WebRTC on Chrome Beta for Android

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Punyabrata Ray

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Mar 6, 2013, 3:38:40 PM3/6/13
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We have released WebRTC support, sitting behind a flag, as part of the M26 Chrome Beta for Android release.

This is an early release - many things will not work well or at all. There is much work left  and challenges to overcome. Additionally, we have only had a chance to test this on a limited set of devices. So, please bear with us as we work towards enabling WebRTC by default on Chrome for Android.

Our hope is that with this release, developers can begin to see how WebRTC on Chrome for Android will shape up in the coming months, and get a sense of how their WebRTC-enabled websites and web apps will need to evolve for mobile platforms.

To enable WebRTC on Chrome Dev for Android (screenshots below):
1. Type in “chrome://flags” in the omnibox to access the flags
2. Scroll about a third down and enable the "Enable WebRTC" flag
3. You will be asked to relaunch the browser at the bottom of the page in order for the flag to take effect.

Known issues:
At the time of this posting, Chrome Beta for Android was failing a permissions check on Nexus 7, therefore failing to install on this particular device. This has been addressed and should be pushed out to the Android Play store today or tomorrow.

1. Audio sounds choppy and warbled especially on devices where the CPU is heavily loaded
2. Acoustic echo cancellation on mobile platforms is not working well
3. Chroma components received from the Galaxy S3 camera drivers are swapped (colors look inverted)
4. DTLS via OpenSSL on Android fails and needs to be disabled
5. General stability and complexity issues

Tips on making calls with AppRTC on Chrome Beta for Android:
1. To disable DTLS (see known issue #4), please add “compat=false” to the AppRTC link (ex: https://apprtc.appspot.com/?r=<roomname>&compat=false)
2. The default resolution used by AppRTC is 640x480, which is too complex for certain mobile devices. Therefore if you notice a low frame rate or a loaded CPU, we recommend using the "maxre" parameter to set the call to a lower resolution, such as 320x240 (ex: https://apprtc.appspot.com/?r=<roomname>&compat=false&maxre=320x240)
3. To debug connection issues, you can always try a call in loopback mode. (ex. https://apprtc.appspot.com/?debug=loopback&compat=false&maxre=320x240)


3 Screenshots:
1. Enabling the WebRTC flag in chrome://flags


2. Accepting camera and mic permissions


3. Loopback call


Thank you.
Ray on behalf of the WebRTC team.

PhistucK

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Mar 6, 2013, 4:24:58 PM3/6/13
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This is a great milestone.
Thank you for all of your work! :)

PhistucK


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Albert Abello

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Mar 6, 2013, 4:56:58 PM3/6/13
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WOAH! Great to see that, the guys from Firefox seemed to have a neat version of WebRTC working in their OS back in the MWC :)

Mamadou

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Mar 6, 2013, 5:40:25 PM3/6/13
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just one word: AWESOME.
With very small changes I got it working with sipml5.org on google
nexus.
The video freezes as said in the initial mail but the only annoying
bug I found when calling the PSTN is the one reported at
https://groups.google.com/group/discuss-webrtc/browse_thread/thread/a216332debd049bc#

On Mar 6, 9:38 pm, Punyabrata Ray <punyabr...@webrtc.org> wrote:
> *We have released WebRTC support, sitting behind a flag, as part of the M26
> Chrome Beta for Android release<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.chrome.beta>.
> (ex.https://apprtc.appspot.com/?debug=loopback&compat=false&maxre=320x240)*
> *
> *
> *3 Screenshots:*
> 1. Enabling the WebRTC flag in chrome://flags
> **
> *
> *
> 2. Accepting camera and mic permissions
> **
>
> 3. Loopback call
> **
> *
> *

Ket

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Mar 6, 2013, 11:25:04 PM3/6/13
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Thank you for your work. I've been expecting this for long time. Hope to see it on stable Chrome for Android soon.

