Jitsi Meet Online Video Conferencing Alternative of Zoom App. An Overview

     Jitsi the open source alternative of Zoom is now getting popularity much faster due to the epidemic and countrywide lockdowns. Zitsi is feature rich and highly encrypted for complete privacy protection. 

     In, this article, we will explore capabilities of Jitsi meet in detail. If you want a quick overview of how jitsi works, then do watch below video. 

       Jitsi Meet is an open-source platform that lets you easily meet people online without paying anything. Just visit meet.jit.sit  on “Go” with or without typing Room Name. 

     Jitsi is not limited to just their site, You can download jitsi and host your own video conferencing server.  If you’re more technically inclined, you can build your own user interface for self hosted platform, but most people will be happy with the quick web version.

     Out of the box it offers many features found in more well-known apps, such as chat, session recording (to Dropbox), and the ability to “kick out” participants, mute individual or all participants and many more.

     For a quick overview of features, I am providing you jitsi meet features list. 

1. Up to 75 participants (up to 30 for the best experience).
2. Public or private chat.
3. Can blur the background.
4. Integrates with Slack, Google Calendar, and Office 365.
5. Share Screen at 720p resolution without pausing presenter's video. 
6. Mute individuals or all participants.
7. Kick individuals or all participants.
8. If user is disconnected for 60 seconds, server will kick him from chat. 
9. Lower audio levels of specific participants. 
10. Peer to Peer or Conference call.
11. Simulcast for perfect bandwidth and video quality management.
12. Customizable UI via interface_config.js file.
13. Server/Client level configuration via config.js file.
14. Out of the box all types of audio processing including noise cancellation.
15. End to End encryption for high security of your privacy. 
16. If you are not happy with customizable UI from configuration file, you can 
    design your own User Interface by writing custom HTML/CSS. 
17. You can control quality of your self hosted video calls by passing video call constraints which includes limiting max resolution as well as max frame per second. 
18. Conference calls are routed through video bridge developed by jitsi which out of the box manage bandwidth estimations and quickly decide the best quality a client should see in order to stay connected. 
19. Full HD video support. 
20. VP8 video codec with support of H264 available. ( Community is working hard to provide VP9 support which is 40% efficient as compared to VP8 and H264 and equally better to H265).
21. For better sound quality jitsi provides option to enable stereo sound. 
22. Live streaming support. 

     I hope the above mentioned features are enough to conclude that jitsi is highly feature rich platform for video conferencing service. It is to be noted that there are much more features that jitsi provides out of the box and you should not think that its features are limited to above mentioned ones.

     Jitsi being open source platform won't charge you if you want to setup your own server using jitsi meet packages and even if you charge your users for your services. 

    For users who do team meetings or personal chats, meet.jit.si is enough. I have seen teachers teaching their students on jitsi without paying a single penny. On the other hand there are limitations for zoom calls if you use their services for free. 

     If you use slack for team meetings and daily calls, there is a limit of 15 members but on the other hand, Jitsi provides you opportunity to host 75+ member meeting and this limit can easily be increased if you host your own server. 

     I have experience setting up jitsi and that's why i know best configurations which i will share in coming posts. So, please do check in few days. 

    Both Jitsi and Google meet are using WebRTC technology for their web based video calls. 

    If you want to read more about why you should use jitsi instead of Zoom, do read this comparision post https://jitsi.org/blog/a-simple-congestion-test-for-zoom/.  The tests clearly shows, Jitsi performs best in congestion test and also the quality of videos are much better for limited network connections. 

Is Jitsi More Secure Than Zoom?

     Well, this is obvious that jitsi is more secure that Zoom as Jitsi is open source platform which provides end to end encryption. While zoom is known for their privacy violation issues and due to the reason many countries had issued advisories to not use zoom if they care about privacy.

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     In the above screenshot you can see some of the settings jitsi provides you out of the box. One of them is end to end encryption which is currently in beta.  Even if you don't want this beta feature you can self host your jitsi meet instance and companies like zoom won't be watching you. 

     Here in this image you can see Tor Project is recommending Jitsi as open source alternative of Zoom and lots of people shows their interest in this. Check out the link here https://twitter.com/torproject/status/1244986986278072322 

     I hope the information provided by me is enough to conclude that jitsi is a feature rich alternative of Zoom and How much limitless is jitsi at the moment. The introduction of VP9 codec support will be revolutionary for all jitsi users as it will save 40% of bandwith for users and then Jitsi will outrank all major video conferencing platforms.