CROW: web based audio and video conferencing services FAILS?

, ,

Which web based audio and video conferencing services
failed you at your event or event you attended? When? How? Why?

(no need to list jitsi on wmcloud overloads)

P.S.
started with a negative premise for this topic in CROW…
(Conference Remote Options for Wikimedians)

…in hope it is easier to do negative selection :slight_smile:

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Para mí, a la hora de elegir una plataforma, tomo en consideración cuál nos brinda el mejor el ancho de banda de mi país, Venezuela. Para colocarlo en contexto, la mayoría de la población tiene acceso a una conexión de solo 1,0 Mbps de bajada.

En este sentido, Google Meet tiene todas las de perder, ya que es bastante probable que se cuelgue a mitad de una conferencia, inclusive en la que los participantes tienen apagada la cámara. Zoom lleva las de ganar, con el tiempo nos ha permitido llevar diferentes actividades de una manera virtual sin tantos traspiés.

Sobre la experiencia del usuario (UX), acá Zoom siempre ha sido más difícil de utilizar, inclusive entre personas como yo que tienen más de dos años utilizándolo, eso sin contar con el odioso mensaje de 40 minutos gratis por llamada cuando no has pagado una suscripción. Acá Google Meet es superior a Zoom, sobre todo para encontrar los botones para intervenir.

Jitsi es un desastre y nunca nos ha funcionado, ni para realizar una conferencia por el ancho de banda, ni tampoco en la experiencia del usuario.

Thank you for sharing these insights and experiences. Super useful!

It is excellent point about geographic distribution of bandwith as many in developed metropolitan areas of North America and West Europe forget that connections are not reciprocal and pushing high resolution video to the ‘last mile’ of developing regions feels like data flood. At home in Bosnia&Herzegovina even Zoom audio fails often, let alone video, so I fully understand and empatize with you.

As for UX complexity and consistency - yes zoom both keeps changing and adding complexity while failing to introduce intuitive logic and no consistency that one could finnaly grasp *(we all fail even after weekly use for all pandemic).

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عندما عرضنا الفيديو في Meet لم يكن هناك صوت وعندما أردنا تقديم تعديل على المباشر بقي الويب يدور في فراغ وعندما تحولنا للزووم كان كل شيى رائع إلا أنه محصور في ٤٠ دقيقة

For all its perceived UI/UX difficulties, Zoom appears to be superior to Google when it comes to bandwidth economy (low latency transmission) and overall capabilities. Imho, the only other contender in this area would be MS Teams.

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This sounds more like input for the new topic thread (maybe) #CROW:Reviews ZOOM?
(not able to branch-it-out myself so please consider to do it yourself)

My experience with bad connections (not so much low-bandwidth, just unreliable) was the opposite, Google Meet seemed to work slightly better. Also, Zoom’s Linux support is just terrible, you need to quit and reconnect every 15 minutes or so because the application becomes increasingly less responsive, to the point where there is a tens-of-seconds-lag between hitting a key and e.g. the comment box reacting. Add to that really fundamental UI fails like the comment box not auto-expanding or scrolling when you type a long comment, so after three lines you have to type blind; and a history of crippling security and privacy bugs (example). Zoom is the only video tool offering live interpretation support, but that’s really the only reason to put up with it IMO.

That’s an excellent point @Tgr!
It looks like we have disregarded the whole OS<>app issue in this discussion. Some solutions indeed work much better on Mac than on Windows or Linux and vice versa.

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Hm…

…is super present in Meta and Telegram discussions - just not yet here as we just started ;-p

We’re quickly getting there… :slight_smile:

I think everyone here knows you meant Microsoft Teams, but in the case we have a wanderer…this is NOT “Movement Strategy” Teams :rofl:

Microsoft TEAM nécessite un enregistrement pour accéder à la réunion que nous n’avons pas réussi à faire une réunion parce que de nombreuses personnes ne parviennent pas à nous rejoindre.