Stephan Bardubitzki

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Mar 6, 2013, 11:27:41 PM3/6/13
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This is really great news and many thanks for all the hard work.

However, I have the following issue

on my laptop


status bar says "waiting for someone to join ..."

but when I enter the room from my Google Galaxy Nexus 


it says "Sorry, this room is full"

Am I doing something wrong?

--

Justin Uberti

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Mar 7, 2013, 12:27:36 AM3/7/13
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Need to set compat=false on both sides of the call.

Stephan Bardubitzki

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Mar 7, 2013, 12:44:05 AM3/7/13
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Nope, same thing with compat=false on both sides.

Ami Fischman

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Mar 7, 2013, 12:56:31 AM3/7/13
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Each room (&r= parameter) can only have two participants present, and apprtc sometimes loses track of the fact that one or both have left.   Try a new room and make sure you enter it exactly once on laptop and once on android.

-a

PM

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Mar 7, 2013, 5:15:59 AM3/7/13
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Great job!

I have tested between my Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 and my desktop computer and it worked ok. The only issue was that video capture in my tablet comes in black and white.

Regards,
PM

Álvaro Alonso

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Mar 7, 2013, 7:00:22 AM3/7/13
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Great job! 

We have tested the compatibility of Chrome beta with our webRTC MCU Lynckia and it also works! 

If you want you can try it installing Lynckia in your computers (www.lynckia.com)

Congrats again for the effort!

Regards,
Álvaro  

2013/3/7 PM <marg...@gmail.com>

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Iñaki Baz Castillo

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Mar 7, 2013, 7:14:13 AM3/7/13
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El miércoles, 6 de marzo de 2013 21:38:40 UTC+1, Punyabrata Ray escribió:
We have released WebRTC support, sitting behind a flag, as part of the M26 Chrome Beta for Android release.

Hi, Chrome Beta for Android perfectly works with JsSIP, tested right now in http://tryit.jssip.net !

Good work!

BTW: When will Android provide a native WebRTC stack so native (or HTML5) apps can make use of it? :)

Iñaki Baz Castillo

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Mar 7, 2013, 7:53:13 AM3/7/13
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El jueves, 7 de marzo de 2013 13:14:13 UTC+1, Iñaki Baz Castillo escribió:
Hi, Chrome Beta for Android perfectly works with JsSIP, tested right now in http://tryit.jssip.net !

Gökhan Gökçe

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Mar 7, 2013, 8:00:49 AM3/7/13
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I've tried this with firefox nightly on apprtc.appspot.com. Firefox and Google chrome beta for android does not talk each other. Just saying Connecting... That's all. 

Anybody tried this?

6 Mart 2013 Çarşamba 22:38:40 UTC+2 tarihinde Punyabrata Ray yazdı:

Philipp Hancke

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Mar 7, 2013, 8:07:35 AM3/7/13
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Well, the notes say DTLS doesn't work and Firefox requires DTLS... so that is not unexpected.

Warren McDonald

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Mar 7, 2013, 8:26:06 AM3/7/13
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We have also tested our new WebRTC web app and the code proven on desktop runs very nicely without any modifications on Android, even on the first beta. We have  a presentation to an important audience later today, and this news will add to the impact :)

Warren  

Philipp Hancke

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Mar 7, 2013, 10:09:30 AM3/7/13
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> To disable DTLS (see known issue #4), please add “compat=false” to the AppRTC link (ex: https://apprtc.appspot.com/?r=<roomname>&compat=false)

This would be unneccessary if you added a simple navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Android') != -1 check that removes the DtlsSrtpKeyAgreement constraint ;-)

Lorenzo Miniero

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Mar 7, 2013, 10:11:39 AM3/7/13
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Very pleased to see it works on Meetecho as well :-)
Great work guys!

