[macuser256]

I love using Adium but i'm annoyed because I'm always drawn to ichat because I can audio and video chat with all my other iChat using friends. Is there any hope of Adium ever getting video and audio conferencing among iChat and Adium users in the near or even distant future. If Adium could just get this one feature it would become the only chat client one could ever need.

[Brad]

Generally, no, not any time soon. At least, not outside of Jabber.

Adium does not currently have any Voice or Video (webcam) Chat functionality. The Adium team is aware that many users want to be able to audio/video chat. Adium depends on libgaim for its protocol-level functionality, which means that information sent or received over (most) protocols must go through libgaim. We therefore can not offer audio/video capabilities until libgaim does; the Gaim team is working on implementing such features, but there is not currently any ETA on when they will be available.

[macuser256]

thank you very much that pretty much answers my question

[Kraetos]

Yeah, 'cept Adium has abandoned libgaim in favor of joscar.

How this changes their plans for video chat is impossible to tell. It will do one of two things:

Push video chat even farther out because joscar is a younger, newer interface when compared to libgaim.

On the other hand, because joscar is better and the developer seems to be more on the ball than the guys over at libgaim are, it might happen sooner.

But really, its a complete crapshoot. It'll get here when it gets here

[blakbyrd]

^ From what I've read, it will probably be a year or so at the least.

[Fahrenheit]

I would use skype for my video from now on. Saying that, the skype IM feature itself ain't too shabby.

[blakbyrd]

Originally Posted by Farenheit I would use skype for my video from now on. Saying that, the skype IM feature itself ain't too shabby.

Ditto. That's what I'm probably going to do.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Kraetos Yeah, 'cept Adium has abandoned libgaim in favor of joscar. How this changes their plans for video chat is impossible to tell.

The change only applies to OSCAR, i.e. .mac/AIM/ICQ. It doesn't apply to MSN or Yahoo!, nor to any other protocol (though Jabber and Jabber-based, e.g. Google Talk, protocols are being moved away to different libraries as well).

It also has no effect on audio or video.

[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by chucker The change only applies to OSCAR, i.e. .mac/AIM/ICQ. It doesn't apply to MSN or Yahoo!, nor to any other protocol (though Jabber and Jabber-based, e.g. Google Talk, protocols are being moved away to different libraries as well). It also has no effect on audio or video.

But isn't video chat conducted over OSCAR? (That is, .mac and AIM?)

[chucker]

Neither joscar nor Libgaim provide any video chat support.

[Kraetos]

Originally Posted by chucker Neither joscar nor Libgaim provide any video chat support.

Well, obviously, because if they did it would be easier for Adium to provide it.

My question was, isn't video chat conducted over OSCAR?

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Kraetos My question was, isn't video chat conducted over OSCAR?

Only for AIM because OSCAR is a protocol only for AIM.

Keep in mind, though, that OSCAR is a closed, publicly undocumented (at least officially) protocol.

[chucker]

Yes, AIM video chat happens through OSCAR (and thus, as of Adium 1.0, would be handled, in part, with the joscar library). MSN video chat happens through MSNP, and thus through Libgaim; same for Yahoo! video chat.

But there's many, many aspects to implementing it. One aspect is reverse-engineering how that part of the protocol actually works, which hasn't been thoroughly done. Another is hooking up QuickTime, Quartz Composer or something similar so you can get access to a video input source (read: a camera) and somehow serialize and encode that motion image (probably through QuickTime) for transmission, and to decode and deserialize (again, probably through QuickTime) the incoming motion image from the other person. There's an awful lot of work involved in getting that to work at all, and much, much more to get it stable.