We should also look at addressing the issue of conferencing tools not actually being able to handle true high quality streams like you might get on Twitch or YouTube Live. My Canon EOS R and L lens may look great in 60fps through an HDMI capture card, but what point is there when it's still going to be a 24fps 360p[0] video stream on Zoom even if I choose the HD option? Sure, the pandemic is somewhat to blame[1], but I'm just using Zoom as an example.
Google Meet goes up to 720p maximum.[2]
Google Duo doesn't do 1080p unless you're on a Samsung S20. Not even Pixels suppoprt it.[3]
WhatsApp does great 1080p video calls on your phone (I think? I haven't verified this), but you can't make video calls on desktop clients.
Skype seems to be the only consumer-facing free cloud video conferencing tool that will do 1080p and look good, but I haven't tried in years -- the redesign and general clunkiness drove me (and everyone else, seemingly) away from it. I can't believe support for 1080p video calls in 2020 is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I stumbled upon TrueConf[4], and might give them a go with my setup to see if I can get an actual 2020-esque video call going between my family. TrueConf appears to be self-hosted, which I guess is why there's no restriction on quality (takes bandwidth and transcoding out of the picture for the service provider, so zero cost per call.) Although this may be great for me, it's certainly not for the average joe, so the aforementioned industry-wide issues still need to be addressed and quite frankly I find it embarrassing that we have such low quality video calls in 2020.
Google Meet goes up to 720p maximum.[2]
Google Duo doesn't do 1080p unless you're on a Samsung S20. Not even Pixels suppoprt it.[3]
WhatsApp does great 1080p video calls on your phone (I think? I haven't verified this), but you can't make video calls on desktop clients.
Skype seems to be the only consumer-facing free cloud video conferencing tool that will do 1080p and look good, but I haven't tried in years -- the redesign and general clunkiness drove me (and everyone else, seemingly) away from it. I can't believe support for 1080p video calls in 2020 is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
I stumbled upon TrueConf[4], and might give them a go with my setup to see if I can get an actual 2020-esque video call going between my family. TrueConf appears to be self-hosted, which I guess is why there's no restriction on quality (takes bandwidth and transcoding out of the picture for the service provider, so zero cost per call.) Although this may be great for me, it's certainly not for the average joe, so the aforementioned industry-wide issues still need to be addressed and quite frankly I find it embarrassing that we have such low quality video calls in 2020.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/s/h88yrdu2gu9kh59/zoom.png?dl=0
[1] https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/207347086-Group-HD
[2] https://www.dropbox.com/s/u74x9g89mtts6ho/meet.png?dl=0
[3] https://www.gsmarena.com/google_duo_will_be_integrated_into_...
[4] https://trueconf.com/