Happy Leopard Day!
Well everyone, we’ve got some great news. A lot of you have been asking about audio and video chat for a while, and have been really frustrated by our response of “It’s coming.” We’ve been hard at work trying to make this a reality, and today we’re excited to give you an update on our progress, and to show you where things will be heading in the future.
Around the end of July, a team was put together to begin working on integrating audio and video chat into Adium. This is a herculean effort, as it requires the cooperation of several people from both Adium and Pidgin to accomplish, as well as the use of several new external libraries to facilitate a variety of tasks. The team has worked extremely hard over the past four months under the leadership of Eric Richie, and we are extremely happy to finally be able to tell you what we’ve been up to.
First up, a large number of changes to the Adium build system are in order. Augie Fackler and Elliott Harris have been heading up the effort to create a more flexible and powerful build system at the core of the Adium build process, allowing us to integrate a number of new libraries using their native build systems with ease. It’s important to us that all of these new external dependencies can be easily upgradeable given that many are currently under active development. These are all anchored around the use of the Farsight and Gstreamer projects to implement various capabilities at the Libpurple level. We are rapidly approaching the completion of this build system, and hope to integrate it into Adium trunk as soon as it is done and thoroughly tested.
Next, we have to make a number of additions to Libpurple itself. Luckily, we aren’t alone in this endeavor; Sean Egan and the rest of the Pidgin team are working closely with us on integrating AV capabilities into Libpurple itself. These new functionalities are being developed in a new branch of Pidgin, and development will continue as we improve our support for AV-capable protocols. So far, GTalk receiving audio has been implemented into the Pidgin voice and video branch, however it is largely untested as no client has actually tried to use the code to this point. We are aiming to be the first.
“What about AIM!?” you say? Great question. Our very own Alan Humpherys has been hard at work on extending Libpurple for AIM AV, and we hope to begin merging that work into the Libpurple voice and video branch as soon as possible. In addition, Farsight has some support for Yahoo and MSN, which will surely be our foundation as we move forward on those protocols.
Finally, we have a lot of work to do to Adium itself. These efforts have been headed by Elliott, with tons of help coming from other members of the Adium team, who’ve been hard at work designing all of the things that we need client-side for AV to function. This includes things such as the user interface, local video preview, and bridge code between Adium and Libpurple. In addition, we will be writing our own Gstreamer-based code to facilitate the bridging, and hope to commit those improvements as far upstream as we can. Right now, we’ve got several mockups of the interface which you will find below.
All in all, we’ve made an amazing amount of progress over the past few months, and we’re confident we will continue to do so. Today, we are making all of the work we’ve been doing completely public to anyone wishing to help out. You can follow our progress in the branch located at:
svn://svn.adiumx.com/adium/branches/adium-2.0-vv/
You’ll notice, of course, that we’ve denoted this as Adium 2.0 – and for good reason. These changes will anchor a large amount of new technology being implemented. The entire team is looking forward to this monumental push forward for Adium, Pidgin, and all projects that use Libpurple.
Of course, we always welcome help, and encourage everyone that can lend a hand to do so. You can find all the information you’ll need on our wiki, and you can contact either of us directly to get a better idea of where we’re at as well as where your help is needed most.
As is usual, there is no way to tell when you’ll have it in your hands, but trust us when we say that we want it just as much as you do, and we’re confident that once it’s ready, you’ll absolutely love it.
Enjoy the pictures and thanks for reading,
Eric and Elliott.
October 27th, 2007 at 3:41 AM
Awesome, keep up the good work!
October 27th, 2007 at 3:47 AM
So cool, I wait this version!
bye,
Nico
October 27th, 2007 at 5:10 AM
What is the date today??? We are NOT in April! OMG!!!!!
October 27th, 2007 at 5:29 AM
I need X-Code 3.0 and 10.5 to build the svn version. Bummer.
October 27th, 2007 at 6:09 AM
great news!
October 27th, 2007 at 7:13 AM
ok this might sound like a stupid question but how do you get the tabs on the side instead of the bottom?
awesome work on the AV aspect btw
October 27th, 2007 at 7:15 AM
Awesome 0:-)
Keep up the good work, Adium is so great my mom uses it !
She has no idea what IM means, she just use “the Duck ©”
With AV, we could also ditch Skype.
As you are (smartly) releasing this info to counter the release of the new iChat, I have a question that I would like to ask you :
Is there any hope that at some point Adium could also plug in into the iChat theater / screen sharing thing, or are those completely closed Apple possibilities ?
I hope you’ll reply…
Regards,
October 27th, 2007 at 7:30 AM
Amazing…. nice job guys. This has been my #1 request and will shortly come true!!!!
Thanks so much!!!!
October 27th, 2007 at 7:44 AM
Looks amazing, can’t wait to get hold of this!
