Jamie's Random Musings on Video IM
Having spent a good part of the last year struggling with a variety of video chat and IM programs, I have decided to write a few things down and see what other people have to say about them.
Thursday 14 February 2008, 8:24 PM
CallOut from VoIP Programs to Fixed/Cell Phones
I have to start this blog entry with an apology. I wrote in December that I had tried to put some money on my SightSpeed account so that I could try their CallOut capability, but I couldn't do it because I have a Swiss credit card. It turns out that I was making a bad assumption. The form you have to fill out asks for the billing address of the credit card, and says "ZIP Code", which sets off all sorts of red flags with me. I've had many years of experience with online credit card payment forms which will not accept non-U.S./Canadian cards, and the ZIP-Code field is a dead giveaway for one of those. So when I saw that, I didn't go any further. It turns out that was a bad assumption; if I had just gone ahead and tried it, as I did today, it would have worked. Not only did it work, but it was amazingly fast, the credit showed up on my SightSpeed account almost instantly! So, I apologize to SightSpeed for writing that incorrectly - and I wish you guys would have yelled at me and told me that I was wrong!
Ok, back to the matters at hand. The next step in my process of evaluating and comparing the major Video / VoIP / IM programs is to look at their PSTN/POTS (Public Switched Telephone Network / Plain Old Telephone Service) dial out capability. I am going to concentrate on technical aspects and call quality, although I will add a bit about costs at the end. Personally, I find one of the biggest advantages of these Dial-Out capabilities is when I am traveling, it certainly beats paying cell phone roaming fees or hotel telephone charges!
The first of the programs that I tried was Gizmo - not out of any sense of priority, but just because I still had plenty of credit left on my account. For the test, I made calls to my brother's fixed and cell phones in Atlanta, and to my fixed and cell phones here in Switzerland. In every case, the calls went through smoothly and quickly, and the audio quality was acceptable. There seemed to be a slight "clip" to the audio, particularly each time one of us started to speak after a pause, as if Gizmo were being a bit over-aggressive in doing background noise suppression, and was cutting off the audio completely during a pause, then losing a fraction of a second each time the conversation started again. This could be something else entirely, another bad assumption on my part, but it happened on every call, regardless of where or what type. In any case, it was not so bad as to make the conversation unpleasant.
While I was in a CallOut, I could bring up the Dialpad in Gizmo, and then click the phone buttons there to produce DTMF tones. This caught my interest, because it is something the people where constantly complaining about in the Skype User Forums, that trying to navigate voicemail systems and such with tone dialing didn't work in Skype. I tried it with my brother's voicemail, and with the answering machine in my home, and both of them worked flawlessly with Gizmo. I have no idea why Skype (STILL) has so much trouble with it. Strike one against Skype...
Gizmo also has an excellent call history log, showing the number dialed, the date and time of the call, the duration, and the cost. I was a bit suspicious of the cost and charging at first, because Gizmo goes through two stages when making a CallOut, first you get the typical Gizmo ringing sound, then it switches to the PSTN ring. When it makes that switch, the "$" symbol shows up to tell you that it is a paid call, and the call timer starts to run. I was afraid that it was actually charging me before the call connected, but that proved not to be the case. I tried making a call and then hanging up before it was answered, but after the $ and the timer started, and it showed in the call log as 0:00 duration and no charge; I also tried calling and connecting, watching the call timer and hanging up when it was over a minute, but I knew it was actually connected less than a minute. Again, the call log got the actual connect time right, and the charge was right.
Next up for testing was ooVoo. This was particularly easy to do, because they are currently running a special promotion with all calls to fixed or mobile numbers in the U.S. or Canada free! Of course, I couldn't try calling my Swiss phones (even for a price - ooVoo is still working out the details of paid calling), but I could try both of my brothers numbers. Once again, the calls went through quickly and easily, and the sound quality was good. This time, rather then being "clipped", my brother said it sounded like there was a faint sound of running water behind me, not bad but just a continuous background noise. Again, this would not interfere with a normal conversation.
The ooVoo call window looks exactly the same for a CallOut as is does for any other ooVoo call; when you have a phone connection, there is a small icon at the bottom of the window showing a telephone and the number you have dialed. While we were talking, I noticed a small icon that looked like a phone keypad at the left side of the call window. Sure enough, clicking that brought up a keypad that I could click to produce tones. I called again to my brother's voicemail, and once again was able to navigate with the tones with no trouble at all. Very nice, and very simple. Strike two against Skype...
