Idea to integrate BBB with external Video/Audio streaming service

[Do Le Vu]

Hello

There are many good free Video/Audio streaming services.
Based on my testing, Appear.in is one of the best one, it supports up to 8 people for free.

My idea is that: integrate BBB with Appear.in to have a better virtual classroom for teaching

Reasons:
- BBB has good whiteboard that teachers would like to use
- BBB Video/Audio/Screen sharing itself are not stable if people joining from different countries
- Appear.in Video/Audio/Screen sharing are very stable, even people are from different countries

I think there are 2 ways that we can do to integrate BBB with Appear.in

1. Somehow modifying BBB, and use Appear.in Video/Audio/Screen sharing instead of the built-in of BBB
2. Somehow disable everything of BBB, except the WhiteBoard, and launch it in an iframe after creating Appear.in room

What way is better? How can I start doing it with way 1, way 2?
Any advises are welcome

Thanks,
Vu

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Vu,

Hmmm ... it doesn't look like the project you reference is open source (and there is nothing wrong with that!), but the lack of source will probably make it harder to integrate.

> There are many good free Video/Audio streaming services.

If you choose a peer-to-peer model with WebRTC you will get a limited number of webcams active as each user must broadcast their webcam to others.  

BigBlueButton uses red5 as a media control unit (MCU) to broadcast the webcams.  In other words, a user streams their webcam to red5 and red5 re-broadcasts it (using it's server bandwidth) to all other users.  I've personally seen a class share 21 webcams. 

For classes of 10 to 12 users, it's not unusual to see them all sharing a webcam in BigBlueButton.

Looking ahead, we use FreeSWITCH as our core audio bridge.  Recently, FreeSWITCH is moving to becoming a MCU that supports both WebRTC audio and video.  See

  https://freeswitch.org/confluence/display/FREESWITCH/FreeSWITCH+1.6+Video

We love FreeSWITCH.  FreeSWITCH is open source as well.  

You can bet it's a natural step for a future release of BigBlueButton to leverage FreeSWITCH to support WebRTC video.

But not for the upcoming release.  Right now we're focused on finishing 1.0-dev and releasing 1.0-beta.

Once we release 1.0 final, we'll turn our attention to the next release.  To undestand how we prioritize features for a release, see

  http://docs.bigbluebutton.org/support/faq.html#when-will-feature-x-be-implemented

Regards,... Fred

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[Do Le Vu]

Hi Fred,

I think it will be good if we can make http request inside BBB to free streaming services, and only use their Video/Audio features.
Example with Appear.in, we only need to make an http request, and it will return an URL for people to join.

Regards,
Vu

[Fred Dixon]

Hi Vu,

> I think it will be good if we can make http request inside BBB to free streaming services, and only use their Video/Audio features.

Sure.  

BigBlueButton is open source so you can extend it any way you wish -- as long as you respect the terms and conditions of the open source licence.  See

  http://bigbluebutton.org/open-source-license/

With that said, the BigBlueButton client loads in BigBlueButton.html page, you could start there an modify the page so when your application calls BigBlueButton, it loads BigBlueButton in the top half of the page, for example, and the other servers in the bottom of the page.

Check out this example on how to control parts of BigBlueButton using the JavaScript API.

  http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/client/demo11.html

It shows how to load BigBlueButton in a page with other HTML5 controls.

Regards,.. Fred

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[Do Le Vu]

Hi Fred,

Thanks for the idea. I guess I can make the BBB version that I want soon.

Thanks,
Vu

[Do Le Vu]

Hi Fred,

On your demo page http://demo.bigbluebutton.org/client/demo11.html
I've tried to change layout, but it didn't work.

Can you also take a look at this file? http://pastebin.com/iM5yaXLD
I can use all Javascript functions in this file, right?

Thanks,
Vu

[Do Le Vu]

I've found out the answer myself. I need to use the value in /var/www/bigbluebutton/client/conf/layout.xml