Low Cost Videoconferencing and GNOMEmeeting?

aht asks: "OK!, here is my problem: I'm about to install a LAN of about 20 computers. Each computer must have a soundcard and a videocamera to videoconference with each other and to the outside (Internet). As Netmeeting compatibility is required, we're trying GNOMEmeeting with a USB Logitech QuickCam, but results have not been satisfactory at all. We're not sure if that bad results come from Logitech's USB driver, GNOMEmeeting or both."

"If we're not able to get videoconferencing working with GNOMEmeeting, we will be forced to install Windows 2000. :-(

We're considering moving from the USB videocamera to a BT8{4,7}8+videocamera, but we have economic restrictions: computer and videocamera and everything should stay close to or under $1000. If we do choose to abandon the USB setup, what combination of hardware, videocamera and software would we need to satisfy our requirements?

We're using Debian Linux and we'd like to stick with AMD processors, if possible. Any help will be welcome!"

Comments

Re:Easy solution!

[cworley]

>Put Windows 2000 on the machine and run netmeeting.

You may not want to limit yourself so dramatically...

Note that MS netmeeting has explicitly stopped support for all open standard codec protocols. This is another attempt to lock out compatibility with Open Source software. MS has done their best to hide that they ever supported any open standard protocols, but you can still get support for an open standard netmeeting codec (if you need to interoperate with folks using netmeeting).

The project mentioned in this article sounds like it's trying to solve a specific videoconferencing problem, and not be a generic desktop solution. In that case, you definitely don't want the excess MS baggage: you're getting the whole elephant when all you need is the tail; linux is much easier to tailor to suit a specific need. Compound that with the high pricetag of W2K and the limited budget, and Windows becomes very unattractive.

WebBriefing is a closed source project for Linux. I have found that it complements GnomeMeeting very well in that each has functionality missing in the other. WebBriefing seems to have dropped off the face of the earth , but I could still find the RPM .

Also, realize that GnomeMeeting relies on PWLib. It's V4L compatibility stems from this. I remember going through the source once and seeing the limited compatibility... you might want to do the same. I don't know what project is in control of this library, but that might be a good place to ask about compatibility. The V4L mailing list is also a good resource.