So, now that we’re rolling out the video phones to all the staff, I’ve been asked about conference calls.
Searching the forum yields nothing recent so I’m wondering what’s new in this field. I’m looking for something I can install locally, and then the staff dial into it somehow and see a multi-person view on their hardware phone.
Anyone currently using something like that?
I’m in the same boat. For person to person video calling, FreePBX can handle the calls pretty well naively. However, I’m also just starting to look at multipoint solutions. I’ve run into http://openmcu.ru/eng.htm recently, and the developer has made a guide for installing this on FreePBX systems (and how to avoid conflicts by routing SIP call handling to FreePBX and H.323 calls to the OpenMCU). http://openmcu.ru/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=1059.0;attach=2871
I haven’t started testing it out yet, but it doesn’t look too difficult. Also, I can’t argue with free (open-source).
Thanks for the tip @adolfoc, I’ll take a look at that.
It’s not high on the priority list yet, but when/if the time comes where I’m told we need it, I’d better be able to make it happen!
If you get somewhere with it before me, do tell!
So I set this up earlier this week and I haven’t really pushed it to it’s limits, but it runs pretty well.
Don’t run the Windows version of openmcu.ru… I initially did that and found the version a little out of date but it’s also only a 32-bit application.
I ended up making a Hyper-V virtual instance of CentOS 7, and running the latest version of openmcu-ru, made some firewall adjustments to allow traffic through my network firewall and the machine’s firewall and that was mostly it.
In the openmcu-ru config, I changed the Settings > Advanced > Video > Video Frame Rate to 30
Same until Settings > Advanced > h.323 parameters > frame rate from MCU 30
Video (receive and transmit) to 1280x720 and H.264
The endpoints I’m using are Polycom RealPresence Desktop (30-day trial) and Mobile (free): Set the call rate to the max. I don’t really have much equipment to test with.
So far I get a good steady 720p at 30fps on each endpoint.
I haven’t messed with it much… or dived into integrating it more with FreePBX… but it seems to work pretty well.
Sounds promising. I’ll spin up a copy on a ubuntu VM next week and see if I can get it running. Will be using h264 on cisco endpoints.