OLPC Open Video Chat Announcement
by Taylor Rose (RIT Student)
The Open Video Chat project started in March 2010. The primary goal was to
develop a wholly Free/Open Source video chat program using an unencumbered
video codec, Theora. We also needed to make the program run at 15 FPS or
better in order to provide smooth enough video to communicate with American
Sign Language.
Since reaching our 15+ FPS goal we have been working to improve the program
and add features. Except for some minor tweaks our attempts have
consistently been blocked by a bug with RTP. Right now we do not have a
reliable way to ensure that the header packets will reach their destination.
TCP would ensure packet delivery but would bog down the XO's too much. Our
current system with UDP is too unreliable. If we were to stop the stream to
change settings there is no guarantee that the stream will successfully
connect again. RTP would provide the best of both worlds. It would ensure
the header packets get through like TCP but then provide the streaming speed
of UDP. Unfortunately we can't get RTP working with open codecs.
Currently there is a bug in Gstreamer that does not support passing
configuration data inband with RTP and Theora
(link<https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=574416>).
Our other option is to use Telepathy-Farsight but this has also given us
problems. We have been able to get Farsight to work inconsistently with
closed codecs but we could not get it to work at all with Theora which is a
requirement of our project.
So at this point we need help from the upstream. Without either the
Gstreamer bug fixed or some help using Farsight we are at an impasse. We
would appreciate any help from upstream community members. Feel free to
pull our repo and check out our code. If you're unfamiliar with the XO's
you should know that the code requires the Sugar environment to run.
We have begun planning an OVC/Telepathy hackfest at OLPC headquarters in
Boston the week of July 12th. We'll send out a mailing list blast once
we've secured a time and place. More information can be found at
http://foss.rit.edu/events/ovchackfest
Project Wiki: http://www.fedorahosted.org/OpenVideoChat
<http://www.fedorahosted.org/OpenVideoChat>Git Repo: git://
git.fedorahosted.org/OpenVideoChat.git
Mailing List: ovc(a)lists.fedorahosted.org<https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/ovc>
IRC Channel: #rit-innovation
Users: decause, jlew, trose, krimpet
-Taylor Rose
OVC Devel Team
13 years, 10 months
Re: [Ovc] [Telepathy] OLPC Open Video Chat Announcement
by Stephen Jacobs
I'll use this to respond to both posts.
> So at this point i need to go of on a bit of a rant. I did check out your code
> and it looks like "My first video conferencing application", which is fair
> enough really as for most if not all of you it will be your first video
> conferencing application.
>
> It is sad though that a project that afaik is partially meant to teach how to
> do open source development seems to have completely failed at actually using
> open source properly.
The team has consistently asked for help for months with this application and been
regularly pointed to documentation that reads "to be documented" or been rebuffed. If they have the perspective that
they are "bothering the upstream" its because they've learned that the community based around these technologies
is less than receptive to requests for support.
They're happy to stand on the shoulders of others.
They didn't get it. They would have responded if the had
To the best of my knowledge they are consistently in IRC, have been blogging their work regularly, etc.
Whoever erected the fence shouldn't have put it up in the first place. As for jungle guides Mel Chua's pretty good
and she's been involved with the course and the projects (of which this is just one, and the only one that's had
these difficulties in getting support from upstream)
Those points addressed, I'm thankful for the assistance that's currently being offered and look forward
to a productive project collaboration. Could have done without the rant, but
we'll take whatever assistance we can get no matter how its offered.
Stephen Jacobs
Associate Professor
Interactive Games and Media
Rochester Institute of Technology
102 Lomb Memorial Drive
Bldg 70
Rochester, NY 14618
sj(a)mail.rit.edu
585-475-7803
13 years, 10 months
Muji
by Taylor Rose (RIT Student)
So I stumbled upon this video chat client that Collabora is developing
called Muji. http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/MujiDemoClient
Looks very interesting. I didn't get a chance to look it over today. I'm
going to open up the source code first thing tomorrow. So far it looks to
be Linux based 4-way video chat.
For the uninformed: the OVC team is being funded by a research grant this
summer to develop a cross-platform Open Source, Open Codec video chat
program. If you'd like to help in any way please let us know.
-Taylor Rose
Open Video Chat Team
13 years, 10 months
New versions of GStreamer plugins in Fedora
by Fran Rogers
The newest versions of gstreamer-plugins-good and
gstreamer-plugins-bad-free were released in Fedora F11-13 today
(0.10.23 and 0.10.19, respectively). This is great news for two
reasons:
* The GStreamer bug (#574416) that prevented us from using RTP the
Right Way® with Theora should now be fixed.
* The gstreamer-plugins-bad-free package now includes a new VP8
plugin, giving us an entirely new open-source codec to try out. (This
is that codec from the company Google bought recently; it's from the
makers of Theora, but better.)
Both will be good starting points for work when we come back next week!
-Fran
13 years, 11 months
