uvgComm is a Real‑Time Communication (RTC) video call software written in C++ and built on the Qt application framework. It is an experimental application that supports a hybrid Peer‑to‑peer (P2P) mesh and Selective Forwarding Unit (SFU) architecture with real‑time network latency measurement-based route-optimization. Together with the uvgcomm-benchmark repository, it can also serve as a reproducible research testbed for evaluating RTC research. uvgComm is licensed under the permissive ISC-license. uvgComm was previously called Kvazzup.

Supported Architectures

• Plain one-to-one calls
• P2P mesh
• SFU
• Hybrid between P2P Mesh and SFU

Protocols

• Signaling with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)
• Negotiation with Session Description Protocol (SDP)
• NAT traversal with Session Traversal Utilities for NAT (STUN)
• Delivery with Real-Time Transport Protocol (RTP)

Media

• High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) codec for video
• Opus codec for audio
• Support for 13 different camera input pixel formats

Analytics and Settings

• A statistics window for monitoring call quality
• Full customizability of both audio and video processing in settings
• Automatic selection of best media settings with option for live manual adjustment
• All settings are recorded to the disk and loaded at startup

Other

• Contacts list

See FEATURES.md for more detailed description of features.

uvgComm relies on following external libraries:

• Kvazaar for HEVC encoding
• OpenHEVC for HEVC decoding
• libyuv for video input processing
• Opus for audio coding
• Speex DSP for audio processing
• uvgRTP for media delivery
• Crypto++ for delivery encryption (optional)

uvgComm uses CMake to build itself and missing dependencies with minimal effort for the developer, see BUILDING.md for build instructions.

uvgComm has been tested together with Kamailio Open Source SIP Server. Easy to follow instructions are hard to come by on the internet, so we provide our own instructions for setting up Kamailio. uvgComm can also call other uvgComm instances without a SIP proxy, but then firewall needs to be open.

You can find instructions on how to use uvgComm here.

For automated experiments and reproducible benchmarking of end-to-end latency, packet loss, and media-quality metrics, see the uvgComm-benchmark repository: https://github.com/ultravideo/uvgComm-benchmark. The benchmark repository contains scripts, metric definitions, and instructions for running controlled evaluations with uvgComm.

If you are using uvgComm in your research, please cite one of the following papers:

This software was used in a manuscript submitted to ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications (TOMM).

uvgComm: Open Software for Low‑Latency Multi‑Party Video Communication

J. Räsänen, H. Tampio, A. Mercat, and J. Vanne, "uvgComm: Open Software for Low‑Latency Multi‑Party Video Communication."

Kvazzup: Open Software for HEVC Video Calls

J. Räsänen, M. Viitanen, J. Vanne, and T. D. Hämäläinen, "Kvazzup: Open Software for HEVC Video Calls," in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Multimedia, Taichung, Taiwan, Dec. 2017.

Live Demonstration: Kvazzup 4K HEVC Video Call

J. Räsänen, M. Viitanen, J. Vanne, and T. D. Hämäläinen, "Live Demonstration: Kvazzup 4K HEVC Video Call," in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Multimedia, Taichung, Taiwan, Dec. 2018.

Live Demonstration: Interactive Quality of Experience Evaluation in Kvazzup Video Call

J. Räsänen, A. Altonen, A. Mercat, and J. Vanne, "Live Demonstration: Interactive Quality of Experience Evaluation in Kvazzup Video Call," in Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Multimedia, Naples, Italy, Dec. 2020.