Tuesday, December 29, 2009

OpenMeetings Recording Feature

happy to announce that the Recording of Web-Conferencing Session's in OpenMeetings is ready.

You can test the Recording feature live at http://www.openmeetings.de

Features of the Recorder:

* Platform independent
* Download recorded file as FLV File (to watch offline, publish on your website or through Youtube)
* Private and Public Recordings via a Drag and Drop interface and Folders to organize Recordings
* Recording Timeline gives additional information when attendees are speaking
* Record hole screen + share screen at the the same time
* Seek in the Player to any point

Below is a sample screen from the Recording:

OpenMeetings Recording Sample Screen














And here is a FLV that I Recorded with OpenMeetings and uploaded to Youtube:

Monday, December 14, 2009

when will h.264 and video ever really work on OSX with Adobe Flash Player

A number of websites and TV stations provide their content as Live Stream these days. And it is getting more and more. As they don't want the user to install anything they often choose the Flash Platform to deliver the content. Unfortunately on Apple OSx it works but your CPU has 70-95%. That means after 5 minutes watching you can hear your CPU trying to cool down like hell. And if you have some kind of sensible data on your MacBook you start thinking how much a crash would cost you. So you better switch off. This High-CPU usage is even higher when it comes to h.264 content. With h.264 you can not watch more then 2 minutes. We would not like to talk about the Linux Plugin now ... for Users of that platform its almost impossible. They can be glad that their webcam and microphone is supported so that they can make some Conference Calls.

It is no new problem, it seems like the hardware acceleration that Adobe is proud of is only part of the Windows Platform Plugin, so that Non-Windows users can wait for a long time until they finally will receive Video On Demand in High Definition. Sorry guys but what Adobe delivers here is not more then a Proof-Of-Concept. I by myself am remind by that every day when I try to watch the Live-Cast of N-TV.de or CNN. I could be glad cause that way I hear more radio ... like the famous and commercial free radio soma.fm but I guess it would be better to choose radio because I like to and not because my device does not support Flash Video for more then 10 minutes.

I tried also updating to Flash Player 10.1, I hoped to get better results. I had not the impression that it really improves anything. After encountering that RTMPT-Connection does not work for the Flash Plugin on OSx I had to uninstall everything and install 10.0.xxx again. I don't feel like Experience Matters ^^.

Friday, November 6, 2009

Flash Player hidden feature - Echo Cancellation and P2P Live Streaming

I recently discovered two features of the Flash Player that are only available for "Premium" customers. These are interesting for Web-Conferencing Systems.

Did you ever notice that this flag in the ActionScript API *useEchoSuppression* does not seem to have any effect to the behavior? (API Docs: http://livedocs.adobe.com/flash/9.0_de/ActionScriptLangRefV3/flash/media/Microphone.html#useEchoSuppression)
Well it is because there IS NO! This echo Cancellation is only available if you use Adobe Connect Pro. You can find a hole history of reports about this feature and people that investigated at the Adobe Bug Tracker (you have to sign up): http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-273 (this issue has started in August 2008, so its not really new). It seems like Adobe has the Code for the Echo Cancellation ready since SWF 9. But they refuse to include it into the Flash Player for everybody. You get an additional Add-On for this feature.
Another interesting feature can be seen live when you watch the CNN Live Broadcast:

http://edition.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?stream=stream1

you should watch your network through-put. You will encounter after some minutes, that your upload is as big as your download rate! That means the Flash Player is able to use P2P to broadcast a Live Stream. Quite nice, unfortunately it seems the same thing here, you need a modified Version of the Flash Player for that feature.

Lets see how long they can follow that route...

Monday, October 12, 2009

OpenMeetings becomes even more liberal with EPL License

to bring OpenMeetings in line with the License of OpenLaszlo we will switch from the LGPL to the EPL with the next release.

What does that mean for you?
- Actually not that much.

Eclipse Public License is even a bit more liberal then the LGPL

Quote from wikkipedia.org:

The Eclipse Public License is designed to be a business friendly free software license, and features weaker copyleft provisions than contemporary licenses such as the GNU General Public License (GPL). The receiver of EPL-licensed programs can use, modify, copy and distribute the work and modified versions, in some cases being obligated to release their own changes.[2]

The EPL is approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI)[3] and the Free Software Foundation (FSF)[4].

