Videoconferencing background: H.323 Software

This page is intended to provide some useful information regarding software-based H.323 videoconferencing methods.

GnomeMeeting

GnomeMeeting is an Open Source program running under Linux. It has been determined that, once all problems setting it up properly have been resolved, GnomeMeeting should have no adverse effects on H.323 conferences. Daniel Wicke has a very useful page, including pictures, on how to configure Gnomemeeting for use at DØ.

Unfortunately, there are also issues with the H.263 video used by the 85X Ad-Hoc conferences (82X should be no problem). Roger Moore has written a page containing guidance for use with the Ad-Hoc meetings (note in particular the calling specification and the fact that GateKeeper registration should not be performed in advance of the call), as well as patched versions that deal properly with the video.

The ESnet people, although they do not support GnomeMeeting officially, provide at least some minimal instructions that should help one to get setup for the Ad-Hoc H.323 meetings. Also Alan Sill (from CDF) has a web page containing useful experience with ancient versions of GnomeMeeting.

Finally, it is worth pointing out that the next version of GnomeMeeting will be appearing under a different name and with a different website: Ekiga.

XMeeting

XMeeting is again an Open Source project, but with the specific goal of providing videoconferencing solutions geared towards Mac OS X. It features two programs:

• XMeeting for Mac OS X 10.4 and later. It is available in "universal binary" format (i.e., the same executable works both on Intel and PPC CPUs).
  Configuration instructions (for version 0.3.4, but this is reasonably version independent) provided by the Computing Division can be found here.
• OhPhoneX for Mac OS X 10.3. This client is known to work with Intel-based macs running under Rosetta. However recompiling the source to build an Intel binary seems to cause video to fail. If anyone does get an Intel binary working please let the VC committee know so we can put a link to it here. (Note that this information is old and may be out of date. At any rate, all development is now done on XMeeting, so it is highly recommended to migrate.)
  Minimal OhPhoneX configuration information has been provided by ECS.

Again, ESnet does not support XMeeting/OhPhoneX officially, but have established that when properly configured, it ought not to affect videoconferences adversely. Note that the bandwidth should be restricted to be between 256 and 768 kbps!

PVX

PVX is commercially available software by Polycom, for use under Windows.