Group Video Chat Showdown: Google Hangouts and AnyMeeting Come Out on Top
Everyone wants to be in on the conversation, but sometimes distance can make in-person meetings hard. We proven five multiperson video chat services–Google Hangouts, Skype Agio, Tinychat, Av by AIM, and AnyMeeting–to find the best place to conduct a meeting online.
A lot of variables can affect the performance of a video chat service, from the gettable bandwidth to the lineament of the participants' webcams. In our lab tests, we plant up five computers to video chat with one some other: two desktop PCs, 2 Windows laptops, and a MacBook. We provided ethernet connections for the desktops and tune Cyberspace connections for the laptops. We likewise looked at how easy it was to set leading and use for each one service, and considered whether each service had whatsoever extra features (such arsenic text edition gossip or picture silencing) to enhance picture chat.
Here's what we ground.
Google Hangouts
Setup: To use Google Hangouts you need a Google account (with a Google+ profile). You also have to establis a web browser plug-in, which works with Windows XP or higher, Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, or Linux. You can start a hangout from your Google+ page by clicking a button on the right side of the screen that says 'Start a Hangout!' This action takes you to a test page, where Google starts your webcam and microphone, but no one else derriere see your video broadcast.
In the test page is a box that allows you to choose which "circles" (operating theater groups of friends) to inform about your haunt. Once you start the repair, everyone in those circles will be able to construe that, and they can join your hangout if they want.
When you're ready, click the 'Hang out' button from the exam page to attend the TV chat room. You can bid more people by typing their Gmail addresses in the bar connected the left side.
You privy invite up to x people to video chat.
Video interface and quality: While you'rhenium in a hangout, whoever has the dominant voice will enter the expectant main video window, and complete the other video broadcasts will appear in smaller picture stream windows at the bottom. This arrangement, of course, assumes that all hangout will remain civil. If two people utter at the same clock, with nearly compeer tone and volume, Google Hangouts still chooses one to be front and center in the chat. Regardless, members of the haunt can manually adjust the layout past clicking on whatsoever of the smaller video recording broadcasts to see that stream in the largest windowpane instead.
Also, with five or more hoi polloi in the same hangout, the video flowing can stall, and sometimes it has hassle resolving. Voices can become temporarily garbled on occasion, but overall the video quality and sound quality are both very good.
Extra features: Google Hangouts offers different features in the videoconferencing window besides just video. Matchless wide-ranging button at a lower place the telecasting windows allows you to send text chats to the whole group during the hangout. Unless you tell people you're going to send text, notwithstandin, the Hangouts window gives no indication that a extremity of the group is sending left-slanting messages–apiece participant has to click the Chat button on their own initiative to record any messages that group members might have backhand.
Unrivalled really cool feature: A YouTube push button in the prat toolbar allows you to search for videos that you can then watch in the main screen within Google Hangouts. Since Hangouts automatically mutes your mic during playback, no nonpareil else give the sack take heed you over the YouTube TV's sound; a 'Push to Talk' button lowers the video's sound and turns on your mic if you need to interject in the hangout conversation before the video is over.
Bottom line: Google Hangouts is a dandy way to gather a small crowd together to video confab–American Samoa long as everyone has a Google account. If you're along a laptop, you Crataegus laevigata want to use it only for short chats, as smaller computers can easily overheat after running Hangouts for a years.
Skype Bounty
Setup: To start a multiperson television chat on Skype, you moldiness have a Skype Premium rank, which costs $9 a month (or you can buy a Skype Premium day pass for $5). Once a Premium user has set up the videoconference, atomic number 2 or she can summate whatever Skype members to the video chat, whether those people use the free service or the Insurance premium avail. If the Skype Premium member logs out of the group chat, the session ends for all participants.
Both the resign and Premium versions of Skype require that you file with the accompany and download its software and chat sidebar, so it ISN't a great option if you need to organize a videoconference with a group quickly (unless you know that everyone in the group has Skype). Once you've sign-language up, you nates uncovering friends via Facebook, Gmail, Oregon Hotmail, OR search by Skype screen name. Skype Insurance premium allows videoconferencing with up to 24 people.
Skype is a favorite service, and if you've had it for a long time (as I consume), you might need to update the software connected your computer to let multiparty video chat to work (I had to update from version 2.8.0.866 to adaptation 5.3.0.1093). Luckily, doing so is easy: Just go to Skype in the toolbar, click Check for updates, and follow the directions. The latest version is much slicker, with fewer windows that clutter your screen.
Video interface and character: In general, Skype's video and sound quality were very good in our tests. The video was on a equality therewith of Google Hangouts–mostly accurate, with only a emotional latency between what a webcam was broadcasting and what everyone else could see on the screen. Sometimes, though, a video stream would freeze for about half a minute of arc in front resolving, a problem that grew worse the longer the conference continuing. The sound prime was punter than the audio in Google Hangouts, but but slightly.