The ooVoo call log is typically well designed and colorful, but is not quite as complete as Gizmo's. It shows the type of call, number called, date and time of the call and the duration, but doesn't give the cost. Of course, this might be a side effect of the fact that calls are free right now, so there is not cost; perhaps it will show up when they start charging.
Next, I tried SightSpeed. I have to say in all honesty, the audio quality of the call was the best of the three. Not by a lot, and as I said for each of the others, they were certainly acceptable and usable, but with SightSpeed it just sounded completely "normal", like any other phone call. The "Telephone" call screen is very obvious, with the phone dial pad right in the center. It stays up during your call, and you can produce DTMF tones by clicking the phone buttons. I was, once again, able to navigate in voicemail and in my answering machine with no problems. Strike three against Skype - why in the world after all these years are they still unable to do this, and they have to fall back on either recommending some sort of third-party plug-in, or that people carry a DTMF tone generator around with them, and hold it up to the microphone!!!
I wasn't able to find a call log in the free version of SightSpeed at all. There is a "Call History" button, which takes you to a web page, but then informs you that Call History isn't available with the free service plan. Too bad, because this was the only thing I could find to complain about in SightSpeed dial out!
Last, and certainly least, comes Skype. I didn't try it. First and foremost because I would never trust them with any of my money, not even $10 of it. I have seen far too many complaints from Skype customers about accounts being blocked - sometimes before they could even make the first call after loading credit! I know what Skype "Customer Support" is like, once they block your account it takes a minimum of FOUR DAYS to get any response, and even that is generally not a resolution, it is only an acknowledgment that they got your request. Even in the Skype User Forums, the response from the exports is "File a Customer Support request and come back after FOUR DAYS". On top of that, there have been hundreds of reports of calls being dropped after 6 seconds, or 30 seconds, or whatever... The bottom line is, I am not about to even risk trying SkypeOut, if anyone else decides to do so... well, it's your money!
Finally, a word about costs. Generally, these services have a per-minute cost, frequently based on both where you are calling from and calling to. So it is very difficult to generalize about which one is "lowest price", because that will often depend on your specific situation and typical calling patterns. One thing to watch out for, though, is a "connect fee" which gets added to every call. Only one of these four currently does that - Skype. This base fee will skew the actual cost of calls which appear to be cheap (or even free) based on per-minute rates. You might also be able to find "All Calls Free" or "Unlimited Free Calling" plans, but make sure you read them carefully and understand what the conditions are. Gizmo has an "All Calls Free" plan, and I seem to have qualified for it, but I honestly don't understand how or why, or even exactly what it covers... Skype has (or has had) various free calling plans, but they were generally limited to calls originating and terminating in some specific country or region you had signed up for. I'm not very clear on the concept of why it matters where a call coming from a computer has originated...
With all of these programs, the CallOut service is not intended to replace traditional POTS service, and it is generally not possible to call 911 or other emergency service numbers with them. In most cases it also doesn't show any useful information for the CallerID at the receiving end, so if your contacts do call screening, you might have a tough time getting through.
jw 14/2/2008
Wednesday 13 February 2008, 11:13 AM
Gizmo5 Cross-System Chat
I've been experimenting this week with Gizmo5's ability to set up chat contacts not only with other Gizmo users, but also across different systems and networks. After figuring out that I was being quite naive about how to set it up and what it could do, I now have it working, and I am quite pleased and impressed with it. If you have an account on MSN (Windows Live Messenger), AIM, Yahoo or MySpaceIM, you can access that account, add the contacts to Gizmo5, and then chat with them from Gizmo, rather than having to keep several different IM clients open at the same time!
First, why was I naive? Well, when I saw this capability in Gizmo, I thought (assumed) that all that was necessary was to add the contact information for someone on one of those other services, and you would be ready to chat. Of course, that's not the case - to access those other services, you have to have an account yourself on them, and you have to give Gizmo5 the login information so that it can make the connection. All I can say to myself about this is... DUH! If you stop and think about it just a little, it's pretty clear that this is how it would have to work. Ah well...
