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Video conferencing

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oblivion:
I've used an old PC at work to set up an internal chat server. (I used ejabberd, running under ubuntu, in case that means anything to you.) It's been through a couple of incarnations -- in fact, its first existence was based on Openfire, but the latter doesn't seem to want to play ball with me when it comes to updates and nobody cared when I said they'd need to set up their accounts again -- but it seems uncontroversial, it works reliably on a relatively ancient PC that was headed for the junkpile, and it doesn't use any valuable Windows licenses. :)

Which is all very fine and pleasant but a couple of people are now pushing me to add videoconferencing facilities to it -- the point being that they don't want to install Skype when we might be able to do something internally.

So suddenly I need either one or two things and I'm either googling badly or what I want isn't available without paying some third party to provide it. I need a chat client that can also handle voice and video, and if ejabberd can't handle the binary streams without help, I need some sort of plugin for it.

I started researching this on the assumption that it wasn't going to be rocket science and that I'd find a solution really easily.

Guess what? I haven't got any sort of handle on what to do. There have been suggestions that I need a SIP server (which looks complicated and possibly far more than is actually required) but I have yet to find anything that looks like a simple recipe for what I want to do.

Anybody here done anything like this? Or can point me at an online resource I can go and bang my forehead against for a while, before deciding I'm out of my depth? (I pretend to understand a bit about ubuntu but if I'm honest, I'm happiest with a gui, these days!) ;)

barney:
For investigation - and any relevant head banging  :P:

* http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/quicklychat-pushtotalk-video-chats-coworkers/
* http://www.infopackets.com/news/software/major_geeks/2012/20120530_argus_boot_accelerator_1_0_1_and_oovoo_3_5_1_71.htm
* http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/some-cool-apps-you-can-use-to-work-as-a-virtual-assistant-pc-android/
* http://www.freewaregenius.com/2012/04/17/supercharge-your-web-cam-with-splitcam-add-effects-broadcast-to-im-services-use-with-multiple-programs-at-once-etc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Freewaregeniuscom+%28freewaregenius.com%29
* http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-a-customizable-webcam-widget-to-your-desktop-with-the-simple-lightweight-camdesk-windows-linux/
* http://www.ghacks.net/2012/03/07/detach-google-chat-from-the-browser/
* http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-chat-client-apps-to-make-business-collaboration-easier/1536
* http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/five-apps/five-video-communication-apps/1390?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techrepublic%2Ffive-tips+%28TechRepublic+Five+Tips%29
I've not tried any of these, as yet - well, I have used Google Talk a time or three (3) - but they're on my list of stuff to check out if I ever get time  :(  :-\  ;).  Maybe something here will click for you or perhaps point you somewhere effective.

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