The more the great unwashe who join the call, the smaller the video boxes get, but you can click on individual video boxes to enlarge them.
The quality of all individual webcam seemed exaggerated happening Skype Insurance premium in comparison with Google Hangouts. In matchless test, I dependent high two desktops with 720p HD webcams and one MacBook with a built-in iSight webcam (which has always given Maine a pretty clear image), and the contrast 'tween Skype's resolution for the iSight and for the HD webcams was surprising. Connecting the same leash webcams in Google Hangouts did non result in such a dramatic difference, and the eat from the iSight was much clearer there.
Extra features: Skype has several useful extras shapely into its group video confabulation service. Members of the mathematical group video natter tin send text messages in the chat boxwood beneath the video recording window; when a extremity types something, other participants see a minuscule red roach on the chat image that indicates a text chat has begun. You can likewise mail messages via SMS during the chemical group television chat, simply you must purchase Skype credits for that service.
Additionally, Skype lets you transmi files (pictures, screenshots, MP3s) to the other citizenry involved in your Old World chat, through with the main windowpane. Thanks to this ready to hand feature, you don't have to navigate to your browser or email client to send away files to the group.
Bottom line: Videoconferencing with Skype Agio costs money, and requires more setup than most other video confabulate services do. The voice quality is the best among the services we tested, but the video timber is no better than that of the (free) Google Hangouts service.
Tinychat
Setup: Tinychat is a browser-based video shoot the breeze service, so you have nothing to download. You can quickly start your own chat elbow room (or, if you're feeling lonely, you can enter any unitary of the many exoteric video recording confabulation suite the site hosts). Tinychat is free, but annoying streamer ads surround the chat port.
Once you decide to raise your own chatroom, Tinychat walks you through several windows to assistant you select a webcam and a mic, and information technology asks you to choose either an open mic or a 'Tug to talk' button that testament mute your mic until you click and hold the button down.
Inviting strange citizenry to join the telecasting natter is easygoing. Once you've started a chat room, go to the Share push button connected high of the video, and Tinychat will generate a URL that you can then air to others. Everyone else joining your Tinychat group needs to sign in through Facebook, sign in via Twitter, or come in anonymously American Samoa a client. New guests wish be able to see the picture broadcasts that are already happening; to add their own video to the chatroom, however, guests must click 'Start Broadcasting', after which a pop-up appears requesting access to their webcam and mic.
Video recording interface and quality: In Tinychat you can share lone capable 12 broadcasts, but you can have an unlimited number of viewers.
Although the video quality on Tinychat is bad good, the sound quality is low-down. I heard a loud abuzz in the background when any noise was present on the mike. Voices sounded louder and slightly distorted compared with voices on Hangouts and Skype, even afterward we made several adjustments to the microphones. And when the noise from all of the microphones was soft enough, the sound would fair snub dead for a little, going ME speculative if my headphones had malfunctioned.
In the lab test, I also experienced a 2.7-ordinal hold up on effectual and video, which was a trifle disagreeable. Sometimes, after linear for more than 15 proceedings, the video will stall, and you may take to refreshen your browser to set forth the video again.
Extra features: 1 of the coolest things about Tinychat is the EtherPad Light mathematical function (which you can part by clicking the paper image under the video box), a word-processing loge in which all members of the chat group can write, allowing collaboration on documents. Each member is assigned a pastel coloration, thus you can see who wrote what during the video chat.
Worst line: Tinychat may be a good choice if you need to gather a lot of people in a telecasting New World chat room quickly. It has no existent setup, and you invite other members simply by communion a URL. It's especially great if you'ray employed on a project that requires more writing than talking (such as in study groups Oregon externalize planning) and you just need the video available so that you can ask quick questions. It could personify pretty useful for a family-wide game of charades, too. But if you want to deliver a long discussion with the rest of your group, Tinychat is not your outdo option.
Av by AIM
Setup: AIM's current AV service is the AOL subsidiary's fashionable be active to stay relevant in the chat arena ever since Facebook and Gchat became predominate in New York minute electronic messaging. And the company succeeds in delivering an incredibly simple and fun way to chat with up to four people.
Starting a group Old World chat is a cinch: Just click a boxful promising that you're older than 13, and AV takes you to a chatroom. Formerly you're in that respect, the service generates a URL that you can share with other populate. When opposite participants click the link, they also have to promise that they're older than 13, and after you subsidization permit for AV to grow on your mic and camera, you're right there, picture chatting with your colleagues or friends.
Users with older Macs won't like the requisite to install a version of Adobe brick Flash that works on Mac OS 10.6 or higher. Merely other than having the latest version of Flash running happening your figurer, AV involves no downloads, and you don't give birth to register for the service or give Place personal information.
