Anyone using RING?

[norm.h]

I have been using RING for several months, weekly, to contact my son in New Zealand, and have been very pleased with the results, until two weeks ago, when my picture became intermittently pixellated, then returned to normal, then pixellated and so on giving the impression of buffering.
Audio and my son's picture are unaffected.

My son's broadband speeds are 94.6 and 50.7 Mbps.
Mine are 13.81 and 0.91 Mbps.
I did wonder if my video chip was faulty, but I can view News and YouTube clips with no problem.

I emailed RING last week about this, but have had no reply.

I'm running Mint 18.2 Mate 64 bit and my son is using a Mac.
I have tried to attach a screenshot of what I get, but file size is too big. [700kb]

[phd21]

Hi "norm.h",

I have been using RING for several months, weekly, to contact my son in New Zealand, and have been very pleased with the results, until two weeks ago, when my picture became intermittently pixellated, then returned to normal, then pixellated and so on giving the impression of buffering. Audio and my son's picture are unaffected.

I hear "Ring" is a great secure multimedia messaging application and Skype alternative, and although I have it installed, I have never had a chance to try it with anyone.

I have been using the superb "qTox" multimedia messenger because it is secure and light on system resources and it just works great.

My son's broadband speeds are 94.6 and 50.7 Mbps. Mine are 13.81 and 0.91 Mbps. I did wonder if my video chip was faulty, but I can view News and YouTube clips with no problem. I'm running Mint 18.2 Mate 64 bit and my son is using a Mac.

Your son's broadband speeds are excellent, but yours are not. I am assuming that those figures are download and upload speeds respectively? The 13.81 is not bad, but the 0.91 is horrible for video chatting. How are you both testing your Internet connections speed?

When you say that your images are "pixellated", do you mean that your son is saying that from his end regarding your images?

It would help to know more about your system setup. If you run "inxi -Fxzd" and "lsusb" from the console terminal prompt, highlight the results, copy and paste them back here, that should provide enough information.

I do not know if Ring has video settings, but you can try lowering your video resolution profile from whatever it is, like from 1080 to 720 to 480 or less which will help, but the trade-off is a smaller video that your son would see. Update: Ring does have video settings, turning on or off hardware acceleration may help too.

Are you running any other applications now that you did not have running before 2 weeks ago while video chatting? Did you install any new software that might be using more of your system resources, especially Internet bandwidth? Have you changed any hardware router settings recently? Are you using wired or wireless connection from your computer? Is anyone else in your dwelling using video streaming, multimedia server(s), or video chat applications now that was not before?

I would recommend testing your Internet speeds at various times of the day and night, and if your upload speed stays low, like less then 1mb per second (0.91), contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and complain.

Have you changed your local ISP DNS servers to secure anonymous ones from a DNS provider? Sometimes, a local ISP will throttle down your connection speeds if they detect you are doing a lot of video streaming and downloading, and changing your default DNS server IP addresses would help prevent that. You might have to test your Internet connection speeds to see which new DNS servers perform best for you. I have been using "dns.watch" DNS servers (IPv4) only and speeds are very good. Are you using a VPN connection? You can try disabling IPv6 from your end.

I have tried to attach a screenshot of what I get, but file size is too big. [700kb]

Uploading a screenshot, image, or images to this forum
viewtopic.php?f=42&t=232332&hilit=screenshot


Hope this helps ...

Ring1sm.jpg

[norm.h]

Thank you for your reply.
We did try the tox thingy some months ago but it was more trouble than it was worth, faffing about trying to find a version that suited us both. IIRC, there are posts about it somewhere.

The answer to all of your questions is that neither I nor my son have changed anything recently.
As I said in my OP, things were working satisfactorily until the week before last, when the pixellation first occurred.

Last night the same happened and we decided to go back to try Skype [I know - security!], and everything was fine, so we are satisfied that the issue in not with either of our devices, but with RING itself.

Thank you also for the guidance with posting screenshots.
A note in the Attachment box would be most helpful, stating exactly what file types and sizes are permissible.

ETA.........playing about with image resizing in the links
This is what I see - my son's picture is OK

Screenshot at 2017-11-17 19-19-19.jpg

[phd21]

Hi "norm.h",

You are welcome.

