I'm trying to find a better video chat solution. My girlfriend and I live about 200 miles apart. I would like to find a open source replacement to Skype. She uses osx and ios I have windows and android. I have used Linux and have a firm understanding of it. I could set her mac up to run a x11 Linux program and virtual box a Linux os on my desktop. I have an fx8350 with 16gb ram and 256gb ssd. She has a macbook pro from 2009-2010 i5 4gb ram non-ssd drive. The issue we have with skype is picture quality. Im living in the dorms and her stream always comes in like, Japaneses censorship: pixelated. We don't do anything sexy with video so we don't worry about the gaping security wholes in Skype. I was thinking that an h.265 stream might lower the bandwidth usage enough to let us chat but neither of us have a native decoder/encoder. So any solution should address two things, Video quality with low network usage, and work on osx and windows.
I will be with my GF over this next week (spring break!!!Wou!) and I can test out solutions. I have tried utox on her mac but it uses around 100% cpu and the fan spins at max. Also it still had craptastic video quality before the stream gave out. I'm looking for a good solution free solution but I will pay for a good one if needed. I also will try qtox for her mac this weekend, I found it on github for mac. I liked the idea of tox because of the build in encryption and knowing that our conversations are secure.
Any help or substitutions would be greatly appreciated