VideoLan VideoConference
VideoLan VideoConference (VLVC) is a plugin for the VLC media player.It adds videoconferencing functions, it can connect from 2 to 10 people so that they can see and hear each others with the help of a computer and a webcam. This software is free and is supported on Windows, Linux and Mac OS. It can be downloaded on the Internet and it aims to be used by private individuals and professionals as well.
It received good reviews [1].
Modes
VLVC will allow four kinds of videoconferencing modes, thus covering most of the users' needs.
- Chatroom mode : All users can hear and see each others, everybody can speak freely.
- Conference mode : This mode has one single user, the server, who transmits his sound and video streams to all other users. In other words, he is the only one who can be heard and seen.
- Amphitheatre mode : This mode is still under development. It is an advanced version of the Conference mode that allows the administrator (the server) to grant and revoke the right of speech to one single user at a time.
- Meeting mode : This mode is under development too. It is similar to the Amphitheatre mode, but it can grant and revoke the rights of speech to multiple users at a time.
The team
The project was created in 2003 by a group of students of Epitech, it was then taken over in 2005. Considering the good results of VLVC as a school project, new students have joined the team to take over the work.
Founders of the project
- Arnaud Deredec : Former project leader
- Julien Arnaud : Former communication supervisor
- Julien Cupillard : Former development supervisor
- Florian Gustin : Former member in charge of external relationships
- Guillaume Martin : Former system administrator
- Floren Nguyen : Former technical developer
- Thomas Delon : Project leader
- Romain Lavocat : Communication supervisor
- William Lienard : Development supervisor
- Julien Passeri : Member in charge of external relationships
- Sylvestre Ho Tam Chay : Technical developer
- David Yu : Technical developer
- Mathavarajan Sugumaran : Technical developer
- Current status of this project is unknown. There appears to be some code and documentation here [2] [3]. Last work apparently done in 2007. Note that the downloadable stuff seems based on a more recent SVN version than their repository does?
See also
In general, a single instance of VLC can "play" or "transcode" several streams at once, just not to the same window.
VLM (a stream scheduler) within VLC, can help with that, as well as the telnet and web interfaces.
More things that might help for playing multiple streams at once:
VLC can also "add" (combine) streams iff the encoding and bitrates of the two streams match, using VLC "slave input" You could theoretically use this to combine video with a separate audio file, or possibly "overlay" a video with audio, or combine two audio files together. Haven't tried it though.
