Maximum video chat limit?

Tried playing tonight with 7 people. Each of us could only see 5 video windows, ourselves plus four other people. Is there a limit to the number of people we can play with?

It does appear to be layout restrained. 5 video windows is what I have room for on my 15" laptop. Too bad hauling my 24" monitor from work home isn't an option :p

If I'm reading this right it looks like tokbox has a volume monitoring JS API: http://www.tokbox.com/opentok/api/tools/js/documentation/api/VolumeEvent.html

Any chance we could get the video layout code to switch video ordering based on who is speaking?

Google+ Hangouts has a system in which it detects who is speaking and puts their feed onto a main screen. I have tried GMing with it, and don't like the result, because video feeds changing is distracting. I imagine that feeds hopping about would be at least as bad.

Instead, may I suggest a measure that is one of the options in the "meetings.io" videoconferencing facility. Crop the sides of the video feeds to present only the centre of the field of view in a portrait-aspect window. That will make all the windows narrower and let you fit more in, without making the images of people's faces any smaller.

Perhaps the ability to move and resize the video windows? Event better if resize was "crop" instead of shrinking the video feed as Agemegos describes.

Ordering the windows has been suggested elsewhere as well. I think it would be handy especially for card games, etc where the turn order is fixed for the game.

* Edit - also, moving each person's video window around the whiteboard would be cool too - put their video where they would be sitting at the table :)

I'd like a feature to temporarily enlarge the video boxes. Sometimes you're not using the table (no need to set up a bar scene unless there will be a fight) and are just interacting. It'd be nice to have the players have the GM video extra big and centered on the table ind those cases, too.

Ordering the windows has been suggested elsewhere as well. I think it would be handy especially for card games, etc where the turn order is fixed for the game.

There are RPGs in which the turn order is fixed for the game, too. E.g. in James Bond 007, ForeSight, and HindSight characters act in order or diminishing Speed. And when I had big parties in such games I sometimes used to get the players to sit around the table in order of Speed clockwise, to speed up combat a little.

Nowadays there are other position based rules, such as in Spirit of the Century position clockwise from the GM breaking ties in Initiative. Or rules in which cards and notes are passed to the left. I mentioned during the Kickstarter that I would like to have the video windows arranged from left to right in each player's view according to other players's imaginary position around a consistent imaginary table. I see now that it would also be desirable that this imaginary seating arrangement be not random, but set by the GM if desired.

Whats the consumption per video feed?

Because I was curious myself, according to TokBox's FAQ
http://www.tokbox.com/support/frequentlyaskedquestions#techSpecs:

End users will need the following:
...
A standard DSL line with a minimum upload and download speed of 160kb per call participant

So it looks like it's a stable ~160kb per person, so if you have six people, a DM and five players, it should come out to about ~800kb up and down per user. At 10 users total, as advertised for Roll20, looks like about 1.6mb up and down per user.

Your typical residential broadband in the US might not have a problem with these numbers, but if you're somewhere less overrun with broadband providers, I could see this being an issue.

Aside: Also, in terms of our occasional flash issues, it looks like OpenTok will migrate toward HTML5 as the video tag becomes more accessible in browsers.

Oh well. Roll on the NBN, I suppose.

My ADSL is configured for 784 kb/s up, and given what I actually get I suppose I'll have trouble with four players besides myself. Rude words!

I don't see why it would be using 160kb/person upstream. It should only take 160kb upload period. Download taking 160kb/person is believable.

*Edit: Unless it's sending the feed from you to everyone instead of a server which then distributes it...

If its doing mixing at the central server, then it would make sense for it to be 160 kbps upstream, then 160 kbps*players downstream. However, if I were the people at TokBox... I'd just be using a central server to tell your browsers' Flash install all of the users' IP addresses and have it do all of the work; a P2P conferencing solution. Else the central servers would be intaking and outputting a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. Not that that couldn't be the case... just wouldn't seem very cloud-friendly, and liable to lag backbones.

Curious what your tests will show.

No, it's all handled by a central server, so I'm pretty sure it's just 160 kbps downstream per participant, and one 160 kbps upstream for you. I will run some tests later to confirm.

I'd like to hear how those tests went when they are done.