[libreoffice-website] OpenMeetings

Hi Marc, *,

On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 4:25 PM, Marc Paré <marc@marcpare.com> wrote:
> BTW ... while we are at this type of topic, in trying out OpenMeetings Craig
> O. and I found that the microphone setting is set so that you practically
> have to place the microphone next to your lips for any adequate use.

Yes, just played with it, and I must say I don't like openmeetings at all...

While the feature to show a whilteboard/slides and draw on them is
nice, its not really required for regular conferences with LO (or
there are alterantives). Same for video, nice for some applications
for sure, but not needed for phone-conferences.

I have similar problems with microphone-level, and the flash based UI
just is a catastrophy. You can easily end up with an unusable window
because you cannot move the windows, moving within the presentation
slides is also broken easily.

It does too much.

mumble on the other hand has very good audio configuration tools,
although depending on your OS' audio settings it might not be
straightforward to disable direct microphone-to-speaker setting that
causes echo, but the audio-setup-wizard makes it easy to get a basic
setting where all users end up with a similar "loudness" which makes
understanding each other much easier than with the current
teleconferencing systems (some people only barely audible, while
others are really loud).

And that you have a visual indication of who is speaking also really helps.
It also has a chat/messaging functionality to pass around URLs or
other messages, and is much easier to use (as it does a lot less than
OpenMeetings)

> I
> couldn't find a setting where the sensitivity of the microphone could be
> adjusted. It may be that OpenMeetings way of dealing with this is to have
> the user work at the computer-hardware level rather than through its own
> settings.

Yes, and I couldn't even allow access to the microphone while my
mic-input was muted/disabled. Even after activating it, I could not
dismiss the dialog. I had to close and start over.

(and the disappointment did start right from the very beginning, when
openmeetings sent the chosen password in cleartext along with the
activation mail)

> On the other hand, Mumble's setting for the microphone is quite fine.

Yes, and also simultaneous speaking works rather well (well, tested
with only two other people, so not sure how it will scale :-)) But
with the notifications/visual indicators it's easier to spot when
someone is about to say something, so you can back off and wait with
your own comment.

> It
> works so well, that I can set my microphone on top of my monitor and it is
> still loud enough for people to hear. We have had some issues with echo, but
> I think this has more to do with "fine tuning" the Mumble client and with
> speakers that anything else.

Yes, echo cancellation works really well for me, with external
speakers right next to the monitor with built-in microphone. The
important part about it is that you must not route the microphone
directly to your speakers, but only let mumble create the audio
output.

> We still need to test out OpenMeetings with perhaps 4-5 people all on at the
> same time. There is also a little more to learn with OpenMeetings than with
> Mumble.

I'm now a fan of mumble :-) and I have to say I dislike OpenMeetings
UI. - But of course different tools for different needs, I can imagine
running general meetings with mumble, and have groups use openmeetings
if they choose to do so.

ciao
Christian

-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to website+help@global.libreoffice.org
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/website/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted