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Re: Video chat with N900?

Just to clear this up and confirm what I understand.

Basically, with aMSN on the N900, the web cam feature works, but there won't be any audio? Which mean, video call is possible, but minus the talking part?

And, how safe is installing this app on the N900? It wouldn't be like the app's in garage, where there's a chance of bricking the device by installing it?

Re: Video chat with N900?

I asked a Nokia person about this and I was told that they are working on supporting video chat.

From what I can see these are possible reasons why video chat is not yet supported:

Google chat: Uses SVC (scalable video coding) extension of H.264 for video. AFAIK there is no open source decoder/encoder available for this and there may be no implementation which is optimized for the OMAP processor. So far Google hasn't even managed to provide a plugin which works on x86 for Linux.

Skype: Since video chat works on x86/amd64 Linux, the only reason I can see is that they have to port the codec to the OMAP, which may take some time and may not be a high priority for them.

Re: Video chat with N900?

Installed aMSN about an hour ago because I couldn't resist temptation.

Here's my thought of the app.
It's a complete resource hog, especially when I try to use the webcam. When using the webcam, typing and sending message is so laggy. It would take several seconds for the letters to appear after you type and about 2-3 second for it to send after you hit send. Almost forgot to mention the most important thing, I can't seem to get the webcam to work yet. The other end keep saying the only thing they see is white.

Also, it takes quite a long time to load, about 5-10 second and same time frame to log in. There's also no panning, the only way to navigate is to drag the scroll bar on the right.
The app also randomly shuts down on me too.

Re: Video chat with N900?

Thanks for trying it out! Did you try just running the cam, without sending any messages? The way I understood kakaroto was to use aMSN only for the webcam, and use another app for audio. Perhaps it's worthwhile joining the aMSN forum.

Re: Video chat with N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pinsh (Post 386077)

"A Nokia person"? In management? A tech responsible? A sales clerk in a Nokia store?

Re: Video chat with N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gadgety (Post 386307)

"A Nokia person"? In management? A tech responsible? A sales clerk in a Nokia store?

I think it was Samir Agarwal (Head of Maemo Operations) or it may have been someone from the marketing department, I can't remember exactly. It was at the store event in Chicago and I talked to quite a few people about various N900 related things.

Re: Video chat with N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gadgety (Post 386303)

I did tried it out with the cam only, but it just won't work. Like I said before, the person at the other end can only see white. As for my own im, the place where the webcam should be is blanked, even the display picture disappeared.

Re: Video chat with N900?

Hi again!
To answer MNX1024: no, there's no risk, it won't brick your phone, it's just a user space application, that's all, it needs however about 2 or 3Mb in your root partition, so make sure you have the space (I will in the future make the tcl and tk dependencies install to /opt and create symlinks to /usr/lib instead).

Yes, aMSN is a resource hog unfortunately.. the more contacts you have the more memory it needs, it's not really a CPU hog, but more like a memory hog, and when we talk memory, it usually means swapping, which could lead to app to be slow.. here's a disclaimer I wrote on the amsn forums :

Quote:

aMSN on the N900 works quite well, I'm using it on it everyday, but I think it's necessary to tell this small disclaimer to people :
aMSN on the N900 is a bit slow, mainly when some actions happen, opening the application takes a long time, but once it's loaded, it's ok.. trying to sign in also takes quite a huge amount of time, but once it's connected, it's pretty good, opening windows and chatting is fast, etc.. so that's good.. however, aMSN uses a lot of memory, so most of the time it will be in the swap, which means that if you're using the N900 for something and haven't focused on aMSN for a while, then when you open the window, it will be quite slow and unresponsive (until the N900 moves the memory from the swap back into the RAM).
Also note that it's not 'hildonized', which means the UI is not really made to work on a mobile device, so the menus are not the normal maemo menus, and if you want to type a upper case letter or numbers or symbols, you need to press shift (or Fn) at the same time as the key you want, you can't just press shift, then the letter.. and you can't have caps-lock or fn-lock (by double pressing shift or Fn) either.
Sometimes you'll need to use the stylus for some things, like for example accessing the menus, or use the scrollbar.
I would recommend that you select the Dark Matter skin as your default, and enable the "show detailed contact view" option in the view menu as soon as you start.
Apart from that, it's pretty usable!
By the way, I now have access to the maemo extras repository and i will soon try to upload amsn there so people can install it directly from the application manager.

