Legacy Videoserver DEPRECATED#
Warning
You need the instructions below only if you need to
reinstall the deprecated carbonio-videoserver and carbonio-videoserver-recorder
packages in an existent Carbonio infrastructure.
These instructions do not apply to the new Video Server & Video Recording, which requires no configuration.
The Carbonio VideoServer is a WebRTC stream aggregator that improves Carbonio Chats‘s performance by merging and decoding/re-encoding all streams in a Meeting.
While the default WebRTC creates one incoming and one outgoing stream per meeting participant, with the Carbonio VideoServer, each client will only have one aggregated inbound stream and one aggregated outbound stream. This applies for both video and audio.
In our simple scenario, 5 people are participating in a meeting.
Without Carbonio VideoServer: each client generates 4x outgoing video/audio streams and receives 4 incoming video/audio streams
With Carbonio VideoServer: each client generates 1 outgoing video/audio stream and receives 1 incoming video/audio stream
In summary:
Carbonio VideoServer |
Incoming Connections |
Outgoing Connections |
|---|---|---|
No |
4 (1 from each other client) |
4 (1 to each other client) |
Yes |
1 |
1 |
By default, the Carbonio VideoServer uses conservative Codecs (VP8 and Opus) to ensure the broadest compatibility, but more codecs can be enabled. It also splits the Webcam and Screen Sharing streams and reserves the same bandwidth for both.
A properly set up Carbonio VideoServer will supersede the need of a TURN server, provided that all clients can reach the Carbonio VideoServer’s public IP and that UDP traffic is not filtered.
Carbonio VideoServer configuration#
Virtual Backgrounds#
It is possible to allow users to add a custom background to prevent showing the real background behind them, to protect their privacy. This features currently works only with the Chrome browser. To enable the feature, execute the following command
zextras$ carbonio config set global teamVirtualBackgroundEnabled true
Users will see a new button at the bottom of the call that allows them to modify the current background.
Audio Settings#
The following settings influence the audio experience.
The administrator can set the Opus audio quality by setting the sampling
rate (in Hz) in the teamChatAudioSamplingRate global attribute.
The available values are:
8000 → represents the narrowband bandwidth
12000 → represents the mediumband bandwidth
16000 → represents the wideband bandwidth (default)
24000 → represents the superwideband bandwidth
48000 → represents the fullband bandwidth
The administrator can optimize the audio sensitivity with these two commands:
carbonio config global set attribute teamChatAudioLevelSensitivity 55
carbonio config global set attribute teamChatAudioSamplingSensitivityInterval 10
The audio level sensitivity defines how much the audio should be normalized between all the audio sources. The value has a range between 0 and 100 where 0 represents the audio muted and 100 the maximum audio level (too loud).
By default the value is set to 55, which is also the value suggested for optimal performances
The audio sampling sensitivity interval defines the interval in seconds used to compute the audio sensitivity level. By default the value is set to 2 seconds, this means that the video server normalizes the audio level considering the audio sources of the last 2 seconds.
The value should be at least 0, but it should be set to 10 seconds to provide the best performances.
Recording a Video Meeting#
The owner or moderator of a room can record any meeting and make it available for people to watch it later. A meeting can be recorded only once, meaning that an ongoing recording will be unique for that meeting. In case a recording is interrupted, it can be restarted at a later point. Every user will be notified of the ongoing recording, while any moderator in the room can stop it, even if it was started by another moderator, and save it to a file or to the moderator’s Carbonio Files.
Note
Regardless if the recording is terminated by the person who started it or not, a copy of the recording will always be saved in the Carbonio Files account of who started the recording.
This functionality is provided by a specific package, called
carbonio-videoserver-recorder, that must be installed together
with carbonio-videoserver. On a Multi-Server, this means that the
package must be installed on each node on which
carbonio-videoserver is installed.
Note
All the instructions below must be executed on every node on
which carbonio-videoserver is installed, unless differently
specified.
# apt install carbonio-videoserver-recorder
# yum install carbonio-videoserver-recorder
The package installs a service that needs to be associated with the Carbonio VideoServer instance, a task that needs to be executed from the CLI on a Node which installs the Mailstore & Provisioning Role, using a command that differ depending if you already installed and configured the Carbonio VideoServer or not.
