AVChat Software Product Blog

Our AVChat 3 Joomla Component is now compatible with JomSocial. JomSocial is a component that transforms your Joomla website into a social network!

When installed on top of JomSocial the AVChat 3  Joomla Component:

• will use the profile pictures from the JomSocial profiles in the video chat’s users list
• will link the users inside the video chat to their JomSocial profile pages
• will login people in the video chat using the user names they have on the website

As a Joomla admin you also have access to the video chat’s admin area from where you can ban and kick users, log in as hidden, delete existing rooms, peak into private discussions, manage banned users, view users IP’s etc… .

Read more about our AVChat 3 Video Chat Component for Joomla here.

30 days trial:

If you have a JomSocial website you can try our video chat component for free for 30 days, just drop us an email with the website on which you will test it. Don’t forget to mention you need the AVChat 3 Joomla Component.

Get it now for your JomSocial website:

The AVChat 3 Joomla Component (which handles the integration with JomSocial) can be purchased for $49 when you purchase the standalone version of AVChat 3!

Looking for feedback:

We are eagerly looking for feedback on how to better integrate our video chat software with JomSocial . While we have studied JomSocial and developed the integration kit to the best of our abilities, you guys live with JomSocial every day and are a better judge of what this integration should do next! So If you have any feature/integration idea, drop us a line.

To see what AVChat 3 build you have installed you need to right click on the video chat software. The first item in the menu that shows up is the build number:

The AVChat 3 build number showing up on right click!

Why is the build number important?

The build number allows you to check if you have the latest version of our software.  If your build number is 284 and on the blog we announce a  new release with the build number 340, then it means you should consider upgrading your installation!

Each increment in the build number might represent any of the following things:

• code cleaning
• bug fix
• new feature
• new file
• new entry in the translation file
• new setting in the config files
• etc…

but you should check the release notes for the exact new features and bug fixes in each build.

Build numbers on our demo of AVChat 3

Our online demo of AVChat 3 is frequently updated, so even tough the latest build available for download might be 284, the demo might be 310 for example. We update the demo more frequently to test new features and UI changes before we release these changes to the customers.

We have put a new build of AVChat 3 up today, this build (340) includes a lot of new small features and some important bug fixes.

New features:

• You can now drag and resize the text chat area, other people’s web cams and the banned users window. A new red arrow is present in the lower right side corner of these windows:
  
• A new users list type which shows the avatar in a small format:
  
• Avatars (when available) are also shown in the side menu for each user:
  
• Added Sort by gender option:
  
• The banned users windows also shows the IP and user name of the person that added the ban
• When you buzz someone a confirmation message shows up: You buzzed ABC
• Better positioning for other people’s webcams
• Added new config option (adminCanViewPrivateStreamsWithoutPermission) for the admin to be able to view private streams without needing permission
• Added new config option (adminCanViewPrivateMessages) for the admin to see private messages or not
• Added new config option (fontsize) to control the size of the text in the text chat area
• Default  font size for the text chat has been increased to 12px
• Added new config options (kbmessages, jlmessages) to control if the joined/left and banned/kicked messages are shown in the chat
• The Joomla Component now also contains proper integration with the JomSocial Component, but more on that in a new blog post!

Bug fixes:

• Translation missing: Private chat with ABC
• The Loading Settings message can now be translated using the lstext Flahvar
• Zooming using the mouse wheel while in fullscreen caused the UI to go bonkers
• Fixed issue with empty spaces at the right of the users in the users list
• Fixed issue with empty spaces between the users in the users list
• The writeUsersList setting in avchat3.properties in the Red5 server side files did not work
• On Red5 the kick message was not being sent properly to the chat rooms
• On Red5 sometimes the text chat history shared objects were not being cleared out resulting in large history shared object files
• Some Drupal 5/6 fixes

How to get the new AVChat 3 release

You can obtain the latest AVChat 3 files by downloading the software again using the download link from the delivery/trial email. You will automatically download the latest build which includes all the bug fixes and feature enhancements mentioned in this post .

After downloading them:

• do a clean install or
• overwrite all the old files including the FMS/Red5 server side files

1) Protection against capturing the video streams

Some software (like Replay Media Catcher) can capture (and save) any audio/video stream that you are receiving from a media server. It does that by analyzing your Internet traffic and looking for connections to media servers. When it finds one it attempts to make its own connection to the media server and thus gets access to the video stream!

AVChat 3 protects you and your users from having your streams captured by such software by disconnecting such software from the media server at regular intervals (about 20 seconds).

2) Watermarks for video streams

We’ve run into situations where certain users were capturing the video from other peoples streams using using screen capturing software and rebroadcasted it as their own video on other websites. To prevent this AVChat 3 can place a watermark over others peoples streams!

To place a watermark over the video streams edit avc_settings.xxx and change the value of the watermarkForOtherPeoplesStreams variable with the path to the desired watermark image (png and jpg images are supported).

Video Stream With Watermark On It

3) Secure communications between users (rtmps, rtmpe)

The data exchanged between the users trough the media server is exchanged using a protocol from Adobe named rtmp. rtmps and rtmpe are the secure alternatives to rtmp. rtmps is supported by both FMS and Red5 while rtmpe is only supported by FMS. When using rtmps or rtmpe all data exchanged between the users is encrypted before being sent over the Internet to the media server.

To use rtmpe with FMIS (3 or 3.5) change your connection string from rtmp://… to rtmpe:// . RTMPE requires about 15% more processing power than RTMP, read here how to disable rtmpe alltogether.

To use rtmps with FMIS you need to configure your FMS server for rtmps.

To use rtmps with Red5 you need to configure Red5 for rtmps.

4) Protection from malicious connections

AVChat 3 will reject any connections to the media server that are made from swf’s delivered from domains other than the ones for which your software was licensed. This prevents your media server from being used (for video streaming for example) by other people with swf files hosted on other websites.

5) SWF verification

FMIS (3 and 3.5) has a nice feature where you can tell it to only accept connections from certain swf files. Read here how to configure your FMIS server for SWF verification.

6) Encrypted room passwords

We’ve had issues in the past where malicious users (using special programs) would look for the password of the rooms in the memory of the computer because the passwords were stored in plain text as opposed to being encrypted.

All room passwords in AVChat 3 are now encrypted, only the creator of the room will ever know the unencrypted password.