Free Video Chatting, with Special Effects
Online video communication services and videoconferencing have come a long way since the days of herky-jerky 15 frames-per-second sessions. Sightspeed, Skype, iChat and Tokbox are among many good, free services capable of delivering high-quality video online. This week, ooVoo released the newest version of its video chat service. The download is free, the sessions are of high quality, and the software lets you execute several kinds of special effects while you are video chatting.
With ooVoo you can have a real-time, face-to-face chat with someone else, or record and send a video message, and a new service gives you 120 minutes of free online calls to anywhere in the U.S. or Canada (this offer expires March 1st, though). The frame rate for your videoconferencing sessions is adjustable. I found the quality to be good at 30 frames per second, although there were very occasionally stutters. There weren’t any when I turned the frame rate down.
You can send files and text messages while you are in an ooVoo session, and a new Sidebar view, which looks a little like Google’s Sidebar, displays the people you are conferencing with in small format if you want to look at files or applications on your desktop during your session. If you want to actually share your desktops with conferencing participants, though, I would recommend using ooVoo’s Sidebar view in conjunction with a free, online desktop sharing application such as Yugma. You can video chat with up to six people at a time in ooVoo.
With ooVoo, you can import lists of contacts from many applications, including Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Mail, Mac Mail, LinkedIn, and more. You can save video calls that you want to send to people in .FLV (Flash), or .AVI format, and I also liked the fact that you can save a video call as HTML embedded video, which could be good for, say, incorporating video in a blog.
My favorite service for video chatting and sharing videos I make with others remains SightSpeed, and the main thing I like about it is how easy it is to produce a video, post it online at 30 frames-per-second and share it with others by e-mailing them a link. However, ooVoo looks to be a good competitor, and I really liked the special effects you can execute with it, which let you morph your video image into customizable versions of yourself.
Do you recommend a particular videoconferencing service? If so, why?
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Interesting thing I just saw about Yugma is the “reality desktop” experiment they are doing… see http://skypejournal.com/blog/2008/02/yugmas_reality_desktop_check_o.html
What I’m impressed with is the quality. I can see the clock’s second hand ticking second by second. I can see the animated ads animating. And … I’m actually watching someones Mac in real-time on my Windows PC. This capability can make Yugma the must-have solution for anyone that does creative or marketing work…
I recommend VSee (http://vsee.com) quality is much better than SightSpeed, Skype, ooVoo, etc.
Great post. ooVoo is getting a lot of attention.
Thanks for the review. I work on behalf of ooVoo and appreciate all the feedback about ooVoo and its capabilities, especially compared to similar VoIP. The great thing about ooVoo is that it is free to download which is a plus for new users. If they know they are not going to use the service everyday, they are not wasting any money in the process.
Just to let everyone know, ‘My ooVoo Day’ starts today and goes on for a couple of weeks. Its a great chance to try out the service and speak with other bloggers at the same time. More information here: http://myoovooday.smnr.us/ and sign up to talk with certain bloggers here: http://www.myoovooday.com. Hope to see you on!
Appreciate the review — great to hear about all the excitement in and around the Internet video communications space. And, glad to hear that you continue to enjoy SightSpeed and SightSpeeding with others.
We have been doing this a long time and there are many things that we have been doing for a long, long time that nobody knows — not only our high quality and feature rich SightSpeed free experience, but also our “one-click” web-based (no software download) video chat feature called “My SightSpeed.” Every SightSpeed Free user gets their own personalized click-to-call URL. Also, we have had in-call live video recording for a year now. And, we just launched “SightSpeed Business” for SMB video conferencing late last year.
The exciting thing for all in our space is that Internet video communications has entered the mainstream and is here to stay and proliferate (now with webcams being bundled in virtually every PC or Mac).
Just last week, SightSpeed was selected as the Internet video communications partner for the highly publicized “Focus the Nation” environmental event, the nation’s largest “teach in” (and focused on reducing everyone’s carbon footprint). I am pleased to say that several members of Congress used us to connect directly with students from around the country without having to fly out to meet them physically.
Many new cool things coming — and important announcements — so stay tuned … and Keep Speeding!
Hi we are using Dim Dim http://www.dimdim.com it’s a free web conferencing service up to 20 participants.
Regards
Alberto
Buenos Aires
Argentina
Hey,
Nice article! Work with a number of different conferencing technologies daily! check out http://www.batipi.com for more information!
Regards,
How do you get on here
when i am chatting the voice and video call it is not active in my chat room and canot seemy friend and canot talking to him .why?