Now that you've read the disclaimer, let's see.. you say it's slow, takes 5 to 10 seconds to start and to connect.. it doesn't seem right, I'd say it takes more like 40 to 60 seconds to start.. maybe 20 to 30 seconds to connect...fd
after that, it works just fine.. typing and sending text is instantaneous.. and I also tried typing/sending while doing a webcam call (sending AND receiving), and it was just a bit slow, but maybe a lag of 100ms, maximum I'd say 200ms, but definitely not a few seconds... maybe you had switched to some other application and the n900 was still swapping, or maybe you had something else take too much of your cpu...
I checked and aMSN seems to be taking about 40% CPU for a sending only webcam session, and about 75% CPU for sending and receiving, so there's still some juice in the device, so there's no reason for it to be so slow for you.

Now about your 'the other contact only sees a white screen', that's a bug, not in aMSN, but in Windows Live Messenger (WLM)... read more about it here : http://www.amsn-project.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6412
If you want the webcam to work, you can either forward your 6891-6890 ports in your router to the device, or tell the other person to use aMSN too, the webcam should work fine between two aMSN instances (since aMSN doesn't have the bug that WLM has). Oh, aMSN for N900 was also compiled with upnp support, so if your router has upnp enabled, it should also work (in theory, not much testing done, upnp support is very new in amsn).

p.s.: make sure you configure the webcam first, I tried aMSN with both the back and the front camera. By default /dev/video0 is the back camera, so make sure you open the lens on the back otherwise, you'll see a black window (and maybe that's why you thought your display picture just disappeared).

Re: Video chat with N900?

Whew! Sounds promising!

Re: Video chat with N900?

Hi, just a follow up on my previous post..
I have tried testing the audio and video SIP/RTP call again and it kept crashing. Someone else had reported this in the aMSN forums, but I couldn't reproduce it until now. It seems the version of farsight on the device is newer than what I had on my laptop, that's why I could only reproduce the bug on the device.. I debugged it on the N900 and found and fix the aMSN bug (now in SVN).

Once it was fixed, I tried doing audio and video calls again, and once I configured the devices correctly, video calls worked, and audio only worked in one direction. there seems to be a format negociation issue between pulsesrc and what farsight expects.. which is weird since the official maemo voip application uses pulsesrc with farsight too.. I'll have to dig deeper to figure out what's wrong..
but anyways, if you configure your audio/video settings and set your audio source to 'disabled', then you can make an audio/video call with aMSN.. you will be able to send and receive good quality H263 video over RTP, and receive audio, but you just won't be able to send your audio.. that is, until I fix it of course.

I hope everyone is happy!
KaKaRoTo

Re: Video chat with N900?

That is great!!

Going to take a look at aMSN and see what I can help with :)

Re: Video chat with N900?

Quote:

Originally Posted by kakaroto (Post 386878)

p.s.: make sure you configure the webcam first, I tried aMSN with both the back and the front camera. By default /dev/video0 is the back camera, so make sure you open the lens on the back otherwise, you'll see a black window (and maybe that's why you thought your display picture just disappeared).

Hi there,

I can't seem to get my webcam working

When it says choose your device, i get 2 options.
1st is v412: omap3/et8ek8/ad5820/adp1
2nd is v412: omap3/vs6555/

and for Choose your channel, its coming camera only.

I tried both the options in different settings, and I still cant seem to get it to work

THanks again

Re: Video chat with N900?

Hi,
The vs6555 is the front camera, the back camera is the omap3/et8ek8/ad5820/adp1.
Once you select the camera, you must also choose the channel (which is 'camera').. if you only select the device but don't select the channel, it will not switch from the currently selected device to the new selection.
Also note that with the current release firmware, the front facing camera shows very very dark images, so make sure you try putting a light bulb in front of it to see whether or not it works.

Re: Video chat with N900?

Any development on Fring ? as that now supports video calling on symbian.

Re: Video chat with N900?

hi guys, i tried video conferencing in googletalk. the video worked (very dark but still working), but the audio i can only send out, i cannot receive any audio from the opposite party.

is anyone else is experiencing this problem or is it just me? is there anything i can do to correct the problem or will i need to wait for the software to be ready. don't get me wrong, the video working is already a treat for me, i just want to understand what is happening to the audio.

Re: Video chat with N900?

I did sip video call through asterisk box to counterpath bria on pc. You have to set everything to use h263 only, but it works ok. Sometimes the n900 camera would have a hard time either starting or sending(it would flash on and off)

Re: Video chat with N900?

i cant get that video sending thing working. i have tryed those 2 settings and they work at the option but not in the chat.

Re: Video chat with N900?

anyone on my problem?