HELP NEEDED - video conference via Palemoon and kiwitalk

Post#1 by **Rava** » 13 Nov 2020, 15:20

I want to join (in less than three hours YIKES!) a video conference via a site called kiwitalk - it has to my knowledge nothing to do with NZ, the country near Australia.
https://kiwitalk.de

The main issue: the last time I saw settings buttons in a browser to switch on or off the camera or the microphone have been years ago when still using Firefox and Flash.
Palemoon no longer uses Flash. I did go through all its Preferences Tabs and Sub-Tabs, but I either oversaw it or there is no settings about the camera and microphone.

Same with XFCE, no settings for the camera and microphone to be found in Settings/Settings manager - or I am overseeing it there as well.

The one who set up the video chat wrote in his email that you can also use it via Smartphone. I looked up "kiwitalk" on gøøgle playstore but got no results, might be the issue of my using a older Android version - 4.*

Post#2 by **donald** » 13 Nov 2020, 15:46

Use a different browser because:

"Web Real Time Chat" (comparable with Skype video calls and the likes) is not considered
useful or desired functionality for Pale Moon.

camera and microphone won't be accessible in Pale Moon because it doesn't include WebRTC
and related "usermedia" functions required for such access.

Post#3 by **Rava** » 13 Nov 2020, 15:50

^ would an older Chrome work?

I have google-chrome-75.0.3770.90-x86_64-en-US_rava_dark.xzm

Post#4 by **Rava** » 13 Nov 2020, 20:48

All went well with google-chrome 75.0.3770.90

thanks Donald.

Post#5 by **Rava** » 15 Nov 2020, 11:56

donald,

is there a free (as in speech and beer) solution hosting a video conference without giving companies like zoom private data?

Post#6 by **AcnapyxoB** » 15 Nov 2020, 12:10

The solution is: https://meet.jit.si/

Post#7 by **Rava** » 15 Nov 2020, 12:13

AcnapyxoB wrote: ↑
15 Nov 2020, 12:10
The solution is: https://meet.jit.si/

I try it. Is there a review of meet.jit.si ?

Added in 4 hours 3 minutes 23 seconds:
UPDATE

Now that yours truly is back enjoying a sunny day I looked for reviews myself.

https://alternativeto.net/software/jitsi-meet/reviews/ are quite positive.

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/priva ... itsi-meet/ also recommends it:

Jitsi Meet is a free, open-source, video call app that doesn't require you to create an account to use it. The privacy conscious folks at the Tor Project recently recommended Jitsi Meet as a good alternative to Zoom. Jitsi Meet works on desktop, Android and iOS devices, has pretty high-quality video and audio, allows for password protected video calls, and has no limit on participants (although your internet bandwidth might set your limits for you). And for those more techie folks out there, because Jitsi Meet is open-source, people with the interest and ability can install and run their own version of Jitsi Meet on their own servers.

(highlighting by me)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22669968

I've tried Jitsi Meet and found it to be smooth. During a hangout call with a group of ~8 friends I introduced it as an alternative. User experience comparison:

Onboarding: Jitsi: Click a URL. No accounts. Hangouts: Google account. Need to individually invite other Google accounts.

Video Quality: Jitsi: Decent, slightly better than hangouts. Hangouts: Passable but grainy.

Video Layout: Jitsi: Automatically big-screens current speaker, shows small screens of others. Has option to tile to equally size screens. Hangouts: Same.

Conclusion: Friends preferred Hangouts.

It's quite disheartening that "average users" shun 1 click URL room creation with superior video and audio quality for manually adding contacts. And that's without any considerations for free software vs. Google panopticon. They would rather tolerate a multi-step process of sharing gmail accounts, asking the same person for their email repeatedly.