Video Conferencing

[mpancha]

At work we are looking into Video Conferencing solutions, and thus far many third party companies have surfaced with pretty high initial setup costs and subsequent monthly or per-use fees.

I've put out the suggestion of using iMacs in our offices and each Satelite office (4 total offices) and using iChat. IN just a mac environment this should work, but we're mixed mode. If we were to go the route of iChat as our Video Conferencing solution, we would occasionally have remote users (managers outside of the office) joining via AIM.

I"ve done a bit of testing and so far just the AV portion works, but screen sharing has been a bit on the difficult side in that it doesn't work between iChat and AIM (PC).

So, anyone have suggestions on making iChat work for this, or any other video conferencing solutions?

[mpancha]

In case it helps anyone in the future, here's what I've found so far:

For multiple user video chat you must use a iChat on all systems, and must see the multiple video icon next to the username you want to include in a video conference. IF you only see one video icon, then you can only do a one on one conference. The image below shows both, the upper video icon has a several layers of green video icon, this indicates that I can partake in a mutiple user conference with video. THe lower icon in the image just has the single video icon, which means they can only do a one on one.

Also, screen sharing only works between iChats, not iChat and AIM.

[roalgumo7]

Try this:

MeBeam, video chat.

It's free, and you don't have to download nothing, so far I hear good stuff about it, worth giving a try I guess.