mimoCall is fantastic and there is plenty of potential for its use. I am very eager for it to emerge out of beta phase. I’m grateful you’ve eased the cumbersome task of taking video calls, as I have never been able to master it effectively enough to put it into use in actual production.
I’m hopeful that the mimoCall iPhone client will be a free download for users. Your use examples typically reference correspondents, who typically are somewhat affiliated with the production. In that instance it would be easy to coordinate apple ID access to arrange for the iphone client app, or to pay the fee for a handful of client apps.
However, there are other uses such as live game shows or call-in talk shows where random viewers could participate in the show. This use case would have dozens if not potentially hundreds of download options, which would be difficult for a production to fund. If paying for the client app was left to the viewer, their incentive to participate would likely drop dramatically. Yes, they could still participate via chrome browser in their PC has a webcam, but I suspect that would be more significantly more complicated than the ease that comes with the iPhone app.
I’m hopeful you will keep this potential use in mind as you consider pricing strategies for mimoCall and specifically for the mimoCall iPhone client.
Thank you for all the great work you do!
@alternativeplan Thank you for taking the time to write this feedback and for the kind words.
Of course, the mimoCall client needs to be free!
mimoCall is a mimoLive feature. We would love to include it in the current license to enable as much use of it as possible, but running the servers incurs an unknown cost that potentially puts us at risk. That’s why we run a free beta test to find out what the usage will be like and if we will have to charge separately for mimoCall.
The whole purpose of mimoCall is to make it as easy as possible to “call in” to a show. Imposing a price on the client would be very much defeating this point.
So glad to hear this! Thank you!
Did some significant testing of the mimoCall feature yesterday and today. Very impressed!! I maintained connection with two calls simultaneously for over an hour. One via the iPhone client, the other via the chrome browser. I did see the rattlesnake error during one of the session, but it did not crash the application and the connection resumed as soon as I dismissed the message. This was while using version 2.8b4. Today I downloaded 2.8b5 and did a single call with the client on chrome browser. Call lasted and hour and a half and had not rattlesnake error. Call quality was excellent, with occasional signal stutter, but at acceptable intervals. LOVE this feature. Thank you!!!
@alternativeplan Thanks for the testing and the report.
For fun, if you insert /v2/ just after http://call.mimo.live in the mimoCall URL, you will use the new version of the web client. It’s still missing a couple of things, but let me know if it goes in the right direction.
The new web client is much better. I like the instructions and caveats that are displayed upon first connection. I like that camera and mic selection is available. I wonder if the control panel could be moved to a less prominent location so it doesn’t interfere with program content like lower 3rd graphics. This is not very important to me, but if there’s an easy solution, thought I’d mention it. Great work!
@alternativeplan: Making the control icon bar’s position use-configurable currently not on our roadmap. We will however see if there is a reasonable position that works better for common use cases like having lower thirds.
Future versions will however allow dragging and resizing the preview video which is currently located in the bottom left corner of the remote video feed.
By the way, v2 is now the default version for the web client. Please let us know if you experience any difficulties!