[ubuntu-za] Video chat alternatives to Skype? Ekiga etc

[Morgan Collett]

On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 14:43, Chris Schoonbee <cmschoonbee at mweb.co.za> wrote:
> Morgan Collett wrote:
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 12:14, Chris Schoonbee <cmschoonbee at mweb.co.za> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks for that feedback.
>>>
>>> Andre Hugo wrote:
>>>
>>>> Empathy works great. Supports video, voice, text chat and includes
>>>> screen sharing if you need to give support to a friend.
>>>>
>>>> I have setup my Empathy with my google account and the video quality is
>>>> better than with skype in my case.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> That is very good news to hear.
>>>
>>> Forgive me if I sound a bit clueless and please correct me.
>>>
>>> As I understand Empathy, I need to set up an external account (eg a
>>> Google account or a jabber account) somewhere ie I cannot use Empathy
>>> directly to communicate with another Empathy user.
>>>
>>
>> Correct - Empathy is a multiprotocol chat client. It supports
>> Jabber/XMPP/Gtalk, MSN, IRC, in fact anything that Pidgin supports if
>> you have telepathy-haze installed which uses libpurple, the Pidgin
>> backend.
>>
>> Jabber/XMPP/Gtalk is required for video/voice AFAIK.
>>
>> I haven't used Empathy for the past year or so so I can't remember the
>> exact process to create a new jabber account but IIRC you can create a
>> new jabber account on a jabber server while adding the account - e.g.
>> username at jabber.org - jabber.org is a public jabber server.
>>
>>
>>> What Google account do you use?  I am confused by the info I have found
>>> as to which type of Google account supports video under Linux.  Google
>>> Talk sounds like the correct type of account but I have read that it is
>>> the Google Mail account which actually supports video chat.
>>>
>>
>> A gmail account is a google talk account. The text chat built into the
>> gmail web interface is Jabber, and your JID is your gmail address.
>>
>>
>>> Does the other party then also need a Google account?
>>>
>>
>> They need a Jabber or XMPP or Gtalk account. These are all effectively
>> the same thing. A gmail account will do, or a @jabber.org account...
>>
>>
>>>> Have tried Ekiga but also could not get it working.
>>>>
>>
>> I haven't tried Ekiga in years but never got it working before. If
>> you're behind a router that does NAT (as probably all of us are) then
>> you need to do some magic to get Ekiga working through some sort of
>> proxy.
>>
>> Empathy (Telepathy actually) uses some magic to "punch a hole in your
>> firewall": http://www.collabora.co.uk/projects/libnice/
>>
>> Regards
>> Morgan
>>
>>
> Thanks for that clarification, Morgan.
>
> I have set up  a jabber.org account as you suggested.
>
> Do you know if there is there a za jabber server at all?  And would that
> make a difference?

There used to be a jabberafrica server locally but I don't think it
exists any more. It would make a small difference in terms of
bandwidth - it should only do the text chat and the signalling to set
up a voice/video call through the server - the actual video/voice
traffic doesn't go through the server so shouldn't need to go
international if you're talking to somebody local.

Regards
Morgan