We did try the tox thingy some months ago but it was more trouble than it was worth, faffing about trying to find a version that suited us both. IIRC, there are posts about it somewhere.

All "Tox" software messaging clients work interchangeably, meaning that if you use QTox and someone else is using the "Antidote" tox client, or "uTox", etc... you can still communicate with each other. I have tested this and it works. Did you and your son try qTox on both your Linux Mint computer and his Mac computer? Have you tried other Tox clients? Maybe "uTox" would work better for you and or him, or another combination of Tox clients. "Antidote" is for iPhones, iPads, iOS products and might be installed in Mac systems too? "qTox" is still my favorite for Linux Mint.

uTox
- Mac Users click the "version list" and at the top ".dmg" file link.
- Linux users click the "static x86-64" for 64-bit computers or "static x86" for 32-bit computers, save the file, right click the archive file, choose extract here, double click the utox file in that new folder to run it. You can easily create a menu item or desktop shortcut launcher icon to that file. I would recommend moving the new utox folder from your downloads folder to your home folder before creating shortcuts.
https://github.com/uTox/uTox

The answer to all of your questions is that neither I nor my son have changed anything recently. As I said in my OP, things were working satisfactorily until the week before last, when the pixellation first occurred. Last night the same happened and we decided to go back to try Skype [I know - security!], and everything was fine, so we are satisfied that the issue in not with either of our devices, but with RING itself.

That is strange, but your Internet bandwidth could still be the problem, and it could be intermittent depending upon your ISP and the time of day (high traffic times). You can always try disconnecting and re-connecting in Ring too.

I updated my last reply to include a screenshot, and Ring does include video and other setting options. And, as I mentioned before even with lower Internet bandwidth, you can adjust settings (if they exist), like reducing video profile, lowering FPS (frames per second) from 30 to 25, enabling or disabling Hardware acceleration.

You can also try "Wire" another secure messenger developed by ex-Skype developers.

I still cannot tell who is getting the pixellation from your comments. Is that a picture of you or your son?



Hope this helps ...

[greerd]

I wonder if your problems coincide with the last update? My update history:

Commit Log for Fri Oct 20 17:40:44 2017


Upgraded the following packages:
ring (20170908.1.d93228e~dfsg1-1) to 20171020.1.120f28c~dfsg1-1
ring-daemon (20170908.1.d93228e~dfsg1-1) to 20171020.1.120f28c~dfsg1-1

Like phd21, I have ring installed but don't use it.

[norm.h]

Thank you both..............

greerd............the recent update is certainly a thought that had [fleetingly] crossed my mind.

phd21.........the picture I posted is what I see on my screen.
I would have thought that if my upload speed were to blame then it would manifest itself on other applications too, which it doesn't.

We have decided to stick with Skype for the time being, since the new Skype for Linux seems to OK at the moment.

[BG405]

The 13.81 is not bad, but the 0.91 is horrible for video chatting.

Horrible indeed, and the norm for many in the UK. 16:1 is particularly bad though as it's usually about 8:1 (just tested mine again & it reported 8.68 & 1.22). Still enough for multiple (down) streams from YouTube etc. though, with no obvious effect on browsing. Don't know how well online gaming would work with this. Torrents would probably choke it!

How are you testing your connection speed? I use this:
wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/master/speedtest.py | python

NOTE: Had to select "Do not automatically parse URLs" otherwise the above had the middle cut out! Too wide for my display, hope it's OK on others.

[norm.h]

I use "SpeedOf.Me". Just tested and got 13.8 / 0.9 Mbps
What I can't understand is:
1) why RING was OK for several weeks and then suddenly went awry, when my speeds haven't changed for years.
2) if it's my speeds, why is Skype OK

[greerd]

FYI, just got a Ring update, maybe this version will solve you're issue.

[norm.h]

Yes, I got that one too.
Going to try it when I chat with my son on Friday - he's my only contact with RING.

Watch this space, as they say................

[norm.h]

First try, the sound my son was receiving was faint and garbled, but mine was OK.
Shut down and tried again - all OK.
No problem with the video stream as shown above.

Maybe it was the update...............hmmm?

[greerd]

Sure sounds like a dud update, that's probably why a new update was pushed so soon.

Cheers

[BG405]

I wonder if your son is still using a previous version, hence the working video at his end?