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

OpenMeetings 0.9 RC3 ready for testing

we are happy to announce the Release 0.9 RC3.
It is a bugfix release for users that have issues with:
- Document or Images that contain special characters (Russian, Scandinavian, German *umlaute*)
- Linux Users that have issues when typing special characters into input-fields

See a the complete changelog:
http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/wiki/ChangeLog

Friday, September 4, 2009

Integrate Collaboration features into your Portal or Website with OpenMeetings

To easily extend your Website or Portal with the Open Source Web-Conferencing of OpenMeetings you only need to have a SOAP Library for your Portal Software. In 99% there will be already such a Library that enables you to use the build in SOAP Methods of OpenMeetings to do the famous SSO (Single Sign On) to directly create/manage rooms of OpenMeetings from your Website.

The Single Sign On Flow is described within this graph:

Single Sign On Flow OpenMeetings

The hole process is documented in OpenMeetings's wiki:

http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/wiki/DirectLoginSoapGeneralFlow

The trick about the SOAP Gateway in general is that you get a Session-Token, mark that Session-Token as logged in, and then set any User-Credentials that you would like into that Session-Token. And in the next step you use that Session-Token as Param in the URL that enters the Room. You don't need to populate any Users from your Portal into OpenMeetings! So you can run those applications even on different servers or build your very own system with several conference servers and one central portal software that redirects the user to those meeting-servers. That way you have a very flexible way of extending your Server infrastructure and can handle 10.000 and more users.

For security reasons login via SOAP is only possible for an Administrator Account. Otherwise any use could simulare 100+++ Users in the Meeting Server.
Additionally to the Direct Login there are a number of other services to manage Rooms, User et cetera:

http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/wiki/SoapMethods

We are also continuously extending this Gateway with new functionality. One already ready to run example of an integration is the Moodle Plugin (Test it here, no need to sign up http://www.openmeetings.de/moodle/ )

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Updated Demo Version of Moodle Conferencing Plugin. Now with much more functionality in the Event Room. Try our demo at http://ping.fm/M53Ft

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

OpenMeetings 0.9 RC2 released

Major changes in MileStone 0.9 RC2:

  • Multiple Moderators: A moderator can make other Users also Moderator (add or remove Moderation flag)
  • No Confirmation from all users needed anymore to get Moderator (you just send a message to the Moderator)
  • Completely refactored Event Modus with: Multiple Moderators, allow any User to draw to the whiteboard, Moderators can allow or deny any user to share his Cam or Microphone (Raise hand function)
  • New Module Configuration XML-File to runtime configure Plugins and Modules
  • New Language Translations: Swedish and Finnish contributed by www.openkvarken.fi
  • Refactored parts of Calendar to fit into Layout and design
  • Various Modifications and fixes

A complete list of all Issue working and worked on MileStone 0.9 can be seen at:

http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/issues/list?can=1&q=milestone%3DRelease0.9

Download of Release 0.9 RC2: http://openmeetings.googlecode.com/files/red5-openmeetings-090-rc2-r2227.zip

OpenMeetings 0.9 RC2 released, this includes a lot new Modifications, for example a new Event Modus Room, check http://ping.fm/oiOeX

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Demo is now at r2219 including the new features of Moderation, new Event Room and functionality and some modifications to the Calendar. Register http://ping.fm/Hh0i8 for free!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

OpenMeetings, the Open Source Web Conferencing has released a new package for Testing http://ping.fm/57d6g

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Interesting new features around Moodle 2.0 http://ping.fm/8J2hc OpenMeetings will also upgrade to it as soon as possible. We hope to integrate deeper into Moodle with our next versions.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

OpenMeetings is news now listed in the OSzine http://ping.fm/ppUP4

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

If you need a developer for OpenMeetings or OpenLaszlo & Red5 http://ping.fm/DKNi8

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

OpenMeetings 0.8.4 Released together with Moodle Mod 0.5 see the Release Notes http://ping.fm/S3p0r

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Finally OpenMeetings is also listed in the Open-Source directory of yeebase http://ping.fm/5rFTR

Monday, June 15, 2009

Thx to CTpaHHoe, there is a new VMWare Image of OpenMeetings r2056 available http://ping.fm/21sLr
Oliver has commited the first part of his Desktop Streaming experience http://ping.fm/pfSHV to OpenMeetings Project.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

There is a new Version of the Moodle Mod for OpenMeetings available, get it at: http://ping.fm/NqNQ9
that Plugin Version should work with 0.8 RC2 and RC3

Monday, June 8, 2009

Try Open Source Web-Conferencing using Red5 and Xuggler, http://ping.fm/73E1L