One thing… I was lucky enough to get a copy of leopard on launch day, one thing I’ve noticed with leopard and adium is when you have the contact list set to show ‘below other windows’ and you press F11 (Expose) the contact list moves with expose, it didn’t do this in Tiger, any chance of getting a fix for this? I like to quickly look at my contacts using expose.
October 27th, 2007 at 10:37 AM
Wow ! i download this SVN version… How to install it ? o_O
mail@berenger.be
Thanks !
I <3 ADIUM !
October 27th, 2007 at 11:25 AM
Would be great if someone built this version. Haven’t installed subversion, xcode and so forth on my Leopard system yet… Please post a link if you upload it somewhere!
October 27th, 2007 at 11:39 AM
yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Spiken, i wold like this link too…
October 27th, 2007 at 12:00 PM
Just so you guys are clear, the branch won’t currently do a whole lot. The pictures are mockups. Right now the functional part is the video preview. We’re still finishing up the back-end. I know you guys are excited but you might want to give us a little more time before actually trying it.
@anon 2: yes, one of the requirements we had to decide on was 10.5+, to make it Tiger compatible would have been more hassle than it was worth.
@fabien: yes, eventually we would like to support things like screen sharing but for right now our main focus (and I’m sure you’ll agree) is to get the basics working before we add too much shiney
October 27th, 2007 at 12:57 PM
yay! This should mean proper support with Bonjour I hope! I can’t wait for this to get out the door, so many of my friends have been telling me I need to move from Adium to something like MSN so they have video and audio chat.
I can’t wait to see this implemented!
October 27th, 2007 at 1:19 PM
When you are talking about GTalk, does that mean Audio will also work with other Jabber Accounts? Actualy it should, since GTalk uses a more or less standard Jabber Server.
October 27th, 2007 at 1:34 PM
@meandcat: Yes, our goal is to have audio working for all XMPP services (assuming the server supports it). For right now the audio we’re referring to is specifically GTalk because that is what has been implemented so far. The rest will come as we progress.
October 27th, 2007 at 1:54 PM
“@anon 2: yes, one of the requirements we had to decide on was 10.5+, to make it Tiger compatible would have been more hassle than it was worth. “
I’m curious, does this AV support use any of the new core services in 10.5?
October 27th, 2007 at 4:33 PM
does this mean that Adium users can audio and video chat with MSN users from Windows?
October 27th, 2007 at 4:48 PM
Holy crap! You guys rule! I can’t wait to have AV in Adium!
What protocols will you be supporting? Just AIM, or AIM and MSN or others as well?
This is such great news. I know you guys have gotten a lot of crap about it in the past, so thanks for putting up with the demanding users and making some awesome progress!
October 27th, 2007 at 5:09 PM
Very exciting news! I’d love to never have to launch iChat AV again!
Cheeseburger Brown
http://cheeseburgerbrown.com
October 27th, 2007 at 5:11 PM
Very, very cool, but why is there a white frame around the black one in the last screenshot. It is incredible ugly and needs to be fixed!
October 27th, 2007 at 7:33 PM
Thanks you guys, this is fantastic!
October 27th, 2007 at 10:16 PM
awesome!
October 27th, 2007 at 10:57 PM
Can anyone link to an already compiled version of the alpha version?
October 28th, 2007 at 1:18 AM
@willie. : the alpha won’t do much for you just yet, give us a little time, I promise, you won’t be sorry
October 28th, 2007 at 4:16 AM
at last. it is time to forget all other programs for video chat
October 28th, 2007 at 4:33 AM
great works guy you rocks… can’t wait to have v2 in my MAC…
October 28th, 2007 at 6:45 AM
That’s awesome news!
Please have some kind of firewall support. With aMsn or iChat there are always problems with connecting if I want to have an AV chat.
October 28th, 2007 at 6:48 AM
Whow guys, this is awesome news!
October 28th, 2007 at 10:04 AM
Will it run with MSN ?
You guys are so cooool !!!
October 28th, 2007 at 10:54 AM
I’ve just built the alpha version – but I can’t see it implemented anywhere? How do I test it out?
October 28th, 2007 at 1:42 PM
This is really awesome dudes!
Keep up the very, very good work guys
The webcamfeature looks good, specialy the wet floor is nice.
I hope i can test is soon :-p
October 28th, 2007 at 2:12 PM
@spiken: As I’ve been telling you guys, it is NOT ready for use. There is currently NO chat capability built in yet (as we mentioned in the post, the build system isn’t finished yet and that has to be in place first.) The only thing that you could really “test” right now is the preview and as I previously stated, it’s nothing more than a fancy mirror.
October 28th, 2007 at 2:20 PM
I’m sorry, didn’t read thoruh all the comments. It’s just that I’m exited..
Keep up the good work!