Video user interface and timber: The video for AV did non work as well as the opposite services we tested. At one orient during the essa, unmatchable picture broadcast froze (although the sound was allay disposable). The member of the group with a frozen video stream exited and and so reentered the jaw room, but one of the frozen video broadcasts remained, essentially showing three the great unwashe in a chat room when we in truth had only two.
Besides those few TV glitches though, the sound quality was great–and being fit to receive friends to a confab room with ii easy clicks was utterly worth the once in a while botched picture broadcasts.
Spare features: AV by AIM doesn't have many extra features, but that's the target. You can text schmooze with the other group members, or take off a screenshot of the video broadcasts, but AV is theoretic to be a clean, bare-bones path of video chatting happening the fly.
Posterior line: For little chats with adequate quadruplet group members, or for chatting with people who aren't willing to go done a total mess of apparatus, AV is the most intuitive and easy-to-use multiperson video jaw service exterior there. This service probably wouldn't work out well for interviews or business meetings; but if you neediness to do a quick huddle with not-tech-savvy members of your family, or pass some time with long-outstrip friends, this is a great service.
AnyMeeting
Setup: AnyMeeting is whole free, and allows six hoi polloi to broadcast video erstwhile. Adequate 200 people can view the meeting instantly.
The table service requires just one soul to register with the site by providing an email address and username. After you verify your email address, clicking 'Start Webinar' allows you to email invites to people, as well as to send on them a short message. Clicking the 'Start mic & cam' push button on the bottom toolbar starts the videoconference.
AnyMeeting testament give you a "preparation window" so you can fix your hair; then, when you click the 'I'm ready' button, you go to your chat room. The creator of the meeting can share screens (a function that requires a Java installment) or prohibit opposite participants from broadcast medium video streams or sharing screens.
Picture interface and quality: AnyMeeting is another service that might non work well for older-Mac users–like Ab, it requires installation of Adobe brick Flash for Mac OS 10.6 or high. But once you'rhenium in the meeting, video recording chaffer is as crisp and accurate equally in Google Hangouts or Skype.
Or so 10 transactions into our meeting, one and only of the picture broadcasts I was running from a Windows laptop computer on a radio connection stopped broadcasting to the other computers, even though the webcam on the broadcasting laptop was connected, and everything appeared normal in that computer's AnyMeeting window. In general, notwithstandin, we had few problems with frozen broadcasts or blocky images. The phonation caliber was pretty goodish, and didn't sound excessively tinny or garbled.
A superior ad sits on the right side of any videoconference you lead off in AnyMeeting, but IT International Relations and Security Network't American Samoa prodigious operating theater intrusive as Tinychat's ads.
Extra features: Unlike AV away AIM, AnyMeeting is all astir the extra features. You stool ploughshare screens for presentations, and the service also gives you the option to prepare risen conference-call entropy, so people who aren't ahead of a computer can participate (although anyone who wants to be heard on the conference call will also have to ring in; the lineament doesn't tie to the video streams o'er the Web).
The creator of the group discussion behind see a list of attendees, and attendees can chink on icons that indicate their mood to the league boniface in a nonintrusive room. Humor options include 'Go quicker', 'Go slower', 'I Agree', and 'I Disaccord' icons, which demonstrate up as feedback for the group discussion host side by side to the attendee's name. Text jaw and video and audio muting are also available.
Bottom line: This is a enthusiastic service for business meetings Beaver State presentations, but it's a fiddling too full-faced and formal for family-and-friends gatherings. A major addition is the fact that only the conference host has to contract with AnyMeeting to start a chat room, and everyone other can enter the room simply by providing the email address at which they accepted the invite.
The Trump Choice for Your Group
So which service should you prefer? Information technology depends on what you want to do.
Google Hangouts and Skype are two of the most hot and most adequate services come out there–as long as everyone in your group has a Google or Skype account, and your group is relatively small. Hangouts is full featured and free; but if voice quality is important to you, Skype might represent a better choice. These two options are immaculate for small, diarrhoeic meetings (much as weekly status meetings, or evening calls to your friends).
Look to Tinychat or AV away Heading if you're pressed for time and you demand to New World chat without too much setup. Participants enter with a apiculate suction stop of a URL, and both services are completely free. Use Tinychat if you're not concerned about voice upper-class and you want to collaborate on notes with someone face-to-face, but use AV if you'd rather sensible meet with relatives or friends without the chevy of getting everyone to sign up for a video chat serve.
Finally, AnyMeeting offers a great way to host larger business meetings, since prepared to 200 people can view the TV broadcasts merely exclusive the host has to register with the service provider. The extra functions enhance the videoconferencing features, merely are plausibly overkill if you just want to talk to your family members around the country complete the holidays.
Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/477997/group_video_chat_showdown_google_hangouts_and_anymeeting_come_out_on_top.html
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