Hangouts Mailbag

Wow, people sure seem to like Hangouts! Following up on a few questions I've been asked in the past week:


Q: "So does this require a certain operating system or version? I would love to conference with a few friends in remote areas with limited computer access."

A: We support all major desktop OSes and browsers (including Mac OS 10.6 "Snow Leopard"). You can see the full list of supported configs here. Other configs may work, but we haven't tested them specifically.

Q: "I was curious about: Latency < 100 ms -> Is this end2end ?"

A: This is the end-to-end transmission latency target.

Q: "Any comment about mobile access?"

A: I'll let our PR answer this: "... we can’t comment on future product plans. However, Google Plus heavily invests in mobile products as we believe you should be able to share and communicate, whether you are on the web, tablet, or phone.”

Q: I love the look of the interface. How much of this design and technology grew out of the Google's Marratech acquisition? 

A: Upon acquisition, the Marratech team was immediately integrated into our group, and they've had a big role in the development of our video technology.

Q: Are you guys planning to open up the tech behind Hangouts? Also, is it based on Muji or was it built from scratch? 


A: Yes, we plan to publish the specifications needed to interoperate with Hangouts. At a high level, it's based on XMPP MUC (XEP-0045) and Jingle (XEP-0166/167), with some other enhancements needed to handle our architecture. We looked at Muji but concluded it wasn't a good fit for our service.

Q: Since Hangout is basically a "meet-me" conference, meaning the participants initiate a session with the conference bridge, why is there a need for ICE and STUN? 

A: ICE is useful for many things besides NAT traversal. We're able to do a bunch of smart things related to mobility, firewall compatibility, and service failover using ICE.

Announcing Google+ Hangouts

What we've been working on recently :-) From the Google Blog:

+Hangouts: stop by and say hello, face-to-face-to-face

Whether it's inside a pub or on a front porch, human beings have always enjoyed hanging out. And why not? It's how we unwind, recharge, and spend unscheduled time with old and new friends alike. Hanging out is deceptively simple though, and the nuance gets lost online.
Just think: when you walk into the pub or step onto your front porch, you're in fact signaling to everyone around, “Hey, I've got some time, so feel free to stop by." Further, it’s this unspoken understanding that puts people at ease, and encourages conversation. But today’s online communication tools (like instant messaging and video-calling) don’t understand this subtlety:

• They’re annoying, for starters. You can ping everyone that’s “available,” but you’re bound to interrupt someone’s plans.

• They’re also really awkward. When someone doesn't respond, you don't know if they’re just not there, or just not interested.

With Google+ we wanted to make on-screen gatherings fun, fluid and serendipitous, so we created Hangouts. By combining the casual meetup with live multi-person video, Hangouts lets you stop by when you're free, and spend time with your Circles. Face-to-face-to-face:

To support Hangouts, we built an all-new standards-based cloud video conferencing platform. This platform combines high quality, low latency, and strong security with the ease of use of a web application. Through the efficiency of this new platform, we're able to deliver a leading video conferencing experience at Google scale.

A few noteworthy technical points:

• Fully browser-based/cloud-based
• Client-server: leverages the power of Google's infrastructure
• Designed for low latency (< 100 ms) and high performance (multicore + hardware acceleration)
• Standards-based: XMPP, Jingle, RTP, ICE, STUN, SRTP
• Fully encrypted (HTTPS + SRTP)

Check it out at https://plus.google.com/up/start/?sw=1&type=st!

Google voice and video v2.1.7

Today, we released the 2.1.7 (and 2.1.8 for Windows) update for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next few days. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

Here's what's new in the latest version:

• Several installer improvements; installation no longer requires a browser restart
• Improved smoothness of video rendering
• Added support to monitor and reduce CPU utilization when system is under extremely high load
• Fixed issue where playout volume was too low on various machines
• Fixed issue with incorrect audio ducking behavior on Vista/Win7
• Fixed issue with delayed audio if connectivity was briefly interrupted
• Fixed issue with delayed video on Mac when under high CPU load
• Fixed issue where encryption/decryption could fail on sequence number rollover
• Fixed random flash effect when entering fullscreen in some browsers
• Fixed many crashes

If you're on 2.1.7 and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. You can also email me using the "Email Justin" link above.

Google Talk now supports XMPP Jingle

As reported by the Register last week, we've just finished updating Google Talk and its related services to speak XMPP's Jingle call signaling protocol. A lot of stuff had to change here - many different code bases, clients, servers, and reporting systems - but the migration is now complete.

From our announcement to the Jingle mailing list:

We are pleased to announce that we have launched support for Jingle
XEP-166 and XEP-167 for Google Talk calls to and from Gmail, iGoogle,
and Orkut. We have also added the same level of support to libjingle
(http://code.google.com/p/libjingle), which is used by many native
clients. From this point on, it will be our primary signalling
protocol, and the old protocol will only remain for backwards
compatibility.