Leo Wang

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Mar 7, 2013, 10:27:06 AM3/7/13
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Gokan,
What device did you test? What was the cpu usage in this test? An "adb bugreport" is very helpful.
It could be a known issue, I want to collect more information about such problem.
Thanks


On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 1:29 PM, Gökhan Gökçe <gokhan...@gmail.com> wrote:
I've tried and everything is quiet good. But the sound come dirty. Maybe my local network problem i think. Nice Job. 

Thanks


6 Mart 2013 Çarşamba 22:38:40 UTC+2 tarihinde Punyabrata Ray yazdı:
We have released WebRTC support, sitting behind a flag, as part of the M26 Chrome Beta for Android release.

--

Leo Wang

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Mar 7, 2013, 10:33:07 AM3/7/13
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Hi PM, what tablet did you test?


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Kevin Glass

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Mar 7, 2013, 10:46:45 AM3/7/13
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This is fantastic work guys, thank you so much for the efforts.

We've tested against HTC One X and Motorola Xoom Tablet with great success on both. Tested:

Android Chrome Beta <-> Android Chrome Beta
Android Chrome Beta <-> Mac Chrome Beta/Stable
Android Chrome Beta <-> Windows Chrome Beta/Stable
Android Chrome Beta <-> iPad Thrupoint Longboard Soft Client (H264 Video)
Android Chrome Beta <-> Windows Counterpath Bria Soft Client (H264 Video)
Android Chrome Beta <-> Audio Only to PSTN Gateway

Just setting up now to test against Cisco video endpoints (9971, EX60 etc)

All working as expected and with good performance - though very warm phones at times :). Only issues we saw were that once the camera had been used by Chrome Beta it couldn't be used by any other application until phone restart.

Screenshots and details here:


Again, thanks for the hard work. Much appreciated!

Cheers,

Kev


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Punyabrata Ray

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Mar 7, 2013, 11:38:25 AM3/7/13
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No, camera selection is still a bit down the road. 

In addition to reporting issues on this list, it would be helpful to actually create issues in the WebRTC issue tracker. If you are reporting an issue specific to Chrome for Android, I recommend adding "Chrome Android:" in the title/one-line summary. This way it could be easier for others to quickly sort through these issues. 

Thanks,
Ray


On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 6:17 AM, Pierrick Grasland <pierrick...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,

This work great ! Thanks for the update. By the way, does this version allow us to select the camera (for example, switching to the back camera on a S3) ?

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Justin Uberti

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Mar 7, 2013, 11:47:35 AM3/7/13
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That wouldn't work because then one side of the call would use DTLS (desktop) and the other side of the call would use SDES (Android). 

Forcing the URL to contain compat=false ensures that both sides are using the same settings.

Of course, the proper fix is to support DTLS on Android, which we are working on right now.


On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 7:09 AM, Philipp Hancke <philipp...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> To disable DTLS (see known issue #4), please add “compat=false” to the AppRTC link (ex: https://apprtc.appspot.com/?r=<roomname>&compat=false)

This would be unneccessary if you added a simple navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Android') != -1 check that removes the DtlsSrtpKeyAgreement constraint ;-)

--

Stephan Bardubitzki

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Mar 7, 2013, 12:15:18 PM3/7/13
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After rebooting my Google Galaxy Nexus it is working.

Very cool!!!

Philipp Hancke

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Mar 7, 2013, 12:19:37 PM3/7/13
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On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 5:47 PM, Justin Uberti <jub...@google.com> wrote:
That wouldn't work because then one side of the call would use DTLS (desktop) and the other side of the call would use SDES (Android). 

It does, when calling from Android to Desktop. You need an additional hack to remove the a=fingerprint line from the SDP when a desktop client is calling an android client. Thanks, I missed that one.
 
Of course, the proper fix is to support DTLS on Android, which we are working on right now.

Looking forward to it!

Eric Thomas

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Mar 9, 2013, 2:54:13 AM3/9/13
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Hi All,

I would like to know whether WebRTC Video Call is also support in Native Android Apps or we can do WebRTC Video Call only in Chrome Beta for Android as of now ?

