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by eric_khun·7y ago·view on hn ↗
We've tried several video conference solutions. Google hangout was nice for up to 10 people. Then it get really slow and the quality of the video decrease. It also do not work in China (need a VPN).

By far, the best one is Zoom. It can easily handle with a really great quality 25 people on 1 page, in a conference with 80+ people. It also works smoothly for people in China (without VPN). Anyone has any know the magic behind their tech?

4 comments
Zoom doesn't use WebRTC (which the article is about). They use websockets to send media through the pipes and decode using a webgl shader or similar.

I don't work for Zoom, but do work in the WebRTC space and read an article about it recently.

Gotta link for that? Sounds really neat
Zoom has to be using h264 under the covers. Did they recompile the OpenH264 into WASM?

like: https://github.com/kazuki/mediacodec.wasm

It could also be that they are using websockets to deliver MPEG-DASH/HLS segments for low latency.

Anybody with the number can join your Zoom meeting and since there's very little indication of their presence you might not even notice. You can also command other people's rooms to join your meeting, if you can figure out how to contact them, and you can force their microphones to turn on, which in my opinion is pretty disturbing.
> in a conference with 80+ people

are that kind of meetings really useful by videochat ? Even in real life it's a pain.

That use case is primarily one way - think "CFO presents the latest quarterly results to employees".

Like Twitch/Youtube Live, except with access control :)

GSuite customers can use Hangouts Meet, which should be better.