
Ask HN: If not Zoom. What to use for large group video with breakout rooms? - evolve2k
So Zoom is getting lots of valid privacy heat. One big issue is that it’s currently the best tool for large facilitated meetings (think 50+ ppl) where the breakout room is the killer feature here and you can auto break people into smaller group chats as part of running a large group session.<p>The use case is public video meetups, so using say Microsoft Teams would be excessive.<p>Anything else out there that’s up for the challenge?<p>(The other killer feature they have is URL based session invites that just makes it much easier to get people on a call)
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totg
BlueJeans [https://www.bluejeans.com/](https://www.bluejeans.com/) Check it
out, Better than Zoom and everything else out there

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evolve2k
Looks great! $10-$15/month hosted Saas (like Zoom).

\- Shareable URL & calendar integration

\- Breakout rooms

“Create up-to-20 small group working sessions as part of an ongoing meeting
where participants can be assigned randomly or designated manually.”

If we’re talking hosted SAAS as a zoom competitor, this looks to be the most
serious contender.

Anyone able to talk to video quality/user experience from actual use of this
product (especially vs zoom)?

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leroyg
[https://jitsi.org/](https://jitsi.org/)

I have used this successfully.

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evolve2k
Ok this looks like best yet. Open source and also available as a free hosted
service via their .org.

Share URL. Talk of quality video.

Only feature I couldn’t find was breakout rooms (key thing needed)

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leroyg
Copy all. Yes it is missing the breakout rooms. That is indeed a really
excellent feature on Zoom.

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evolve2k
New feature request for Breakout rooms on their github.

You can give it some love here: [https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-
meet/issues/5550](https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/issues/5550)

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WhatsInAName78
Twenty Three is a decent option. Breakout rooms, different URL-based invites
for both participants and viewers (participants share the video feed and
viewers simply view, but also have a chat option).

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evolve2k
Thx. Had a quick look..

At $199/month I think it’s too steep to be a drop in replacement. That said it
seems a full webinar & marketing platform so maybe worth it for some.

Site: [https://www.twentythree.net/](https://www.twentythree.net/)

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shams93
Janus gateway + gstreamer is one way to handle this.

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evolve2k
Had a quick look. Looks open source but not so clear for people how to self
host as other options here.

Can you point to a setup guide and importantly how breakout rooms are
supported? (I quickly got lost, admittedly only having a quick search around)

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jbd28
BigBlueButton

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evolve2k
Ok this looks good.

Open-source web conferencing system.

Focussed around “students” and “teachers”.

But seems to have the needed features; including ability to unlock a session
and share a URL for access.

Intro video on host features here:
[https://bigbluebutton.org/teachers/](https://bigbluebutton.org/teachers/)

As it’s open source I think this means it needs to be self hosted. Not sure on
usual expect video experience as you’re relying on own smaller infrastructure
but do get back full privacy I imagine.

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codegeek
BigBlueButton or BBB is pretty good. We use it for our clients (edtech). If
you need any advice on hosting, happy to give some guidance. They have a
install script that does everything in one go for you. You just need a decent
server with Ubuntu 16.04 (specifically that version) installed on it. Min.
requirements for server are 2 core CPU and 8 GB RAM. We use at least 4 cores
though and 16 GB per server and that can handle 50-100 users concurrently give
or take depending on what you are doing. Completely HTML5 and webrtc based so
nothing to install. Runs like a charm.

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evolve2k
Great Thankyou. I’ll also add they list breakout rooms as a key feature. How’s
that to use as a teacher/facilitator?

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codegeek
It works great. You can select a few users from the existing room to create
the breakout room.

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Raed667
Google Meet handles our 100+ person persenations no sweat.

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danielazhao
It's a good option. All my university classes are holded in Google Meet

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evolve2k
Ok obv it’s google so likely no video issues. Shareable meeting URLs.

No breakout rooms though.

This lecturer uses a bit of a work around making rooms & urls ahead of their
session, but this won’t scale to 50 people and being able to auto split people
into equal groups.

Lecturer video: [https://youtu.be/_MeCJgSh-U0](https://youtu.be/_MeCJgSh-U0)

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kull
Google hangouts / meet