Thanks,
Eric

Miguel Paraz

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Mar 13, 2013, 2:11:49 AM3/13/13
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Hi,
Thanks for the good work on this.

On Thursday, 7 March 2013 04:38:40 UTC+8, Punyabrata Ray wrote:
Known issues:

Is TURN server support available on Android?

I'm trying a setup where the Android phone is using the mobile network operator 3G network, and the desktop Chrome is on a network with limited connectivity. I have A TURN server available on the open Internet.

Thanks,
Miguel

Kaiduan Xie

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Mar 13, 2013, 11:47:03 AM3/13/13
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Kevin,

Does this version on Android support H.264 codec? You mentioned that it worked between iPad Thrupoint Longboard Soft Client (H264 Video).

Thanks,

/Kaiduan

Kaiduan Xie

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Mar 13, 2013, 1:06:21 PM3/13/13
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Hi all,

I just made a call from Android/Samsung Nexus/4.2.2 to Chrome desktop/Windows/25.0.1364.172 m, the video call went through, both sides agreed on VP8 codec, and I did not find H.264 listed in the SDP.

Does Android version support H.264? If yes, how to enable it?

Thanks,

/Kaiduan

Leo Wang

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Mar 13, 2013, 1:09:27 PM3/13/13
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We only support VP8.

Justin Uberti

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Mar 15, 2013, 12:38:35 AM3/15/13
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TURN should be fully supported on Android.


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Serge Lachapelle

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Apr 18, 2013, 6:47:08 AM4/18/13
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Are you sure you enabled the flag and that you are running chrome beta?


On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 3:55 AM, Christian <cam...@gmail.com> wrote:
Using my Motorola Photon Q, I ended up getting a the following error when creating the peer connection: NotSupportedError: DOM Exception 9

The same page works fine on my colleague's Motorola Xoom.

Any ideas?

--
Christian
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Christian

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Apr 18, 2013, 8:33:48 AM4/18/13
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Yes, even though I know it makes it seem like I didn't.  Just to make absolutely sure...
  • I boot up my phone from being turned off.
  • I launch Chrome Beta
  • I go to chrome://version/ and confirm that under 'Application' it reads 'Chrome Beta 27.0.1453.49'
  • I go to chrome://flags/ and the 'Enable WebRTC' section has a white background with the link 'Disable'
  • I go to my page and try to create the peer connection, and get the error 'Error: NotSupportedError: DOM Exception 9'
I do also have regular Chrome installed.  Not sure if there's some sort of interaction happening.  That doesn't seem likely, however.

--
Christian

PhistucK

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Apr 18, 2013, 8:40:58 AM4/18/13
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Christian

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Apr 18, 2013, 8:56:08 AM4/18/13
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Yes it does, and so does http://www.simpl.info/rtcdatachannel/

I'm using RTCPeerConnection-v1.4.js so maybe there's a problem with that version?  But I'm not sure why it would work on the Xoom but not the Photon Q in that case.

--
Christian

Punyabrata Ray

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May 30, 2013, 10:04:54 AM5/30/13
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Hi,
We are still working on adding camera and microphone selection. Today it defaults to the front facing camera.
Could you elaborate the color inversion issue? 
Thanks,
Ray

On Wednesday, May 29, 2013 7:50:13 AM UTC-7, Eugene Krevenets wrote:
Hello. Is there any changes with camera selection possibilities and color inversion?

Stephan Bardubitzki

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Jul 9, 2013, 7:59:27 PM7/9/13
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Any news on when we can expect camera selection, such as in FF nightly for Android where the user can select back or front facing camera?

Anders Both

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Mar 9, 2014, 7:09:42 PM3/9/14
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Is WebRTC still behind a flag today ?

Alexandre GOUAILLARD

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Mar 9, 2014, 7:47:19 PM3/9/14
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no.

It is available in the current stable version of chrome.


On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 7:09 AM, Anders Both <and...@basechat.com> wrote:
Is WebRTC still behind a flag today ?

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