EKK:LoFi Sounds in HiFi Spaces/Making connection/ooVoo

ooVoo

ooVoo is a multi-platform video conferencing/chat application that boasts allowing up to 12 simultaneous video streams.

Unlike Skype, ooVoo doesn't make use of peer-to-peer connections, instead relying on some kind of cloud configuration. Apparently because of this, ooVoo's CEO has stated that ooVoo isn't typically used for "scheduled international calls or professional meetings," instead focusing on casual users. Nevertheless, the Washington Post claimed in 2011 that ooVoo had been approved for official communications within the US House of Representatives.

The ooVoo Interface

ooVoo manifests as a cluttered and non-native interface spread across multiple windows for its various tasks: a contacts list, a text chat window, a video chat window, etc. Every window in ooVoo displays advertisements at you. It can be assumed that these are targeted: during our intercontinental chats, I was shown a Volkswagen ad comprised of text in Spanish, German, and English simultaneously. Some ads automatically play audio at you, destroying any recordings you might be making - this is significant since call recording is a built-in feature.

Frustratingly, some menu items are not identical across platforms. In trying to troubleshoot issues we were having, ooVoo's tech support page referred to necessary menu entries which existed on OS X, but not on Windows.

In a video conference, ooVoo partitions the window based on how many participants are present. In the default view with two people, the video streams appear as adjacent rectangles. With three people present, the right and left streams are angled in a gratuitous 3D effect. As an alternative, any single stream can be designated to fill the window, with the remaining streams delegated into a single corner.

Testing ooVoo

We tested ooVoo as a 3-person team with one person in Weimar and 2 people at separate locations in San Diego. Audio fidelity during conversation was relatively poor, as has come to be expected from internet telephony. All three of us experienced intermittent feedback bursts, where audio with about a half-second of delay would return loudly for a few seconds at a time. ooVoo's automatic gain control didn't have much of an effect on this.

Weimar occasionally experienced bandwidth issues, which ooVoo deals with by automatically dropping the affected video stream, while keeping audio alive.