I’ve been busy, nestled away in my testing area. Next up to bat is the excellent software OpenMeetings. Openmeetings is free video conferencing software that allows you to chat via video, to do whiteboarding, to convert documents on the fly, etc. It even allows you to share your desktop.
So, what can OpenMeetings do? Let’s start there. OpenMeetings can allow you to do video conferencing for free. It is cross platform and browser independent. That’s because it renders in flash. It’s pretty good at what it does. In those meetings, you can upload office files (word, excel, powerpoint) and it will convert it on the fly using the Openoffice converter plugin. It will then serve those files in the original format, pdf, and flash. It uses flash to present the document to the whiteboard area. You can also upload and share images. You cannot share video. You can, however, share your desktop. When sharing your desktop there is something you need to know. If you keep the OpenMeetings meeting open in the browser, it will mirror your desktop view infinitely. What you need to do is minimize the openmeetings window. No, you can’t see what others see while you’re doing it, but they will. Just ask them.
Let me share some experiences with you in my testing thus far. At first, I ran OpenMeetings on a Windows box with 768 megs of ram. I was just wanting to demo the product and see if it had any viability for a non profit thing I’m doing. This is what I learned on that experience:
- Set up was easy
- Document conversion setup had some issues (this could have been me!)
- Hardware wasn’t nearly sufficient
Two attendees to a conference were okay in terms of delay and processing. Doing document conversion killed the meeting. The machine spontaneously rebooted. End of meeting! Lol.
For my second test, I moved to a ubuntu linux install on a much better machine with 4 gigs of ram. Now, on Ubuntu there are just a few gotchas. First, make sure you install the openoffice-headless package. This will allow you to run openoffice in headless mode to do the document conversions. You can see this option by running the Synaptic package manager. Just type “sudo synaptic” in the terminal. That will prompt for root password and your off. Then search for openoffice-headless and install it. Easy Enough. Follow the directions on the wiki and you should be fine. I had it up and running in less than 20 minutes once ubuntu was installed. Also, if you are going to be accessing the server remotely, you need to forward at least port 5080. This is what I learned from this test:
- Hardware was just fine for document conversion and running the app
- Added 5 participants with issues on client hardware (like webcams!)
- Bandwidth was a real issue and needs QOS
What you are going to find is that hardware and bandwidth are going to be your limiting factors (as always!). The router we were testing on did not have QOS. As a result, time lags were horrendous – up to a minute with 5 participants. That made the app unusable. Oh, another note while I’m at it – make sure you use headphones while using OpenMeetings! Using speakers will cause a feedback loop on the audio.
So, my next test will be conducted on a router with Qos. That will be interesting. Here are some screenshots. Click on them for full view.
Wow. That’s great specially it’s free
Yes, it is a good program. I have not worked with other participants as yet (have tried from 2-3 other PCs). I like what I see with document and images sharing.
Having some problem sharing desktop. Getting “Could not parse launch file” error. I am not sure how to resolve this issue (I have the red5-7.0 on Ubuntu). Any suggestion?
Thanks,
Hi,
Please remove the above comment as the weblink has a typo (sorry!)
I have not worked with other participants as yet (have tried from 2-3 other PCs). I like what I see with document and images sharing.
Having some problem sharing desktop. Getting “Could not parse launch file” error. I am not sure how to resolve this issue (I have the red5-7.0 on Ubuntu). Any suggestion?
Thanks,
Does this software run in Windows plataform ?
Thanks
Yes, it runs on Windows as well and it supposed to be easier to install and run. Unfortunately, I am not finding it easier on Winows platform. Installation part is fine but there is some other glitch in the (my) setup somewhere. I can’t upload any files/images to see the results in a webmeeting.
Still waiting for some response for my desktop sharing issue (Ubuntu Linux).
David L
glad to see others are using this fine product. Windows was definitely an easier install for me. i have found that starting over is easier than troubleshooting some issues.
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Yes, it is a good program
Wonderful article, but I was left wondering what CPUs were used in your testing? RAM is important, as are disk speed and total available bandwidth, but CPU is critical when tranformation is performed “on-the-fly”. CPU models, please.
Was RAM really an issue? Was swapping an issue? What sort of disk subsystem was tested? RAID10, RAID5, RAID-z?
I have followed install instructions, and everything is working, except, that when I try to upload a document to the whiteboard it times out, and does not load.
documents are uploading and converting( and can see the thumbnails in the file box) but when I try to upload to whiteboard I have a problem.
Do you have any suggestions to help me locate and fix the problem?
This blog Is very informative , I am really pleased to post my comment on this blog . It helped me with ocean of knowledge so I really belive you will do much better in the future . Good job web master .
Is there a limit to the number of participants in a meeting? Would 40 be too many?
I would like to see the video software work live do you have a working demo area?
I am not a computer person, can you please put into simple language how to install this program, and exactly which program is needed to run Open Meeting. Thanks
Chuck, go see my recent post on DimDim:
http://gopaultech.com/blog/2009/06/dimdim-free-web-conference-software/
That software will work really well for you.