Solutions for multiple webcam meeting

Question

Currently our team is partially distributed with several members not at our local office. We do a lot of collaboration, and have decided to move to using webcams. I've done this before where we've had dedicated video links, but that was typically point to point, connecting two rooms at a time.

What solutions exist out there for having multiple webcams streaming at one time? Audio would be nice, but not entirely necessary, since we can just do a conference call for audio while we stream the video. Any gotchas to those who have used it?

Answer 1

A lot of clients only do point to point, I've found AIM to be the most flexible for quick 3 up or 4 up video sessions.

If you have access, or are using a mac, the ichat interface for video is amazing. There are several other clients that have a stand alone app for this, the main feature you want is bandwidth limiting, because video will eat your bandwidth fast.

Answer 2

Thanks ChanChan. We are primarily a Windows shop (though I do have a MBP at home). Anything other than AIM out there? Anyone done this with MSN?

Answer 3

I've used the Video Chat feature of Skype for 3-way chats a few times and it worked well.

Answer 4

You might want to check out Adobe Connect. I've used it and it's cheap and good. Bonus, it works on any computer with Flash installed.

Answer 5

Never tried, but maybe some Ustream or Stickam combination on a custom webpage could do it... maybe.

Answer 6

ooVoo is completely awesome at this sort of thing (and it is free). It has always seemed far more stable for my team than Skype & other alternatives built into messaging apps for this sort of thing.

Definitely worth a try (I first heard of ooVoo from Hanselman who was raving out how good it worked so I tried it and I've been very happy with it too)

Answer 7

I'm going to second Adobe Connect @ironkeith, it works really well for us. We use it with multiple computers on multiple networks running multiple OS'es.

Answer 8

We've used both OoVoo and also a combination of skype conference call and http://www.mebeam.com/ which worked surprisingly well also.

Answer 9

We've tried Oovoo, but we gave up because of frequent dropped connections. The average connection length was as little as 10 minutes.

Oovoo is also not free for the resolution we needed (640x480 15fps allows both whiteboard reading and facial expression interpretation) and for multi-user conferencing after the trial period. I'd have argued for payment if it had been more reliable.

Lately we've been using Google Video Chat (Gmail) point to point, and doing limited multipoint with multiple computers. We'd like a reliable multipoint solution but haven't found one at the resolution and edge sharpness we need.

GVC stability is very good on XP. Unfortunately the OS X client is unstable, we can't maintain an XP to OS X session for more than about 10-20 minutes.

We're using Logitech Vision Pro webcams for their build quality, optics, and driverless operation (they're marketed for OS X, but are driverless on XP SP2 and Vista as well).

We're also using Panasonic IP Cameras with embedded web server to serve a 640x480 JPEG refreshed q3sec to up to 12 remote clients, but that's only useful for sharing diagrams and static material.