Video chat

I guess the most promising option will be WebRTC-supported browsers. If you want to try it now, I think the latest Firefox has support for it. It's called 'Hello'. I tried it briefly and it was flaky.
 
I highly recommend net/linphone. It builds nicely from ports, but the package does not include video support so you will need to build it from ports. I've been happy with it ever since Microsoft killed off the existing Skype.

Edit: To add as to the reason why I recommend Linphone so highly for this purpose, it has been ported to everything from Linux to Windows to OS X to iOS. It is truly platform-independent and works with anything.
 
Last edited:
Does anyone here has uTox running on FreeBSD (especially audio input)? It doesn't select the correct audio input device and it seems impossible to change that.
 
MarcoB said:
Does anyone here has uTox running on FreeBSD (especially audio input)? It doesn't select the correct audio input device and it seems impossible to change that.
Click to expand...

Just had this problem myself, emailed the port maintainer who had the solution.

Code: 
[oss]
device = /dev/dsp
capture = /dev/dsp4

to $HOME/.alsoftrc

see also /usr/local/etc/openal-soft/alsoftrc.sample
 
rabfulton said:
Just had this problem myself, emailed the port maintainer who had the solution.

Code: 
[oss]
device = /dev/dsp
capture = /dev/dsp4

to $HOME/.alsoftrc

see also /usr/local/etc/openal-soft/alsoftrc.sample
Click to expand...

Yes, this seems to work. Thanks for the pointer!
 
I did install uTox too and looks it works. I have a problem with sound - there are so loud echo. I didn't try to talk yet. Are there any manuals for the uTox, please?
 
This gets interesting, in the end, free software it seems that it will have its own support for video chat. Some comments from Linux users, they say that the application Hello goes luxurious, and does not spend many system resource. I would like proving the application (uTox and Jitsi) As also Hello. :D
 
Hossein said:
Which application do you advise for video chat?
Click to expand...
This is one of the most frequently asked question and one of the most annoying question for a UNIX guy like myself to answer. The reason is following. OP asks the question about video chat application even though she/he is really asking for a proprietary Skype client. Namely for better of worse lousy Skype protocol has won the video/audio chat wars just like lousy VHS won similar battle in 1980s. The protocol is proprietary, closed source, and only the proprietary vendor can release the FreeBSD client for it. Proprietary vendor, in this case NSA pardon Microsoft, does that not out of goodness if its heart but because of the financial benefit or in this case so that the big brother can listen to your conversation.

Now lets for a second pretend that OP asked really about video/audio chat client. I come here and tell you that pjsua which is not ported to FreeBSD but works like a charm on OpenBSD is the best SIP video/audio client. No nonsense CLI, open source SIP protocol which is used as a building block for many top notch proprietary vidoe/audio clients were privacy is of concern. How will that benefit OP anyhow? Namely OP wants to talk to somebody. With probability 1 the other party is technically clueless and have heard only about Skype (maybe WebEx if it is a U.S. based business partner). How will the fact that pjsua is the best of the best (this is now direct link to the project)

http://www.pjsip.org/

benefit OP? It will not in any shape or form. FreeBSD or for that matter any BSDs are not commonly used as a desktop OS and not fully polished end products (Surprisingly Open is probably the most usable as Desktop OS). As such they are not target platform for any proprietary vendor which a scientific computing guy like me makes really sad (how wonderful would be to be able to use MATLAB on FreeBSD or GPU cards and ditch Red Hat). There is nothing that BSDs can do different to change this situation. So pull that smart phone of yours and just make a damn Skype call.

For the end of this long boring post I will tell you little story from this year BSDCan held in Ottawa. For some reason I got to share a room with one of OpenBSD alpha-males developers. First night I wanted to check on my kids who were at grandma's place in Cleveland U.S. and he wanted to do that with his kids in Germany. I pulled my Android phone and my Skype video call over WiFi well aware that every word will be recorded by NSA. He did the same with his kids in Germany fully aware of the lack of privacy. Did we feel bad about it? Not for a second. We have nothing to hide. We are just two fathers who were missing our kids. We used technically the easiest solution to accomplish the task. That evening we had a diner with bunch of other OpenBSD guys and they did the same while we discussed tor network and how to game the guys from the office next to mine who have 15 million grant from one of three letter agencies to hack into tor network.
 
jrm said:
I don't know anything about pjsua/pjsip, but I see a FreeBSD pjsip port.
Click to expand...
pjsua is just a library and CLI client. pjsip is (I think) a basic GUI SIP client written as a proof of concept around pjsua library. I forgot to mention in my first post that pjsua supports strong cryptography. We can try it once if you want instead of Skype. What sucks of course is that if you don't have fixed IP you need to use somebody's proxy server. There are very few free proxy servers left. I used in the past ekiga's and iptel proxy servers.

This is my .pjsua.ekiga

Code: 
--clock-rate=44100
--registrar=sip:ekiga.net
--id=sip:username@ekiga.net
--realm=*

And this is the .pjsua.iptel


Code: 
--clock-rate=44100
--registrar=sip:iptel.org
--id=sip:username@iptel.org
--realm=*
--username=me
--passwrod=xxx

The good news is that at least here in U.S. my dynamic IP is changing so infrequently that we don't need proxy server.
 
Oko said:
I come here and tell you that pjsua which is not ported to FreeBSD but works like a charm on OpenBSD is the best SIP video/audio client.
Click to expand...

Indeed I know it from OpenBSD and is a very nice Softphone.

net/pjsip as FreeBSD package does not include the client pjsua,
but if you compile the port, you can configure it to get pjsua.

The problem: I do not get audio. Dif someone got pjsua work?

I is there a SIP softphone running without problems in FreeBSD?
 
Back in late 90’s, there was a nice video chat app called CuSeeMe for MSOS and its variants (with similar names which I forgot) for Linux and MacOS. If I remember correctly, Linux also had server (called Marshal?) for its binary client. Now, I wonder what happened to all that tech.
Then and now, there are also murmur (server) and its mumble (client) for VoIP that runs on AnyOS. If some genius adds video stream to it, there could be another multi-platform VVC app. Better yet, there should be one inside today’s super WWW browser(s), as add-on or plugin for VideoVoiceChat. Until then, we just have to wait for a lonesome teenager stuck in his bedroom who will develop such utilities out of boredom :)

Edit: Maybe, I'm out of touch with current tech:confused: I guess the in-browser video chat systems do exist. But, I don't want to test the tech in flirtymania to see if it offers 2-way video with sound. :D
 
And all this softphones behave different on different sip servers. Perhaps due to NAT traversal.

I do not get pjsua on OpnBSD working on iptel.org, but with different configuration on
callcentric.com and sipgate.de.

Sipgate needs the stun server, although they recommend not to use it. I configured them with udp, I did not manage
them to work with tcp. VoIP seems to me not a simple thing.

But I have first to solve the problem with FreeBSD audio devices.
 
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