Decent audio/video conference program?

[adzy31]

Does anyone know of a decent Audio/Video conferencing program that will actually make the most of a broadband connection in the reliability and quality of audio and video it sends/recieves? Both myself here in the UK and my girlfriend in the US both have broadband lines sitting there doing not much, and it'd be great to be able to utilize them as a reliable alternative to phone calls, with the added bonus of live video streaming. The main problem is: I'm behind a linux firewall/proxy, and she's behind some kind of broadband router. So hopefully/ideally this software would have to have proper support for being used with port forwarding [ie. using a known set of ports that i can set up to work with my proxy and her router]. We've tried to use various instant messaging clients in the past to do the same thing, but the options on these are really awful for what we want to do. Only AIM will connect with live video stream, and even that's when I forward every single port on my firewall to this PC [because it uses stupid dynamic ports for the video stream]. Not the point of a firewall really... One last thing, although this isn't that necessary - would be good feedback cancellation features, so the software could be used if desired on standard speakers without crappy feedback. I know I may sound incredibly picky here... but if i'm asking, I might aswell include everything :P this would just be the perfect solution, any slightly different alternatives would also be great. Thanks for any help.

[nightshadow]

new version's of MSN messenger connect video fine, and audio if you have a mic setup. With a decent broadband connection (and no downloading at the same time) it works fine between the UK and AUS for me. There are several IP audio phone programs available now.. which are free to use, but charge if net to real phone etc instead of net to net calls. I don't know any that use video though. Have you tried the old version of netmeeting and connecting directly via IP ? you can specify ports etc.. it should be still installed, even on xp boxes, somewhere, but there is no shortcut to it.

[adzy31]

Hiya, I have tried Netmeeting, yep, but it still tries to dynamically assign ports, which leaves me again having to forward a heck of a lot of ports to both my PC and her PC - which still isn't ideal. Surely there's a dedicated program out there for audio/video conferencing that would do many of the things we need? Even if it's a professional business suite or something, if in the long term it would be cheaper than multiple phone calls, i'd be willing to try it out. I'm looking into the IP phone thing, that'd be handy for just phone calls, but as you said they won't do video. Cheers for the suggestions though..

[adzy31]

More research into this field seems to bring up lots of companies trying to charge a monthly fee for their product... yep, hopefully there's one that fits our needs and is just a one-off fee for the software. Can't seem to find one though.

[back_ache]

It may be worth trying Microsoft experimental video conferencing software called "portrait" get it from http://research.microsoft.com/~jiangli/portrait/

[Kev_UK]

I would recommend eyeball chat, It is free, so if the firewall gets in the way you've nothing to lose. It has good video and audio (unlike netmeeting). My wife and I used it to communicate before she moved here to be married (she is from Canada). http://www.eyeballchat.com

[adzy31]

Cheers, back_ache, that Portrait program looked promising. Haven't been able to test it yet, but have noticed one thing that didn't look too good - in the help file it says "Currently Microsoft Portrait is unable to complete a communication, in which two peoples are behind two separate firewalls". Fingers crossed that it'll work though if i have the right ports open. The eyeball chat program doesn't seem to even know that firewalls exist :( have tried that one. Just waiting for her dad to open some nice ports on her router for the Portrait thing, but in the meantime, any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Thanks again people, Adam