Pidgin with Video on Windows


I’ve been helping out Maiku (who’s the Google summer of code student who was tasked with getting voice/video working in Pidgin) to get pidgin-vv working on Windows. We’ve done lots of playing around for the last wee while, but we’ve finally managed to get it working on Windows. Just so you all believe me, here’s a teaser screencast video of me giving Maiku a call.

Cool huh! So far only XMPP (and Skype, kinda) are working but Maiku is hard at work to get all the other protocols working too. Yay! πŸ™‚

  1. #1 by Lycox on 2009-09-07 - 7:44 am

    This is awesome. Really looking forward to it πŸ™‚

  2. #2 by Ibrahim on 2009-11-09 - 12:56 pm

    Cool, any updates on this? I notice it hasn’t made it into any 2.6.x builds on Windows so far…

    • #3 by Eion on 2009-11-09 - 2:13 pm

      Unfortunately, since voice/video needs a newer version of glib than what is supported on Windows, you’ll have to wait for 2.7.0, since that’ll be when a new version of glib will be supported by the Pidgin devs

  3. #4 by Dan Chokola on 2010-03-02 - 12:11 pm

    Code?

    • #5 by Eion on 2010-03-02 - 1:17 pm

      The code is all in Pidgin, it’s just compiled with the –enable-vv configure flag.

  4. #6 by Zajec on 2010-04-06 - 2:16 am

    Hey, thank you a lot for your work! I’m really waiting for next Pidgin release now πŸ™‚ Finally will able to talk with my Windows friends πŸ™‚

  5. #7 by Dan Chokola on 2010-05-16 - 8:46 am

    Well, 2.7.0 is out, and video is still disabled in the Windows binary. πŸ™ Should I whip out my MinGW/MSYS environment and build from source or is there a good reason why video is disabled?

    • #8 by Eion on 2010-05-16 - 2:06 pm

      It wasn’t quite stable enough for 2.7.0 I’m aiming to give the OK to the Pidgin dev’s for 2.7.1… no promises though πŸ™‚

  6. #9 by Zajec on 2010-05-17 - 6:47 am

    Thanks Eion for info. I hope you’ll able to fix discovered issues πŸ™‚

  7. #10 by Jon Moller on 2010-06-01 - 10:28 pm

    Now 2.7.1 is out. What now then πŸ™ Keep up the good work. Pidgin seriously needs this and so do I and lots of other people and you are so few working on it. Thank you so much for your efforts πŸ™‚

    • #11 by Eion on 2010-06-01 - 10:56 pm

      2.7.1 came out before I was ready πŸ™‚ I’m still working on it and it should definitely be a 2.7.x version that has vv on win32

  8. #12 by Jon Moller on 2010-06-02 - 2:56 am

    Thanks for the update πŸ™‚ I can hardly wait πŸ™‚

  9. #13 by ThePianoGuy on 2010-06-03 - 11:51 pm

    Keep up the work. We are really happy, if Pidgin gets the voice and video support on Windows!

  10. #14 by Frizou on 2010-06-09 - 10:05 am

    I hope also this XMPP Win32 video-conferencing version of pidgin will be available soon. πŸ™‚ It’s my best candidate to replace Netmeeting and be able to switch to Linux… πŸ˜‰ I address you all my encouragements!

  11. #15 by Olivier on 2010-06-10 - 1:13 pm

    Nice work so far — thanks a ton! Seems like http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/11075 isn’t on the 2.7.2 “roadmap” (http://developer.pidgin.im/query?status=new&status=pending&milestone=2.7.2) :/ P-p-p-please make this happen. We can’t wait… PS: I just sent you some $$, can’t really think of another way to help [and hopefully mentioning this here will inspire other people too]. I’ll be glad to do so again should this cool feature appear in the next Windoze release.

  12. #16 by Nash on 2010-06-16 - 12:35 am

    Hello, You are doing great work, I see. I am happy to read that you’re still onto implementing Video chat on Pidgin for Windows. But this wait is beginning to feel like torture. I am willing to live with bugs or even an unstable Pidgin if it means I can use the video chat feature. I am sure there are others like me. Could you at least put out a “Alpha/Beta” build so that we can get cracking?

  13. #17 by TMS on 2010-06-25 - 9:52 am

    Yes! Can you give us a version of Pidgin with the activated videoconference? Thanks.

  14. #18 by Yann on 2010-06-27 - 7:35 pm

    Dear all, I understood that VV is in development, and I am willing to help by testing and reporting bugs. What is the procedure to compile this unstable vv-version for windows ? (i am on Ubuntu 10.04, and have vista in dual-boot) Do i need to follow the instruction of http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/UsingPidginMonotone ? i understood i had to “compile Pidgin with the –enable-vv configure flag” , how can I do this?

  15. #19 by ao2 on 2010-08-28 - 7:59 pm

    Hi, are there patches available? Have they been submitted upstream for revision? Please let’s continue the discussion here: http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/11075 Thanks, Antonio

  16. #20 by Ben on 2010-09-24 - 10:11 pm

    Hi! is there a compiled and downloadable version of pidgin-vv for windows somewhere? I would be glad to test and file bugreports. Thx Ben

  17. #21 by Anthony Wilson on 2010-09-29 - 6:05 pm

    i always love to do videoconferencing because it is quite convenient;*’

  18. #22 by Event Management Courses : on 2010-10-26 - 3:58 am

    i alway attend video conferencing at least once a week because of our company meetings and leadership training”*.

