Webcam/video chat options - The Bear and Badger

davyK

kneecap wrote:

Is there a way to have more than 4 people display on Teams at one time? Also why does my webcam not show up even when it is broadcasting. I also cannot turn it off once it has started...

There's a floating toolbar that will appear if you move your mouse - you can switch on/off your camera and mute / unmute your mic. It's also got the hangup button? When I have my camera on it's shown bottom right.

Any > 4 and you get a row of avatars along the bottom - we would have 15 or so in our meeting of a morning. You can click on those and also pin someone.

It will swap people in and out of the 4 on-screen depending on who is speaking.

Unfortunately it doesn't have 1 person full screen view with auto-switching to speaker - we had someone with hearing difficulties who wanted that so he/she could read lips. Zoom has that

There are auto-subs but it's WIP- akin to the Hungarian Phrase book sketch at times...

Facewon

poprock wrote:

Found an absolutely lovely video chat app called Whereby, but sadly it’s a paid service. They do offer a free tier, but your chats are limited to four people. Means I can’t use it for work, but it’s definitely a nice option for personal use. Beautifully designed.

Massive co-sign on this for small groups. Just tried it properly with dad. Works really well. Much much nicer than zoom, in browser, and enough free features (especially no time limit) to make it a great option for fam chat.

Screen sharing is slick and quick, can watch youtube together too. Gonna try a little listening party thing with a mate soon.

Please tell me it's not stealing stuff or burning kittens to run.

g.man

This will probably come as a surprise to no-one...
The hugely popular video meetings app Zoom has "significant weaknesses" which might make it unsuitable for secrets.

Facewon

Yeah, think stuff about it was posted earlier. (maybe general dodginess, not this specific problem.)

On top of the shite design, another reason I prefer using anything else.

g.man

Our cabinet meetings are probably being broadcast as Big Brother on Chinese TV for the lols.

cockbeard

tbf near on every twat I speak to has "significant weaknesses" which make them unsuitable for secrets

g.man

hahaha

GooberTheHat

Cisco Webex seems pretty good for actually making group video calls. It's fairly uninspiring otherwise but it does the main job well.

davyK

So it seems that Zoom uses some amateur homebrew encryption that can be cracked with an abacus.

The encryption keys also come exclusively from servers in China.

So that's OK for government use then. Fuck me.

If my organisation is anything to go by it's a struggle weaning senior management off it. It has them in some sort of spell. We have managed to get most of our people to ditch it and stick with Teams. But there are some pricks who seem to think it's better.

You don't even need a Teams account if you are invited to a Teams meeting - install the app and you guest access. There is no excuse for public sector / government to be using something like Zoom.

poprock

Despite their IT guys instructing everyone to use Teams for security reasons, my wife’s firm insisted on using Zoom instead for their Friday night social. Because Friday night has different rules you see, even though they’re all login in from the exact same computers with the exact same email addresses.

GooberTheHat

davyK wrote:

So it seems that Zoom uses some amateur homebrew encryption that can be cracked with an abacus.

The encryption keys also come exclusively from servers in China.

So that's OK for government use then. Fuck me.

If my organisation is anything to go by it's a struggle weaning senior management off it. It has them in some sort of spell. We have managed to get most of our people to ditch it and stick with Teams. But there are some pricks who seem to think it's better.

You don't even need a Teams account if you are invited to a Teams meeting - install the app and you guest access. There is no excuse for public sector / government to be using something like Zoom.

In my government department zoom is absolutely not allowed for anything even remotely official.

GooberTheHat

But seriously, Webex is a pretty solid free offering, and easy as pie to use.
Free features
Up to 100 participants in each meeting
(Up from 50)
Meet as long as you want
(Up from 40 min limit)
Call-in for audio
(in addition to existing VoIP capabilities)
Unlimited number of meetings
Desktop, application, file & whiteboard sharing options
Video conferencing features
Webex Teams collaboration features
Mobile features
Security features
Online support

Facewon

Just had a look at webex. And yeah, if I needed Corp stuff, that's great.

monkey

Cisco have got the contract for govt IT business. They just used Zoom for a photo op to try and look zeitgeisty.

nick_md

You don't even need to install Teams to use it, there's a browser link to join calls.

We still use hangouts for all but our client meetings (who for obvious reasons need to use Teams).

davyK

When you are paying out for an Enterprise Sub as we are (for 2100 users which is quite a lot of money for what is effectively software for sending email and writing letters) and you are spending public money, it is lunacy, not to mention immoral, not to use Teams as far as I'm concerned.

nick_md

Eesh, I've no idea of the costs; I work with Microsoft so everything is provided (and mandated) in terms of Teams use, for interactions with them.

davyK

We pay well in excess of £300K every year. And that's with public sector discount which is quite heavy. Private sector bills will be well over that for similar usage levels. Could easily be double that.

So if you are paying that out you really should be using it.

poprock

Yeah, adding Teams on top of our existing Office sub would be a tenner per user per month. We’ve taken a one year free trial, on the assumption it will see us through this shitshow.

Facewon

@mattyj. This is the thread re webcams.

Facewon

Has anyone ever live streamed on youtube?

Appears I need encoders. Wanting to set up so I can show dad.

Minnesänger

monkey wrote:

Cisco have got the contract for govt IT business. They just used Zoom for a photo op to try and look zeitgeisty.

We have Cisco setups at work and they’re really nice.

End up using Teams, hangouts or Skype a fair amount though, depending on what setup other people use.

poprock

Interesting article from Bloomberg here on the sudden rise of Zoom.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-09/zoom-goes-from-conferencing-app-to-the-pandemic-s-social-network

(If you’ve used up you free article allowance on Bloomberg, switching to private/incognito browsing works.)

g.man

I'll just leave this here then...

Archers fan event invaded by Nazis and pornography

poprock

“It was a teachable moment - as our American cousins would say.”

g.man

You live and learn.

kneecap

It was the one thing we didn't want to happen.

Wookienopants

Nextime one of us wants to do one of our quizzes on here we should try it over Zoom or Houseparty.

With silly hats

davyK

For pure comedy gold, leave a voicemail using MS Teams.

It manfully attempts to turn it into text. It is clearly struggling with the NI accent. We are having a riot sending each other transcripts with a challenge to guess what the speaker is talking about.

It is in the Python Hungarian phrase book territory.

Our current favourite phrase is "making babies in Santa Land" - I am still trying to remember what I was saying...

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