October 28th, 2007 at 2:45 PM
Awesome stuff, it’s just that… when tabs are on the left or right they’re pretty ugly. It would be nice if they looked more like Leopard iChat
October 28th, 2007 at 4:50 PM
What can I say? I’ve been looking forward to this for a while, glad you guys are working on it. It’s something I’ve been really hoping for!
Good luck with the implementation! I’m sure it’s going to be a lot of hard work – but hey, we’re worth it!
October 28th, 2007 at 6:06 PM
very nice, just as a side note about the screenshots, I prefer my tabs on the bottom than the side, they feel less clutterish on the bottom to me.
best regards and thanks for making one of the best mac apps ever !
October 28th, 2007 at 6:15 PM
For everyone who has expressed their dislike for side tabs, remember, this is an option. We don’t plan on making that the only option by any means. I use my tabs on the bottom, Elliott just happened to have his set to the side when he took those screenshots. Have no fear.
October 28th, 2007 at 7:29 PM
will the the video work with msn
October 28th, 2007 at 7:57 PM
Listen, for everyone asking for MSN… if you read the post it says the following: “In addition, Farsight has some support for Yahoo and MSN, which will surely be our foundation as we move forward on those protocols.”
So YES we do plan on supporting it.
October 29th, 2007 at 3:25 AM
This makes me sad that I haven’t a single clue how to code, I would love to help with this. Anything to get it out the door quicker.
October 29th, 2007 at 4:57 AM
One little thing. One of the interesting things of windows’ msn when compared, for instance, to aMsn, is that the video is inside the conversation window. This is way more practical than the clutter amsn imposes with three windows just to see and be seen when you’re chatting.
Oh, and please, let the user icons appear in their normal size instead of a miniature! I always have to go to the contact list, put a white window at the background (as adium is a little transparent), click the contact window and hover over the contact to see it’s picture in normal size. A little odd, isn’t it?
October 29th, 2007 at 6:49 AM
Nooooooooooooooooooooooo! Please support 10.4!! I have been waiting for this for ages, only for it to be snatched away from me because I can’t afford leopard noooooooooooo!!
October 29th, 2007 at 10:15 AM
make command failed, any idea?
October 29th, 2007 at 3:04 PM
Is this actually possible to date? Or is this just a “what if-mockup”? Also, are we going to see fast filetransfers for MSN soon?
October 29th, 2007 at 4:06 PM
Skype chat please! More important than all the rest!
October 29th, 2007 at 9:47 PM
Will you be backporting some of the Gtalk/XMPP stuff to a version that works on Tiger, or are we SOL on that one?
October 31st, 2007 at 11:43 AM
Very cool. So, I’m guessing the response is amazing. I’m sure nobody even thought of having these great things in Adium… ha.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:48 AM
Just noticed something in that last screenshot: The reflection of the video doesn’t really look like a reflection … A reflection is really just the original image, but flipped – not stretched and in perspective like that.
November 3rd, 2007 at 3:32 PM
cool, from the screenshots it looks like the tabs are on the side now, I hope this is an adjustable feature I actualy much prefer them on the bottom.
Thanks !
November 6th, 2007 at 7:01 PM
yeah adium with videochat
BEST IDEA EVER
when this is ready to download i will delite this stupid ichat
November 15th, 2007 at 4:31 AM
can’t wait for this exciting improved version of my best ever IM program !
December 6th, 2007 at 12:01 PM
Sigh. Okay everyone. Eric has said this multiple times, So all I’m doing is repeating what he stated above.
First of all, MSN, Yahoo, and almost every other popular service that Adium has now out there that has video chat WILL BE SUPPORTED. AIM, MSN, Yahoo, GTalk, All of these ARE SUPPORTED.
The side tabs you see in the picture are an option. In fact, it’s in the current Adium you’re all using right now. It will not be the only option you can pick.
And lastly. Skype, sadly, will NOT be supported as stated in the blog post. Skype is a closed proprietary protocol. The owners are not letting “anyone” use the service outside the official client.
February 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 PM
i need a msn video chat plz to see my mother and sister i love dem and miss dem pz yall need to get it as soon as possible
February 23rd, 2008 at 12:37 PM
OK, downloading the source – hope it’ll compile without much problems
February 27th, 2008 at 1:39 PM
hay every one i cant accesses the page svn://svn.adiumx.com/adium/branches/adium-2.0-vv/ is there any solution for this matter
March 20th, 2008 at 6:41 AM
Your work is great. Are you so far with Adium Av – beta version or so which similarly? I cannot do svn down load – I have today tried however without success: (
July 16th, 2008 at 10:27 AM
Hey!
Any news regarding the AV progress?
Thanks!
October 27th, 2008 at 5:42 AM
What happened to the webcam development?
It seems to of disappeared