Setting it up is quite easy, you just have to select Contacts / Find Friends (this window also shows up automatically when you start Gizmo, if you haven't already disabled it). Enter your Username and Password for each of the services you want to integrate, and Gizmo goes off and does the rest - logs into the service, picks up your contacts, adds them to your Gizmo contact list, and then waits and watches for chat requests on that service. If you want to manually add contacts on other services, you can do that too via the Add Contact dialog, the first field is a drop-down list where you can choose what service the contact is on. (Note to Gizmo: it might be nice to warn users who add contacts on other services for which they have not yet entered their User/Password information)
Chats conducted this way across systems look "normal" on both ends - on Gizmo, it looks like any other Gizmo chat, and on the others it looks like they are chatting to your account on that system. They even get Presence reporting right, with very quick updates, which is something that Skype is still not able to do reliably even within their own network!
For those who are active in several different networks, the ability of Gizmo5 to "centralize" all of that IM activity could be very nice. Oh, and before anyone gets too excited, I did try making a video call between Gizmo5 and MSN, and of course that didn't work.
jw 13/2/2008
Sunday 10 February 2008, 6:44 PM
The Week In Review
Wow, what a week we had last week! It started first thing on Monday with an excellent new release from ooVoo, followed on Tuesday by Skype blundering through an attempt at a new release, and finally on Thursday Gizmo5 also made a very nice new release. Three in a week (well, two and a half since it is still not clear that Skype has gotten theirs out properly), you can't ask for much more than that!
The ooVoo release continues to please and impress me. I used it in a three-way video call with both of my brothers yesterday (I am in Switzerland, one of them is in Atlanta and one is in Colorado Springs), and it was simply excellent. Audio and video quality were consistently good through the entire 45 minute call.
I have also been quite pleased with the Gizmo5 release. It is a big improvement over their previous release in video quality and in overall performance and stability.
The Skype release... well, what can I say? Judging from what is posted on the Skype User Forums, it's still not clear that they have managed to get the new (.248) release consistently downloaded, some users are were still reporting getting .244 as recently as Saturday. Of, course, according to Skype, this is "not their fault" (nothing ever is), it's a problem with Firefox. It's odd that no one else in the world has this problem with Firefox, but it is typical. They have major problems with video, but it's "not their fault", it's the webcam drivers, or the video drivers, or something else... they have problems with audio, but it's "not their fault", it's the audio drivers, or interference from the webcam drivers, or something else... they even have problems with getting the application installed in the first place, but it's "not their fault", it's something wrong with the MSI installer, or Windows, or something else.
Even those who have been fortunate (?) enough to successfully download the new release have already started to report that the video problems aren't solved, they still get frozen video in, out or both, or missing video. One of the "experts" on the Skype User Forums has already said that the "splitcam" utility will still be needed in many cases with the new Skype release - in his words
"Splitcam will be the savior of Skype Video for a long time to come"
If anyone would like to pay him for this sterling advice, he is "accepting donations through PayPal". He doesn't mention if any of those "donations" will be shared with the developers of SplitCam, who seem to be becoming increasingly indispensable to Skype.
My friend Grant continues to discover nice things that I haven't come across yet, or haven't looked into. This week he sent me video messages from both ooVoo and SightSpeed, and both came through just fine. In both cases the messages were viewable in a browser, without having to install the application. This could also be quite useful for someone "on the run", who wants to send more than email, but isn't able to make an actual video call because of time difference, internet bandwidth or whatever.
I am in the process of preparing new computers for my partner and our best friends, and reloading a laptop for another friend. I can honestly say that for the first time I have the feeling that I can load a Video IM program for them, and not have to worry that they will be calling me every day and asking why it doesn't work. Well, unless I was silly enough to load Skype, of course, but I'm not that silly.
Thursday 7 February 2008, 8:57 PM
Gizmo5 - The New Beta from The Gizmo Project
Well, as I suspected at the beginning of the week, this has been an eventful one. First an excellent new release from ooVoo, followed by a sputtering mess from Skype full of the same old bugs, and now there is a new release from The Gizmo Project. Wheeee!
The first big news is that they are "re-branding" their product, it is now called "Gizmo5".
It's a bit difficult to write a clear, simple comparison of this with the "previous" release, because there were multiple previous releases. There was the "original" Gizmo Project for Windows, version 3, which did audio only, and there was the "Beta" Gizmo 4.0 for windows that did video as well. This release follows in the 4.0 line, and as the last Gizmo 3 release was in June 2007, I think it is safe to assume that line has been retired in favor of this one.
