[Plugin: FCChat Widget] Tutorial: How to configure the video chat

As of version 2.1.10, FCChat is equipt to provide videoconferencing capabilities. When you activate the chat widget service, you can specify, at that time, that you want to include videoconferencing as part of your account.

After signing up for the videoconferencing service; however, there is still one step you must take before you can videochat on your site. The FCChat plugin has video disabled by default. You may notice that, when you open up the chat window, the little blue camera icon at the bottom is disabled, so that you can’t access the video window. In order to activate the icon, do the following:

1) Go to the FCChat Configuration file, located in your wordpress plugins directory:
wp-content/plugins/fcchat/config/config.js

2) Open this file with a text editor and search it for ‘video_enabled’.

3) Set video_enabled:true,

You will see some other video parameters in this section of the configuration file:

`max_video_streams:30,
capture_width:80,
capture_height:60,
fps:8,
quality:85,`

capture_width and capture_height specify the resolution of the webcam, in pixels. Higher values mean more resolution, but at the same time, higher bandwith consumption and lower performance. The values have been preset to allow for maximum performance given a wide range of connection speeds. If you want more resolution for your webcams, you can change the values of these parameters- be warned though, that performance may suffer if you do not have a high connection speed. For the best results, you should change them to values which maintain the aspect ratio 80:60, for instance, 160:120, 240:180 etc.

fps stands for frames per second. A lower fps will make the video appear choppy. A higher fps will make the video appear more fluid, but again, consumes more bandwidth and may result in performance issues. I do not recommend setting the fps higher than 10.

The quality parameter, above, refers to the amount of compression used to transmit the video. The quality can be set to any value between 1 and 10. A low value indicates that more compression will be used, and thus, that detail will be lost and that video quality will suffer. A higher value uses less compression, therefore producing a more faithful reproduction of the broadcast video. Setting this value too high may contribute to performance issues for slower connections.

A final note regarding the quality of video broadcast over the web. Currently, the caliber of video that can be broadcast using only using a web browser is inferior to that which can be produced by a dedicated app that you have downloaded onto your computer. The point of FCChat is, of course, not having to waste time downloading any apps. So keep that in mind before you complain to us to that the video is not HD quality 🙂

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/fcchat/