Remotion — Quick video chat with your remote team

Thanks Andreas! Hey Product Hunt! [Check out 3-minute demo video] My cofounder Charley and I started working remotely when he moved to Chicago. We’d worked on remote teams before, but we struggled to collaborate as closely as we wanted to: scheduled meetings and text chat couldn’t keep up with the pace of our ideas. Why weren’t we video chatting as ideas came up? Quick video chats weren’t happening because they were awkward or annoying. We didn’t know when the other person was free to chat, and setting up video calls felt heavy and interruptive. So we built Remotion: It puts selfies of your teammates on your desktop, so you can see who’s free and jump in to quick video chats. Details: - The Desktop Shortlist puts your teammates a glance away on your desktop - Availability & Status show you who’s heads down or free to chat. As a remote team we deeply value privacy, so all sharing is easy but manual - Lightweight video chat & screen sharing are a click away and happen within the shortlist to minimize distraction Bonus, much-loved feature: - Selfies are quick to update, so that you can share your smile and create a feeling of presence 😄 We’re opening up our beta early and keeping it free, hoping to help all the teams working remotely now. It’s macOS only for now but Windows and Linux are coming soon. We’d love for you to download Remotion from remotion.com, and we’re looking forward to your feedback! -Alexander - cofounder (going to sleep now but looking forward to your questions in the morning)

Remotion is awesome! Have been using it w/ our partially colocated / partially remote team for weeks. Easily lowest friction way to hop into impromptu chats with team members. Congrats on the launch!

For ten years, our team of 12 have mostly worked out of one location, but Coronavirus has seen us suddenly forced into working remotely. We initially struggled to maintain a connection with each other, but once we started using Remotion it felt like being in the office again. Not only is it great for seeing who is and isn't online, but being able to set "open" and "around" makes it clear to the team whether you're up for a chat or whether you're deep in focus. There is much less friction in kicking of a video call, and because the app stays over out of the way, that chat doesn't take you away from your work. The fact that you can quickly and easily add other team members is a huge plus. Finally, the daily selfies are awesome, and our team have really taken to it with a passion. At first glance it's easy to think "how is this any different to using Slack?", but after using it for a couple of weeks, there's nothing quite like it for replicating that feeling of "Hey, got a second?" conversation you have in an office. I can't think of too many apps (other than maybe Slack) that our team have picked up and run with like we have with Remotion. Our team truly love it, and the devs have been super responsive to our feedback and questions! Love love love it!

I really like Remotion, I've told that to my own team a few times. I'm not a huge meetings fan, especially meetings that are scheduled a week in advance and often require little (or no!) input from me, and really aren't a productive use of my time. I'm a pretty big fan of Slack, but less of Slack video calling and Zoom etc. They feel really... 'official' and 'structured' - i.e. they really take over your workspace and it's hard to be involved asynchronously and treat the video as a conversation about a piece of work. Remotion solves both of the above problems for me, I think of it as 'asynchronous video'. It's like if I was working in the office with the team, and someone just stuck their head up from their monitor and asked a question. It's a similar dynamic and works really well for my workflow. Things I like: - The UX is nice and intuitive, without loads of clutter - The way the app sits above everything. This used to be an annoying paradigm, especially in the late 90's, but works really well here. If it's really obtrusive in my workflow, I just minimise it. - If I lock my screen (which I do when I step away from my desk), it automatically sets my status to away. - The concept of 'open' and 'around' is perfect. Things I (hopefully) look forward to: - Being able to change the avatar/video size, I'd like the circles to be smaller in general, but I understand this is a personal preference. - ~ Ordering team members - I talk to 20% of the team 80% of the time~ (EDIT: it appears this is in the newest version!) - Perhaps a Slack integration? Being able to go `/remotion` and have the app focus and call the coworker I was just typing to would be really nice. All in all, cheers for making it easier to work with my coworkers!

Great work @embirico Any ETA on the windows version? Have a few members of my team that are windows only.

Really excited to try this out with my team. Are multiple teams something that might come in the future? Also, is it possible to delete a user once it's been added? I seem to have accidentally added an unused email address.

I’ve been following Remotion for a while now and we just started using the product this week, it’s been really useful for our *now* fully distributed team (we were 50% distributed / remote-first before COVID-19). It’s been great to have quick little chats that don’t require a full-out scheduling process with a Zoom meeting link. The prompt to update a daily selfie has been one of my favorite parts of the app as it’s a fun and casual way to see the daily changes in appearance, background, clothes, faces, etc like you would in a normal office setting. @embirico and team have been amazing and are really responsive to any questions. Keep the good stuff rolling Remotion team!

is this the same as around.co rebranded? both seem like really interesting ideas and good execution, but very similar looking demos

We were fortunate enough to be early adopters of Remotion and we love it! It's given us the ability for our Company to have spontaneous chats and it's very easy to use. Congrats to the Remotion team!

One of the teams I know well has been using Remotion for a while. From the team: > As a remote team I want to still feel connected in real time to my colleagues. I had thought about just having everyone join a Zoom meeting every day with audio off. But video on all the time is actually pretty invasive for some people, and the tool will only work if everyone adopts it. So they’ve struck a nice balance with the selfies and the ability to pull people into little video chats. It replicates the feeling of presence, without being too invasive.

Congrats on the launch! We are big fans of Remotion and use it daily (especially given corona) to communicate. Remotion has definitely replaced FaceTime for us and even certain messages that we'd otherwise share over iMessage or Slack but now use Remotion because video is more fluid than written words. Exciting :)

We absolutely love Remotion here @BugHerd. Since we've all had to go fully remote it's really meant we can maintain those simple conversations we would have had across the desk which is invaluable. It's rare that an app instantly becomes the first app you open when you start your day but this definitely has. Thanks for a great product folks and keep up the good work!

We've been beta-testing Remotion and think it is super great! It's helpful to have your team on your screen while working remote –– it felt like we were working alongside our team even when we weren't in the same room because we could easily see if they were online and strike up a conversation. @embirico and @charlim0813 are awesome too and always taking into account user feedback to improve the product!

Very simple and straightforward! I've been using Remotion with my team of 7 people for a few days now and we all love it a lot.

Have to echo the comments and upvotes. @Makersights has been using remotion for a few weeks as a result of covid-19 and we're really happy to have found Alex and his team. The ability to have natural and personal conversations really is made easier than slack and zoom video. It fits well within our cultural practices of being available to talk when you're not in "headphones" or as Remotion calls it "away" mode. So thankful for a tool that's keeping us more connected and present with our distributed team.

I'm so glad to see this out in the public, it looks like such a useful tool. Unfortunately I'm a Linux user, but I'm looking forward to seeing the app make it over there. Thanks for not forgetting about us!

Great! Works really well, and I really enjoy the lite design to work/chat 🔥🔥🔥 The whole team already on it and loved it

Love the more presence-oriented take on video conferencing. Co-workers and I have often joked it'd be great to have a traffic light type signal above our workstations at work to know whether it was ok to initiate convo, and Remotion basically has that. Lower friction to have happenstance conversations if you want them, and an easy signal when you don't. 👍

We've been using Remotion here @tapdaq and it's been great to feel like your connected to the team whilst we're unable to be physically in the office during these trying times. This isn't a replacement for Zoom, nor is it trying to be I would say, this is for quick, informal chats. The daily selfie feature (which is NOT taking a photo of you every X seconds) is a great addition, and our employees use it often. Well worth trying it out with a small team in your org.

Congrats on the launch Alex, Charlie + rest of the team!! We love Remotion and are about to start using it again now that we're all WFH. Team is clearly customer first too — we got in person support from Charlie a few months ago!!