Readme: XMeeting v0.3.4 XMeeting Readme
System Requirements
Thank you for downloading XMeeting!
Features
Contact
Manual
Localization
Credits
Release Notes for Release 0.3.4
Older Release Notes
Known Bugs
In this document, you will find all information related to this particular release of XMeeting. For more information about the XMeeting project in general, project roadmap, planned releases or actual news, please visit the project's webpage found at http://xmeeting.sourceforge.net/.
Important: If you are upgrading from XMeeting 0.1, please read the Release Notes for Release 0.2
System Requirements
Mac OS X 10.4 or newer with QuickTime 7 installed. (PPC or intel)
Recommended: An QuickTime compatible USB or FireWire webcam (e.g. iSight)Some functions will be disabled on machines with older and less powerful graphic cards.
Features
This release of XMeeting (0.3.4) ships with the following key features:Communication Protocols:
- H.323
- SIP
Video:
- H.264 (Partially)
- H.263
- H.261
- Video input from QuickTime compatible cameras, pictures or screen.
- Video input devices can be switched at any time.
Audio:
- G.711 uLaw & -ALaw
- Audio input and output devices can be switched at any time
Misc:
- Advanced Address Book integration
- STUN
- H.224/H.281 Far End Camera Control
- Call Recording into QuickTime movies
Contact
Any help or contribution to the XMeeting project is well-appreciated. Please feel free to contact us.
If you have bug reports, feature requests or patches, please use the
bug-tracking facilities
at sourceforge.net. In addition, you can also use the
xmeeting-application
mailing list. The project's admin can be contacted by sending mail to
hfriederich@users.sourceforge.net.
Manual
Starting with version 0.2, XMeeting will ship with a manual. The manual covers all relevant
topics about XMeeting. However, many topics are mentioned very briefly only. The manual will
be updated in regular time intervals and we ask everyone to report us typos and other sorts
of errors.
Localization
Starting with version 0.3, XMeeting is fully internationalized and ready localization. Version 0.3
already ships with Italian, French and German localizations. Please contact us if you want to
provide a localization for your native language.
Please note that the Italian localization is not 100% complete. Some sentences will
still appear in English. We will fix this in future releases.
Credits
XMeeting release 0.3.4 by NET's XMeeting project team. The team consists of Hannes Friederich (software engineering), Thomas Rechsteiner (testing, gatekeeper & conferencing setup) and is led by Dr Thomas Piendl. The NET XMeeting contribution is completely funded by NET http://www.net.ethz.ch/, a part of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich http://www.ethz.ch/.The new Graphical User Interface (GUI) is contributed by SWITCH http://www.switch.ch by funding the work of Ivan Guajana (software engineering). SWITCH supports and fosters cross-platform video-conferencing and therefore decided to contribute to the XMeeting project by offering a new user interface. In addition, SWITCH contributes regularly to the project by providing testing capabilities and support for testing with proprietary videoconferencing solutions.
The Still Image & Screen video input modules are contributed by Mark Fleming, Learning Technology Specialist at Queen's University, Ontario, Canada.
The localizations are provided by (in order of appearance):
Language | Translator |
---|---|
Italian | Marcello Teodori |
French | Joël Vimenet & Christian Helft |
German | Hannes Friederich |
Release Notes for Version 0.3.4
New Features:
- Silence Suppression and Software Echo Cancellation.
Note: The software echo cancellation is not the iSight built-in echo cancellation, and there will be quality differences. Also, the echo cancellation does only help the remote side. If you're hearing echo, the remote party does not have echo cancellation in place. - More call recording video options
- More options for sending DTMF
- Fixes problems when receiving calls and multiple network interfaces are present
- Fixes problems with some SIP endpoints / media formats
- Various other bugfixes
- Fixes incorrect color rendering in the StillImage video input module
v0.3.3
New Features:
- Call Recording Feature
- Local Audio echo test
- Slightly improved GUI
- Fixes a bug introduced in 0.3.2 that prevented calling certain phone numbers when using H.323 with a Gatekeeper
- Fixes a bug introduced in 0.3.2 that made unregistering from a SIP registrar hang forever
- Fixes problems when using SIP and multiple network interfaces are present
- Fixes incorrect DTMF tones when using SIP
- Various STUN/NAT traversal improvements
- Fixes a bug introduced in 0.3.2 that occupied the microphone all the time even if not needed. This attempts to increase bluetooth compatibility as well.