If you're interested in interoperating with the Google Talk service, you can now refer to the public XEP-0166 and XEP-0167 documentation for implementing call signaling.

If you're interested in the differences between the old and new protocols, you can also see the old "Gingle" protocol documentation on our developer site.

Google voice and video v2.0.7

Today, we released the 2.0.7 update for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next day or two. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

It's been several weeks since our last release, so there's a lot of new stuff:

• Fixed crashes on:
• Mac OS X - Firefox 4 when resizing popped-out 1:1 call
• Mac OS X - Safari when ending a call
• Windows XP when starting a call
• Fixed several crashes within Google Talk Plugin Video Accelerator during a call
• Fixed an issue where we could misinterpret a camera image format, resulting in green-tinted video.
• Improved rendering performance in many situations.
• Improved audio performance in high CPU situations, and fixed issue where audio could become corrupted in such situations when using Windows.
• Optimized Mac video encoding and decoding performance.
• Enabled use of "Video chat enhancements" lab on systems without video hardware acceleration.
• Improved media performance when connected using TCP.
• Improved hot-plugging and unplugging support for cameras, speakers, and microphones.
• Preferred devices are now remembered even if unavailable, in case they become available again.
• Added support for specifying a port range to use when making media connections, to simplify enterprise firewall configuration.
• Reduced number of steps to install on Mac.
• Fixed an issue where the Mac uninstaller would not uninstall itself.

If you're on 2.0.7 and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. You can also tweet @GoogleChat or @juberti, or email me using the "Email Justin" link above.

Gingerbread gets Google voice and video chat!

The Google Mobile team just announced the release of Google Talk with video chat (originally added for the Honeycomb release) in Gingerbread 2.3.4. Like other communication services, video chat benefits from network effects, and adding millions of additional video chat endpoints will be a nice boost to the Google Talk network.

I've been using this on my Nexus S, and it's quite nice. The software uses the same libjingle-based stack as Google voice and video, and the front-facing camera on the Nexus S really works well.

Vtok Brings Google Video Chat to the iPhone

From GigaOM:

"... a new app called Vtok will finally let Google Talk video chat users connect with friends on their iPhones — and soon, on Android mobile devices as well.

Vtok hooks into Google Talk, providing users with a list of all their contacts that are available for video chat and enabling them to initiate both voice and video chat calls. The app runs in the background and will send push notifications if someone tries to start a video chat with a user that’s logged in. Users that are signed in and receive call requests can choose to speak either by voice or video. Calls can be made or received on both Wi-Fi and 3G networks."

More info at vtokapp.com.

Google Talk on Motorola Xoom first look

From PC Magazine: Google Talk on the Motorola Xoom: Video Walkthrough
Google's Honeycomb OS adds video chat, and we take it for a spin on the Motorola Xoom.

Google Video Chat / Flash 10.1 issue on Mac OS X

A few people have written in to say that the Google Voice and Video software has caused webcam support in Flash Player 10.1 to stop working on Mac OS X.

We recently discussed this problem with Adobe, and they have confirmed it is a bug in the 10.1 version of Flash Player (see Adobe's bug tracker at https://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-5730). It affects not just Google Voice and Video, but any application that installs its own QuickTime component.

Fortunately, Adobe has come up with a fix for this in the upcoming 10.2 release of Flash Player. If you have been affected by this issue, you can get the 10.2 RC build that has been confirmed to resolve the problem at http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html.

Update (2/8/2011): Fixed the Flash Player download URL.

Jim Breuer Demo Slam with Google Video Chat

Google voice and video v1.8

Today, we released the 1.8 update for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next day or two. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

Here's what's new:

• Fixed issue where webcams could fail to be detected on Mac OS X
• Improved call quality monitoring

If you're on 1.8 and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. You can also tweet @GoogleChat or @juberti, or email me using the "Email Justin" link above.

Google voice and video v1.7

Today, we released the 1.7 update for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next day or two. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

Here's what's new:

• Improved performance for networking and media processing, especially when the system is busy
• Fixed issue that could cause crashes in Safari 5+
• Fixed issue where frames could be dropped at call startup when using the Video chat enhancements Lab
• Fixed an issue where video could fail to appear on OSX
• Fixed issue where killing the Google Talk Plugin process could crash the browser process on some platforms
• Various performance improvements for Atom CPUs
• Added support for hotplugging and unplugging of webcams on Linux
• For interoperability, added support for video bitrate to be specified via XMPP signaling

If you're on 1.7 and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. You can also tweet @GoogleChat or @juberti, or email me using the "Email Justin" link above.