Download and installation of the new release is smooth and easy (how nice to be able to say that again). The only caveat is that primarily because of the "re-branding", it is important that you remove any previous Gizmo release you might have installed before you install this new release. I did notice one new thing in the installation, it now asks if you want to install the "Ask" tool bar, and the default answer is "Yes" (of course) - I don't recall that it did this before.
The new release retained all of the contacts that I had defined with the previous release, of course. The cosmetics of this release are similar to the previous Gizmo 4 Beta release, which means of course that they are somewhat different from the Gizmo 3 release. The differences are not huge, however, and the menus and controls are quite intuitive, so Gizmo 3 users are not likely to have trouble adapting. Menu layout and options, sub-menus and buttons are all very similar if not identical.
From my "first look" at this release, the big news is in the video quality and reliability. As I had mentioned in my previous blog entry about the Gizmo 4 beta with video, the first time I installed and tested it I was able to crash the client in no time at all. I also got lots of other misbehavior short of crashing out of it. So far with this version, I haven't been able to get it to crash at all. Even better, the overall performance and efficiency are clearly much better than the previous release. Video quality is good, with much less tendency to smear and jump, although when I was testing with my brother on his low-quality internet link it still struggled to keep up. Audio quality is also much better, it sounds considerably more clear and natural than the previous release. I have also done a bit of testing at home, between my laptop and my partner's old, underpowered Dell 2400 desktop, and the new Gizmo release worked just fine, both for audio only and for video. This is a situation where Skype was simply not able to work properly, it used to overload her computer very badly, even with the ancient Skype 2.5 release installed. The difference is most likely a good example of why the Gizmo "Video Output Size" is such a good idea, I was able to reduce the video resolution to lessen the load on her computer. That's much better than having Skype simply try to start up at some higher resolution and then kill her computer for a minute or two while it slowly reduces the resolution and frame rate again and again, trying to unload the CPU. Most often, by the time Skype had arrived at something usable she had gotten disgusted with the connection and given up.
The other big thing that the people at the Gizmo Project (Gizmo5? SIPPhone?) seem to be quite excited about is their Gizmo5 beta release for mobile phones. I have had a fair amount of contact and conversation with the VP of Engineering there, mostly via Gizmo5 IM text, and whenever I chat with him I'm never sure if he is on a computer somewhere, or on his mobile, or something else. Since Gizmo also has releases Mac and Linux, this gives them excellent device coverage.
Speaking of text chat, I still have a preference for Gizmo's chat over any of the others. That is mostly because of personal taste - I think their presentation is clean and it works well - but that's what I'm here writing this for! If you are a MySpace user, Gizmo has just announce support for MySpace IM in their chat, too!
In fact, as I sit here thinking about it, even before I first tested the Gizmo with video, in my opinion one of their best features was their CallOut to ordinary PSTN numbers. When I needed to put some credit on some sort of call-out program, to use while I was traveling over Christmas, I had a choice between Gizmo, SightSpeed and Skype (well, honestly, Skype was never really a choice, because I wouldn't give them one cent of my money, but they were at least theoretically a choice). I found Gizmo to be the quickest and easiest to put credit on when using my Swiss credit card, and I have used the CallOut feature quite a bit since then, it has always worked quickly, easily and well. Compare this to Skype's silly "3 Phone" or whatever it's called, which they hype like crazy that you can use Skype on, but they conveniently fail to mention that you can only use it for Skype-to-Skype calls, if you want to call a PSTN number you have to use your cell minutes.
So, I am going to continue testing this new Gizmo5 release, and I will report on it again in the next few days. My "first impression" judgment is that it is quite good, and it is an excellent improvement over their previous release both in terms of quality and stability. It has not "blown me away" the way that the new ooVoo release did earlier this week, but then ooVoo has a pretty good head start on Gizmo, especially in the video call area. If Gizmo continues to close the gap at this rate, things are going to get interesting before too long.
Thursday 7 February 2008, 11:06 AM
Skype 3.6.0.248 - Take A Deep Breath, This Is Going To Hurt
Can you tell that I really like the saying that I used for the title of this blog entry? More importantly, and more sadly, Skype manages to prove how accurate and appropriate that saying is with every new release, and 3.6.0.248, which was released Tuesday, or Wednesday, or today, depending in when you got "lucky" with the download and got the new version, is no exception.
