Everyone wants to be in on the conversation, but sometimes distance can make in-person meetings hard. We tested five multiperson video chat services–Google Hangouts, Skype Premium, Tinychat, AV by AIM, and AnyMeeting–to find the best place to conduct a group meeting online.
A lot of variables can affect the performance of a video chat service, from the available bandwidth to the quality of the participants’ webcams. In our lab tests, we set up five computers to video chat with one another: two desktop PCs, two Windows laptops, and a MacBook. We provided ethernet connections for the desktops and wireless Internet connections for the laptops. We also looked at how easy it was to set up and use each service, and considered whether each service had any extra features (such as text chat or video silencing) to enhance video chat.
Here’s what we found.
Google Hangouts
Setup: To use Google Hangouts you need a Google account (with a Google+ profile). You also have to install a browser plug-in, which works with Windows XP or higher, Mac OS X 10.5 or higher, or Linux. You can start a hangout from your Google+ page by clicking a button on the right side of the screen that says ‘Start a Hangout!’ This action takes you to a test page, where Google starts your webcam and microphone, but no one else can see your video broadcast.
When you’re ready, click the ‘Hang out’ button from the test page to go to the video chat room. You can invite more people by typing their Gmail addresses in the bar on the left side.
You can invite up to ten people to video chat.
Video interface and quality: While you’re in a hangout, whoever has the dominant voice will enter the large main video window, and all the other video broadcasts will appear in smaller video stream windows at the bottom. This arrangement, of course, assumes that every hangout will remain civil. If two people speak at the same time, with nearly equal tone and volume, Google Hangouts still chooses one to be front and center in the chat. Regardless, members of the hangout can manually adjust the layout by clicking on any of the smaller video broadcasts to see that stream in the largest window instead.
Also, with five or more people in the same hangout, the video streaming can stall, and sometimes it has trouble resolving. Voices can become temporarily garbled on occasion, but overall the video quality and sound quality are both very good.
Extra features: Google Hangouts offers several features in the videoconferencing window besides just video. One large button beneath the video windows allows you to send text chats to the whole group during the hangout. Unless you tell people you’re going to send text, however, the Hangouts window gives no indication that a member of the group is sending written messages–each participant has to click the Chat button on their own initiative to read any messages that group members might have written.
Bottom line: Google Hangouts is a great way to gather a small crowd to video chat–as long as everyone has a Google account. If you’re on a laptop, you may want to use it only for short chats, as smaller computers can easily overheat after running Hangouts for a long time.
Skype Premium
Setup: To start a multiperson video chat on Skype, you must have a Skype Premium membership, which costs $9 a month (or you can buy a Skype Premium day pass for $5). Once a Premium user has set up the videoconference, he or she can add any Skype members to the video chat, whether those people use the free service or the Premium service. If the Skype Premium member logs out of the group chat, the session ends for all participants.
Skype is a popular service, and if you’ve had it for a long time (as I have), you might need to update the software on your computer to get multiparty video chat to work (I had to update from version 2.8.0.866 to version 5.3.0.1093). Luckily, doing so is easy: Just go to Skype in the toolbar, click Check for updates, and follow the directions. The latest version is much slicker, with fewer windows that clutter your screen.
Video interface and quality: In general, Skype’s video and sound quality were very good in our tests. The video was on a par with that of Google Hangouts–generally accurate, with only a little latency between what a webcam was broadcasting and what everyone else could see on the screen. Sometimes, though, a video stream would freeze for about half a minute before resolving, a problem that grew worse the longer the conference continued. The sound quality was better than the audio in Google Hangouts, but only slightly.
The more people who join the call, the smaller the video boxes get, but you can click on individual video boxes to enlarge them.
Extra features: Skype has several useful extras built into its group video chat service. Members of the group video chat can send text messages in the chat box beneath the video window; when a member types something, other participants see a small red circle on the chat icon that indicates a text chat has begun. You can also send messages via SMS during the group video chat, but you must purchase Skype credits for that service.
In addition, Skype lets you send files (pictures, screenshots, MP3s) to the other people involved in your chat, through the main window. Thanks to this convenient feature, you don’t have to navigate to your browser or email client to send files to the group.
Bottom line: Videoconferencing with Skype Premium costs money, and requires more setup than most other video chat services do. The voice quality is the best among the services we tested, but the video quality is no better than that of the (free) Google Hangouts service.
Tinychat
Setup: Tinychat is a browser-based video chat service, so you have nothing to download. You can quickly start your own chat room (or, if you’re feeling lonely, you can enter any one of the many public video chat rooms the site hosts). Tinychat is free, but annoying banner ads surround the chat interface.
Inviting other people to join the video chat is easy. Once you’ve started a chat room, go to the Share button on top of the video, and Tinychat will generate a URL that you can then send to others. Everyone else joining your Tinychat group needs to sign in through Facebook, sign in via Twitter, or come in anonymously as a guest. New guests will be able to see the video broadcasts that are already happening; to add their own video to the chat room, however, guests must click ‘Start Broadcasting’, after which a pop-up appears requesting access to their webcam and mic.
Video interface and quality: In Tinychat you can share only up to 12 broadcasts, but you can have an unlimited number of viewers.
Although the video quality on Tinychat is pretty good, the sound quality is miserable. I heard a loud buzzing in the background when any noise was present on the microphone. Voices sounded louder and slightly distorted compared with voices on Hangouts and Skype, even after we made several adjustments to the microphones. And when the noise from all of the microphones was soft enough, the sound would just cut out for a minute, leaving me wondering if my headphones had malfunctioned.