- Various H.323 stability improvements
- Improved compatibility with Polycom MGC 100
v0.3.2:
New Features:
- Audio input volume metering
- Inspector windows no longer hide when XMeeting is not the active application
- The manual is now available in French
- Improves STUN support
- Fixes several stability problems when using SIP
- Improves H.261 compatibility (Polycom MGC)
- Improves H.263 compatiblity (
- Many other small bug fixes
v0.3.1:
Fixed bugs:
- Fixes problems with registration on certain SIP registration servers
- Fixes problems when making an audio-only SIP call whith video enabled
- Several minor bug fixes
v0.3:
New features:
- Support for STUN (Simple Traversal of UDP through NAT), improving NAT traversal.
- Improved Address Book integration, allowing to call phone numbers stored in the Address Book database.
- Support for localizations, adding Italian, French and German localizations.
- New Still Image video input module.
- XMeeting no longer quits when closing the main window.
- More information available about calls and network interfaces.
- The GUI now remembers the state when quitting XMeeting.
- The manual is now accessible through the Help menu
- Various other GUI improvements.
- Fixed video handling to allow custom picture formats (H.264).
- Fixes incorrect Mute/Unmute of audio
- Fixed problems with debug log generation. Debug logs now contain more information.
- Removes duplicated log statements.
XMeeting 0.2 uses a slightly different preferences system than XMeeting 0.1. New is the use of Accounts for H.323 and SIP. This means that the H.323 gatekeeper settings will be lost when launching XMeeting 0.2. You will have to add this information again in the preferences window, section "Accounts". Alternatively, you can remove the preferences file (usually found at ~/Library/Preferences/net.sourceforge.xmeeting.xmeeting.plist) and use the Setup Assistant to setup XMeeting.
New features:
- Support for the SIP protocol. XMeeting can now do both H.323 and SIP. The SIP support is still basic and is not yet considered stable. Also, in the current version, only the H.261 and H.263 video codecs are supported when using SIP
- Support for H.224/H.281 (Far End Camera Control) to improve compatiblility with Codian MCUs.
- Improved H.323 system to improve compatibility with other clients
- Improved H.263 compatibility
- Improved handling of resources if video is disabled
- Various GUI improvements
- Much, much more...
- Fixes incorrect bandwidth requests when making calls using a gatekeeper
- Fixes problems when a phone number was entered with spaces in between
- Fixes a bug that prevented the Address Book from appearing for the second time
- Fixes a problem that if no remote video was received, it wasn't possible to access the in-call controls
- Adds a workaround for the case that the H.263 decoder starts displaying a green screen instead of the remote video
- Adds a workaround for improved handling of video on older machines
This is the first "official" beta release of XMeeting which ships with the following features:
- Support for the H.323 protocol. SIP support is planned.
- A new implementation of the underlying XMeeting framework, redesigned from scratch. This framework builds upon the PWLib and OPAL libraries from the OpenH323 project
- Support for QuickTime video codecs, improving the quality and bandwidth usage compared to ohphoneX.
- Supported video codecs: H.264 (partially), H.263 and H.261. Sending H.264 will not work in most cases unless sending between two XMeeting clients. There exists an option "Enable H.264 Limited Mode" in preferences that allows to send H.264 with a limited bandwidth used and certain other restrictions. However, this mode is NOT standard compliant!
- Supported audio codecs: G.711 uLaw and ALaw. More codecs will be added later
- A completely redesigned Graphical User Interface (GUI) with support for FullScreen video, Picture-in-Picture (PiP) and many other useful features.
- The concept of encapsulating relevant preferences in a super-set, called location. This makes it easy to adjust the application behaviour to your current location. (e.g. "Home" or "Office")
- A new system for providing video input, using a modular interface. XMeeting ships with two modules, a Live Camera Module for QuickTime compatible webcams and a Screen Module for capturing and sending screen content.
- A new Setup Assistant for first-time launch. The assistant can also be used for importing locations from existing files, intelligently asking the user for the missing information. This is the ideal solution for distributing XMeeting along with predefined preferences. Please contact Hannes Friederich if you plan to use this feature.
- There may be random crashes of XMeeting while launching it. Please report us if you experience this problem often
- There may be random crashes of XMeeting while being registered at a Gatekeeper. Please report us if you experience this problem often
- There have been reports about bluetooth headset not working properly. The implementation of bluetooth devices in Mac OS X / Core Audio can still not considered be "stable". Our own tests using bluetooth headsets have so far worked well. Please report us if you experience problems with bluetooth headsets often.
- In some rare cases, calling a remote party seems to take long time without showing any success.
- After some calls, XMeeting is no longer registered at a gatekeeper, even if indicating so. Terminating XMeeting may take a long time in this case.
- XMeeting may crash randomly and rarely when in a call. This is especially true when receiving H.264