If you already installed Carbonio VideoServer, execute this command on the Node featuring the Mailstore & Provisioning Role
zextras$ carbonio chats video-server update-servlet example.com:8188 8090
Here, replace example.com with the domain name or IP on which the Carbonio VideoServer is installed, 8188 the Carbonio VideoServer port, and 8090 (which is the default value) with the servlet port that will be used only for recording.
Warning
The value of the servlet port (8090) must
match the one defined in file
/etc/carbonio/videoserver-recorder/recordingEnv on
the Node installing the Video Server Role.
If you did not yet install Carbonio VideoServer, you can execute the following command on the Node installing the Mailstore & Provisioning Role, which configures at the same time both the Carbonio VideoServer and the recording servlet.
zextras$ carbonio chats video-server add example.com port 8188 servlet_port 8090 secret A_SECRET_PASSWORD
Replace example.com with the actual domain name or IP, 8188
and 8090 with the ports associated with the Carbonio VideoServer and the
recorder, respectively, and A_SECRET_PASSWORD with the value
of the variable api_secret in file
/etc/janus/janus.jcfg on the Node installing the Video
Server Role, for example:
api_secret = "+xpghXktjPGGRIs7Y7ryoeBvW9ReS8RQ"
In both cases, edit the file /etc/janus/janus.jcfg, find
the variable nat_1_1_mapping and write the public IP
address of Carbonio as the value for that variable, for
example: nat_1_1_mapping = "93.184.216.34".
Configure Carbonio VideoServer Recording#
To complete the setup, you need to execute a few commands as the
zextras user on the node with the Mailstore & Provisioning
Role. First, make sure that the functionality is enabled on the
infrastructure at COS level.
zextras$ carbonio config set cos attribute teamChatEnabled true
You need then to enable the actual recording on the rooms.
zextras$ carbonio config set global teamVideoServerRecordingEnabled true
Finally, allow all users to start a recording.
zextras$ carbonio config set global teamMeetingRecordingEnabled true
In this command, the policy allows every user to record a meeting. It is however possible to enforce this policy at user or COS level, to allow only selected users or members of a COS to record meetings.
You can revoke the ability for a user, a COS, or even globally, to
record a meeting by replacing true with false
Carbonio VideoServer Scaling#
Multiple Carbonio VideoServer can be run on the same infrastructure.
To add a new Carbonio VideoServer to the configuration, run the Carbonio VideoServer installer on a
new server and follow the instructions - the installer will provide
the required commands (carbonio chats video-server add with the
appropriate parameters) needed to add the server to the infrastructure
once packages are installed.
To remove a Carbonio VideoServer from the configuration, use the carbonio chats
video-server remove command from any mailbox server - this will
remove the appropriate entries from the Zextras Config (manual package
removal on the video server is required).
Warning
When using multiple video servers, meetings are instanced on any of the available instances.
The CLI command to manage Carbonio VideoServer installations is :command`carbonio team` with the sub-command
video-serverand the parameters add and remove.
Quick reference:
zextras$ carbonio chats video-server add *videoserver.example.com* [param VALUE[,VALUE]]
zextras$ carbonio chats video-server remove *videoserver.example.com* [param VALUE[,VALUE]]
Modify or Move a Carbonio VideoServer Installation#
To reconfigure an existing Carbonio VideoServer instance, simply use the various commands previously mentioned in this Section, then restart the Carbonio VideoServer service.
If you prefer to move the Carbonio VideoServer to a different Node, or need to do so
because for example the current Node must be decommissioned, you first
need to remove the Carbonio VideoServer instance: as the zextras user run
zextras$ carbonio chats videoserver remove video.example.com
Here, video.example.com is the name of the Carbonio VideoServer instance, that you
can retrieve as the hostname in the output of
zextras$ carbonio chats clusterstatus
Once done, remove the package
# apt remove service-discover-agent carbonio-videoserver
# dnf remove service-discover-agent carbonio-videoserver
Now the Carbonio VideoServer is completely removed from the node and you can install it on a different Node, using the corresponding Role installation procedure.