Kvazzup

Kvazzup is a High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) video call software written in C++ and built on Qt application framework. The aim of Kvazzup is to be pave way for better quality video calls while valuing usability, security and privacy. Kvazzup makes use of the following open-source tools: Kvazaar for HEVC encoding, OpenHEVC for HEVC decoding, Opus Codec for audio encoding and decoding, uvgRTP for media delivery and Speex DSP for Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC).

Kvazzup is under development and new features will become available.

Current features

Currently Kvazzup has the following features:

• Initiating call through Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) proxy with authentication
• Alternatively, initiating call peer-to-peer (firewall needs to have incoming TCP port 5060 open)
• Peer-to-peer media delivery with NAT traversal using Interactive Connectivity Protocol (ICE)
• Contacts list
• Enable/disable audio and video
• Screen sharing
• Media settings which are saved to the disk
• Automatic selection of best media settings with option for manual adjustment
• Live media setting adjustment
• A statistics window for monitoring call quality
• Media delivery encryption

Compile Kvazzup

Kvazzup requires the following external libraries to operate:

• Kvazaar for HEVC encoding
• OpenHEVC for HEVC decoding
• Opus for audio coding
• uvgRTP for media delivery
• Speex DSP for audio processing
• Crypto++ for delivery encryption

Qt Creator is the recommended tool for compiling Kvazzup. Make sure you use the same compiler and bit version for all the dependencies and for Kvazzup. It is possible, although not recommended to use Kvazzup without Crypto++.

Kvazzup uses code indent of 2. You can change that in qt creator from Tools -> Options -> C++ -> Code Style by making a new code style with indent and tab sizes of 2.

As per usual, make sure you don't mix libraries from different compilers or bit versions. 64-bit (x64) is the recommended bit version of Kvazzup.

Linux (GCC)

Install Qt, Qt multimedia and QtCreator. Make sure Opus, Speex DSP, OpenMP and Crypto++ are installed. Compile and install OpenHEVC, Kvazaar and uvgRTP.

Ubuntu

On Ubuntu, the necessary Qt packets are qt5-default qtdeclarative5-dev libqt5svg5-dev qtmultimedia5-dev libqt5multimedia5-plugins libqt5multimediawidgets5.

Next, install qtcreator.

The following Kvazzup dependencies are available as packages: libopus-dev libspeexdsp-dev libomp-dev libcrypto++-dev. For the OpenHEVC, Kvazaar and uvgRTP, if they are not available, you will have to clone the Github repositories and compile them according to their respective instructions.

If you have trouble with Qt creator code highlights, but not compilation, make sure you have the correct version of Clang installed. When testing, the Ubuntu had clang-10 installed when Qt depended on clang-8. Installing clang-8 may solve this issue.

Note: We have not been able to get the changing of the camera formats, resolutions or frame rates to work on Linux. It is possible that we didn't have all the necessary packets installed or that there is some sort of bug in qt multimedia/multimediawidgets on Ubuntu. Any information on this would be greatly appreciated.

Windows (MinGW)

Make sure OpenMP is installed in your build environment. Compile rest of the dependencies. If you are not putting files to PATH, Kvazzup MinGW build uses the following folders for build files:

• ../include for library headers
• ../libs_dbg for debug builds of libraries
• ../libs for release builds of libraries

Windows (Microsoft Visual Studio)

Compile the dependencies. If you don't exclude Crypto++, you need to compile it with dynamic C++ runtime linking. See this section for detailed instructions. After that, the easiest way to compile Crypto++ is to select Build -> Batch Build....

If you are not putting files to PATH, Kvazzup Visual Studio build uses the following folders for build files:

• ../include for library headers
• ../msvc_libs_dbg for debug builds of libraries
• ../msvc_libs for release builds of libraries

Shared Kvazaar (default)

When compiling Kvazaar, select Dynamic Lib(.dll) in kvazaar_lib project Properties: General/Configuration Type and add ;PIC to C/C++ Preprocessor/Preprocessor Definitions.

In Kvazzup, please make sure DEFINES += PIC is included in Kvazzup.pro file. It is include by default.

Static Kvazaar

Please uncomment: DEFINES += KVZ_STATIC_LIB in Kvazzup.pro file and remove DEFINES += PIC.

Paper

If you are using Kvazzup in your research, please refer to the following paper:
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.

Planned features

• Contact presence monitoring
• Multiparty video conferences
• TLS Encryption