  19. #23 by MacCyber on 2010-11-06 - 12:46 am

    I’ve installed a XMPP-server (openfire) at for IM-chatting at work. It integrates well with Active Directory! Linux users (that would be just me) can make Audio/Video calls in pidgin, but Windows users (that would be the rest) can’t. So, i’m a bit lonely here πŸ™‚ Anyways, thanks for your good work Eion. I hope the Windows users get A/V in XMPP soon! Any updates on that?

  20. #24 by Jon Moller on 2010-12-31 - 5:51 pm

    “2.7.1 came out before I was ready πŸ™‚ I’m still working on it and it should definitely be a 2.7.x version that has vv on win32” 2.7.9 is out and this post in soon 1Β½ years old. The demonstration video doesn’t even show a two way video conversation. My guess is, that no work is being done on this. Windows users of Pidgin are the majority but the windows client is now only a feature limited edition and nothing is being done about vv on windows. Maybe windows users should stop donating to this project which doesn’t seem to be include them anymore.

    • #25 by Eion on 2010-12-31 - 6:20 pm

      The demo video was a two way conversation, it’s just that Maiku didn’t want to show his face so preferred to use the test pattern instead πŸ™‚ Right now the work being done is trying to build the gstreamer dependencies without having to jiggle things around a lot to get it to work with Pidgin. That said, now that Pidgin ships with its own GTK/glib it should be easier to package up the dlls to go. Last time I gave it a whirl though, Pidgin went nuts with gstreamer-ffmpeg, so wasn’t any good for video to/from people who were using the gmail plugin. I’m not sure why you’d want to stop donating to Pidgin though. I’m not an official developer (have a look in Help->Developer Information).

  21. #26 by ThePianoGuy on 2011-02-11 - 8:57 pm

    Eion, I’ve been building pidgin and recompiling the gstreamer/farsight for windows and I know what hell you are suffering! Do you think using VLC backend for audio/video would be a better choice? I know phonon (because of the gstreamer problems) supports only VLC and mplayer on windows.

  22. #27 by Martin on 2011-04-08 - 3:39 am

    And another two month have passed…

    • #28 by Eion on 2011-04-08 - 9:05 am

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Christchurch_earthquake

  23. #29 by William Swartzendruber on 2011-11-21 - 4:11 pm

    Now that the spammers have had their say, let’s get back to the topic at hand. Are there any VV-enabled Windows binaries of Pidgin 2.10?

  24. #30 by Roby on 2012-02-03 - 11:25 pm

    Nothing?? πŸ™

  25. #31 by Andreas on 2012-04-06 - 6:17 am

    For me, I dropped Pidgin for GTalk. Now I have to have two clients. πŸ™ What a mess!

  26. #32 by bummedoutbob on 2012-04-25 - 4:46 pm

    This is a very disappointing thread. It’s been more than two years since this post with no light at the end of the tunnel. For XMPP/Jingle video chats with gtalk you can use ‘Jitsi’ now on all platforms.

  27. #33 by katze_sonne on 2012-06-15 - 1:18 pm

    …which, however, is a quite crappy programe (IMHO), because the interface (->JAVA!!!) doesn’t integrate very vell – just try to convince someone to switch to Jitsi and no longer use Skype. You can’t. Anyway, I hoped, if a more “famous” programme like Pidgin would integrate VoIP for Windows (with Videocalling!), the chance of convincing people to switch would be higher. That seems to stay an unreachable goal for quite some time. I mean, I’ve already been looking for an OpenSource Skype alternative since 2007/2008. Nothing really happened yet (apart from Jitsi)… Too bad πŸ™ Hope you still want to continue your work! (If I’d only had some better programming skills yet :S )

  28. #34 by Tyrel on 2013-01-26 - 9:01 am

    Many years later, still waiting!

  29. #35 by Yuna Ayame on 2013-03-16 - 3:28 pm

    Hey, I know this is a hard thing to do and it takes a lot of time and work =/ I have to request some atention for it though… plz… I don’t like the idea of having two clients installed on windows specially just because of the video/audio conference. This would be a great feature to have on windows’s pidgin and it seem thereare a lot of people who also liked the idea =/

  30. #36 by Norman on 2013-03-27 - 5:30 am

    All this is great, but where is the application of the add-on that can be installed like other Pidgin add-ons in Windows.

    • #37 by Eion Robb on 2013-04-02 - 2:38 pm

      Voice/Video isn’t available as a plugin for Pidgin. The v/v developer considered making it a plugin module, but decided against it in the end. It requires Pidgin to be recompiled from source with all the correct libraries installed and with the right compiler flags.

  31. #38 by Tomkiewicz on 2013-06-09 - 5:33 am

    This feature is finally done: http://blog.wasilczyk.pl/en/2013/pidgin-with-video-finally-for-windows/ It’s not officially released yet – you can wait for 3.0.0 or grab the development build (or build it by yourself).

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