Google voice and video v1.5.1

Today, we released the 1.5.1 update for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next day or two. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

Here's what's new:

• Fix issue where we would write a 'debug.log' file to the application directory, in some cases the desktop
• Fix issue where the plugin could crash if cameras sent resolutions other than requested
• Fix issue where we would sometimes show the camera capability icon even if you had no camera
• Various performance improvements

If you're on 1.5.1 and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. You can also tweet @GoogleChat or @juberti, or email me using the "Email Justin" link above.

Google voice and video v1.4.2 and v1.4.3

Today, we released the 1.4.2 (Windows) and 1.4.3 (Mac) updates for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next day or two. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

Here's what's new:

• All-new, hardware-accelerated video rendering subsystem (more on this later).
• Fixed a crash when processing RTCP packets.
• Fixed a crash on Windows when ending a call.
• Fixed an issue on new MacBook Pros where loading Gmail (and starting the Google Talk Plugin) would cause a switch to the high-performance GPU and cause the battery to drain more quickly.
• Several minor fixes and improvements.

The 1.4.3 release for Mac also resolves issues identified by some early users of 1.4.2 on Mac OS 10.4. Note that when running on Mac OS, Google voice and video requires QuickTime 7.2.1 or later (the current version is 7.6, so almost all Macs should have this.)

If you're on 1.4.2 on Windows or 1.4.3 on Mac and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. You can also tweet @GoogleChat or @juberti, or email me using the "Email Justin" link above.

Google voice and video RPM packages now available

Following up on my earlier post, we've now released a new version of Google voice and video for Linux that includes both Debian and RPM packages. As usual, it can be downloaded from www.google.com/chat/video; upon visiting this page, you'll be given the option of which package you want to download.

This new version also includes fixes for some top crash issues seen since release. If you've already installed the plugin, you'll be notified through the typical package update mechanism that a new version is available.

Also a quick followup regarding some of the PulseAudio questions: while PulseAudio is supported, it's not required. If PulseAudio is not detected, the plugin will fall back and use ALSA.

Lastly, we're also working on resolving the issues reported with upside-down ASUS cameras and a debug.log file appearing for a few users. If you encounter other issues, please report them in the Google Voice and Video Help Forum.

Google voice and video - now available for Linux!

Google voice and video chat is now available in Gmail for Ubuntu and other Debian-based Linux distributions. As the comments on this blog indicate, I know many folks have been waiting very patiently for this day! For those of you using RedHat-based distros, we're planning on adding RPM support soon as well.

This release required significant engineering to develop an all-new video rendering solution and an all-new PulseAudio-based audio handler, along with work to support 64-bit and countless webcam compatibility tests. We spent a lot of effort to make it fully feature-complete, with all the same goodies as the Windows and Mac versions, and we're happy to now support Google voice and video now on all major desktop platforms.

Visit www.google.com/chat/video and start video chatting!

Google voice and video enterprise firewall configuration

If you're a network administrator trying to control access to Google voice and video chat, take a look at our help document on this topic, specifically this line:

Allow your XMPP clients to connect to all IP addresses resolved on DNS name talkr.l.google.com, UDP port 19295 and 19302, or TCP port 19294.

This rule allows your internal users to contact our STUN and relay servers over UDP and TCP. In the event that policy does not allow receipt of UDP from the Internet, just allowing access to TCP port 19294 will allow users to still contact the relays via TCP, although performance may suffer in congestion situations. Lastly, if policy does not permit access to TCP port 19294, port 443 may be used instead.

Note that the info for talkr.l.google.com is updated regularly as we add/turn down datacenters, so it's a good idea to check regularly for changes.

Awesome Google video chat photo

Love this photo - Google video chat lets a grandma virtually attend a wedding. Full story on the Gmail Blog.

Google voice and video v1.3.1

Yesterday, we released the 1.3.1 update for the Google voice and video chat software. All current installations will automatically update within the next day or two. If you do not want to wait, you can visit http://www.google.com/chat/video and re-run the installer.

You can use your Gmail account to find out what version is currently installed. Simply go to the Gmail Settings page and look under the "Chat" tab. You will see the plugin version under the "Learn more" link, in small type.

Here's what's new in version 1.3.1:

• Fixed an issue on Windows XP where audio could become garbled or significantly delayed , especially when other applications were using the sound hardware.
• Fixed an issue on Mac OS X where the Google Talk Plugin process could show as "Not Responding" in Activity Manager.
• Improved detection and reporting of deadlock conditions (unfortunately often caused by buggy audio drivers)
• Some important stuff that I can't talk about yet :-)

If you're on 1.3.1 and still having a problem, please take a look at the Google Chat Help Center, or report the issue on the Google Voice and Video Help Forum. As always, feel free to email me directly as well.

Google video chat setup tutorial

If your Grandma (or Grandpa) has encountered some hiccups setting up Google video chat, we've made a short video that hopefully will make the process a bit easier. We know this is a killer use case for video chat, and are always looking to make getting started even easier!

Full story on The Official Gmail Blog.