Add sessions recording support

[imobachgs]

We have discussed two approaches here.

1. Use the integrated recording feature in Janus, which produces one .mjr per each audio and video stream. We could use then the streaming plugin to recreate the meeting in a similar way to what is done in this demo (code available) https://janus.conf.meetecho.com/recordplaytest.html We would probably need to store some additional data (like the list of participants) in order to be able to recreate the session effectively. Data channels would be most likely lost, since I don't think they are currently recorded by Janus. The good part is that the recording could be "interactive", i.e. allowing selection of the participant to highlight in each moment, browser resizing, layout rearranging and so on.

2. Connect to the room with a "ghost" participant that will run a browser and simply record what is rendered in the browser. It needs almost no special support server-side and everything will be recorded (including chat messages). But the result would not be so flexible.

[lprimeroo]

we can use this for recording of webrtc streams also ? http://lynckia.com/licode/ . Also, is it just recording of the video and audio streams or are we looking at the whole application to be recorded ?

[ancorgs]

We can already record the audio and video streams separately server side with janus. That's trivial. What we want is to reproduce a full meeting "like if you were there", with all the participants, the chat and all that.

We already considered Licode as a replacement for janus in the server part. But we discarded it. I don't remember the details of the decision, but I think it has to do with the fact that it was hard to install and configure, with a lot of nasty dependencies like Java.

Still, having an "external" tool based on licode (not installed in the Jangouts server) would be acceptable.

[ancorgs]

Just to add some information about how challenging the option (1) can become, although it's the preferred one by @Imobach and myself.

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/meetecho-janus/pB0EK0zVix0/discussion Beware this is an old conversation and things could have changed meanwhile in the Janus world (although I don't expect that).

[sandr3j]

@ancorgs The information that data channels are not supported seems to be outdated. There is a demo which demonstrates data channel processing.

[ancorgs]

Of course data channels are supported. We use them extensively in Jangouts.
What is not supported is server-side recording of the data channels. Only
video and audio can be recorded and eventually played back.

[ancorgs]

@sandr3j Actually it was me who contributed the data-channels support to the videoroom plugin by copy&paste&adapt from the echo-test plugin
meetecho/janus-gateway#82

The fact that it's supported in videoroom and echo test plugins does not imply:
a) that it's supported in the streaming plugin (which we will most likely use for playback)
b) that is properly recorded server-side

So be open to the possibility of having to closely collaborate with janus developers (that are really helpful and nice) or even create a pull request for it (something nice to include in your proposal, btw).

[ancorgs]

@sandr3j Never mind. I have just read the draft of your proposal and I see you have already considered all the implications, including contributions to janus and much more. Feel free to ignore my last comments 😉

[ancorgs]

Maybe interesting for our purposes https://groups.google.com/d/msg/meetecho-janus/xuwhOHxYUxI/MNu7NNAfBgAJ