In the lab test, I also experienced a 2.7-second delay on sound and video, which was a little annoying. Sometimes, after running for more than 15 minutes, the video will stall, and you may have to refresh your browser to start the video again.
Extra features: One of the coolest things about Tinychat is the EtherPad Lite function (which you can start by clicking the paper icon under the video box), a word-processing box in which all members of the chat group can write, allowing collaboration on documents. Each member is assigned a pastel color, so you can see who wrote what during the video chat.
Bottom line: Tinychat may be a good choice if you need to gather a lot of people in a video chat room quickly. It has no real setup, and you invite other members simply by sharing a URL. It’s especially great if you’re working on a project that requires more writing than talking (such as in study groups or project planning) and you just want the video available so that you can ask quick questions. It could be pretty useful for a family-wide game of charades, too. But if you want to have a long discussion with the rest of your group, Tinychat is not your best option.
AV by AIM
Starting a group chat is a cinch: Just click a box promising that you’re older than 13, and AV takes you to a chat room. Once you’re there, the service generates a URL that you can share with other people. When other participants click the link, they also have to promise that they’re older than 13, and after you grant permission for AV to turn on your mic and camera, you’re right there, video chatting with your colleagues or friends.
Users with older Macs won’t like the requirement to install a version of Adobe Flash that works on Mac OS 10.6 or higher. But other than having the latest version of Flash running on your computer, AV involves no downloads, and you don’t have to register for the service or give AIM personal information.
Besides those few video glitches though, the sound quality was great–and being able to invite friends to a chat room with two easy clicks was absolutely worth the occasionally botched video broadcasts.
Extra features: AV by AIM doesn’t have many extra features, but that’s the point. You can text chat with the other group members, or take a screenshot of the video broadcasts, but AV is supposed to be a clean, bare-bones way of video chatting on the fly.
Bottom line: For short chats with up to four group members, or for chatting with people who aren’t willing to go through a whole lot of setup, AV is the most intuitive and easy-to-use multiperson video chat service out there. This service probably wouldn’t work well for interviews or business meetings; but if you want to do a quick huddle with non-tech-savvy members of your family, or pass some time with long-distance friends, this is a great service.
AnyMeeting
Setup: AnyMeeting is completely free, and allows six people to broadcast video at one time. Up to 200 people can view the meeting at once.
The service requires just one person to register with the site by providing an email address and username. After you verify your email address, clicking ‘Start Webinar’ allows you to email invites to people, as well as to send them a short message. Clicking the ‘Start mic & cam’ button on the bottom toolbar starts the videoconference.
AnyMeeting will give you a “preparation window” so you can fix your hair; then, when you click the ‘I’m ready’ button, you go to your chat room. The creator of the meeting can share screens (a function that requires a Java installation) or prohibit other participants from broadcasting video streams or sharing screens.
About 10 minutes into our meeting, one of the video broadcasts I was running from a Windows laptop on a wireless connection stopped broadcasting to the other computers, even though the webcam on the broadcasting laptop was on, and everything appeared normal in that computer’s AnyMeeting window. In general, however, we had few problems with frozen broadcasts or blocky images. The voice quality was pretty good, and didn’t sound too tinny or garbled.
A banner ad sits on the right side of any videoconference you start in AnyMeeting, but it isn’t as big or intrusive as Tinychat’s ads.
Extra features: Unlike AV by AIM, AnyMeeting is all about the extra features. You can share screens for presentations, and the service also gives you the option to set up conference-call information, so people who aren’t in front of a computer can participate (although anyone who wants to be heard on the conference call will also have to call in; the feature doesn’t connect to the video streams over the Web).
The creator of the conference can see a list of attendees, and attendees can click on icons that indicate their mood to the conference host in a nonintrusive way. Mood options include ‘Go faster’, ‘Go slower’, ‘I Agree’, and ‘I Disagree’ icons, which show up as feedback for the conference host next to the attendee’s name. Text chat and video and audio muting are also available.
Bottom line: This is a great service for business meetings or presentations, but it’s a little too full-featured and formal for family-and-friends gatherings. A major plus is the fact that only the conference host has to sign up with AnyMeeting to start a chat room, and everyone else can enter the room simply by providing the email address at which they received the invite.
The Best Choice for Your Group
So which service should you choose? It depends on what you want to do.
Google Hangouts and Skype are two of the most popular and most capable services out there–as long as everyone in your group has a Google or Skype account, and your group is relatively small. Hangouts is full featured and free; but if voice quality is important to you, Skype might be a better choice. These two options are perfect for small, regular meetings (such as weekly status meetings, or evening calls to your friends).
Look to Tinychat or AV by AIM if you’re pressed for time and you need to chat without too much setup. Participants enter with a simple click of a URL, and both services are completely free. Use Tinychat if you’re not concerned about voice quality and you want to collaborate on notes with someone face-to-face, but use AV if you’d rather just meet with relatives or friends without the hassle of getting everyone to sign up for a video chat service.
Finally, AnyMeeting offers a great way to host larger business meetings, since up to 200 people can view the video broadcasts but only the host has to register with the service provider. The extra functions enhance the videoconferencing features, but are probably overkill if you just want to talk to your family members around the country over the holidays.