As I have been writing the reviews of the various Video IM programs in this blog, each time I have included a statement something like "download and install was smooth and easy". In fact, I had been thinking of dropping that statement, because it was always the same. But, as I have mentioned in the two previous entries about Skype, they have proven that I need to keep it. Download of this release of Skype was anything but smooth, it was a nightmare.
Installation is, unfortunately, still the same as with previous Skype releases. That means there are some very important options lurking on a second page of the installation screen, under the "Options" button, which is easily and often overlooked. This screen contains the choices to install the Skype Extras Manager (a very large and unruly process that has nothing to do with basic Skype operation and text/audio/video chats, but is installed by default), to install the Skype Plugin for Internet Explorer (which searches every web page you visit for anything that looks remotely like a phone number, and turns it into a clickable button, in the process often making the number partially unreadable, and all too frequently driving IE insane and making it unusable), and to install the Skype Plugin for Firefox (which does the same as for IE, but at least doesn't have such a reputation for causing mayhem). The best advice I can give is, if you don't know what these options are, and you don't know for absolute certain that you need them, then turn them ALL off, they are miles more trouble than they are worth.
In particular, in the "Options" window of the installation process, be sure to UN-check the "start Skype after installation" box, because you do NOT want it to run before you have the opportunity to disable the "stealth ActiveX" it installs, without your permission, and despite the fact that you have already told it not to install plugins. Once the installation is complete, and before running Skype for the first time, start Internet Explorer (yes, even if you use Firefox and not IE, you need to do this), go to Tools / Manage Add-ons / Enable or Disable Add-ons, and from the drop-down "Show: " list, select "Add-ons that run without requiring permission". In that list, select the "Skype Detection Object", and click "Disable", then "OK". Once again, this ActiveX control, which was installed without your permission, has absolutely nothing to do with the normal operation of Skype for text/audio/video chats; Skype has never been willing to admit what it does, but given their track record of program quality and bugs, I certainly don't want anything they produce installed and running without my permission or explanation.
Once the new release is installed, it does in fact identify itself as 3.6.0.248, so it looks like they might have finally gotten the download problems straightened out. There are no obvious changes in the appearance or user interface. The new version picked up all of my contacts, and mainained all of my choices in the View and Tabs, and program Options.
Unfortunately, the new release appears to have carried forward a lot of the bugs from the previous release. The first that jumped right out at me was their atrocious "presence reporting"; I've had the new release running on my test system for a couple of hours now (I refuse to even allow Skype to be installed on my main system any more), it is still reporting that ALL of my contacts are offline. I know that is untrue, because I have spoken with some of them. When I finally started Skype on another old laptop that I have here, and logged in another account, the two of them noticed each other (which is in itself rather an accomplishment for Skype), and in the process it was apparently enough of a "nudge" to get the Skype on my test system to suddenly realize several others of my contacts were actually online. As has been said before, and not only by me, an IM system without accurate presence reporting is worse than useless.
I have not been able to do much more testing (to be honest, I'm not all that interested anyway, finding and reporting the same problems over and over again, from one version to the next, gets old after a while). I have been able to confirm that the problem between Skype and the Logitech QuickCam application software still exists. The most common symptom of this problem is apparently random changes in audio device selection or volume when you make a Skype call. The simplest way to avoid the problem is to go to Skype / Tools / Options / Advanced / Manage Other Programs' Access to Skype, and if you see "Communication Helper.exe" there, select and change it to deny access. This is, unfortunately, not a 100% certain fix for this problem; if it persists after making this change, the only other solution is to uninstall the Logitech QuickCam application.
My recommendation for Skype remains the same. If you are not already using it, avoid it like the plague. Any of the other Video IM programs I have mentioned previously will peform much more reliably than Skype, and cause much less grief for both you and your computer. If you absolutely have to use it, because of their very large installed base, at least be very careful and very suspicious. If strange things start happening to your computer or other applications, such as system crashes, audio problems, Internet Explorer crashing, hanging, or repeatedly opening the same page, immediately suspect Skype as the culprit, and uninstall it to see if the problem goes away.
Last, but not least, I strongly recommend that you do not entrust them with any of your money by subscribing to any of their paid services - unless, of course, you think having your account blocked for no apparent reason, or having your incoming Skype phone number canceled with practically no notice, sound like a fun way to spend your money.
jw 7/2/2008
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