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High-Definition PC Video Conferencing?
dsginter asks: "This year's spring Networld+Interop has ended with little fanfare. However, I noticed that a small nugget slipped between the cracks - HD video-conferencing. Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon. After seeing the massive pricing estimates for such products, I couldn't help but think that I should try my hand at my own HD product (a Mac Mini, some H.264, a pinch of AAC and the glue that is H.323 or SIP). However, I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition. I've scoured Google but can't come up with anything suitable. Is there an answer? HD video-conferencing is an important step in complete communication between remote parties. While there will be those that joke about the possibilities, it is important to remember that the bulk of business travel still happens for the sake of face-to-face communication. HD video-conferencing might prove to be a panacea."
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition.
Good luck! Only several 'pro-sumer' HD video cameras exist nowadays, and neither of them could be classed as small.
I've recently bought a Sony HDR-FX1e camera - for recording some music videos for my brother's band. The recording quality (1080i, 3CCD) is absolutely fantastic. However I'm not sure about it's suitability for video conferencing:
1. The camera is large. I guess in a fixed setup this isn't a major problem - the camera could be positioned on a tripod next to the screen or preferably projector.
2. Video is sent via firewire as MPEG, at DV datarates (18Mbit or something like that). Unless you have that kind of bandwidth to transmit the data without recompression, you need to reencode the video on-the-fly. Reencoding 60 mins of video to 720p WMV-HD takes me 8 hours on a 3GHz P4. My system struggles with realtime playback of the full-bitrate HD MPEG. I'm not sure if any codecs could easilly transcode the stream in realtime without some expensive hardware accelleration.
This could be a good thing but my instinct tells me it won't pick up. The problem with this is most people just aren't that technically literate and video confercing would be looked at more as a toy than any kind of useful vechile for communication
Unless you're doing a video conference with some hot starlet, I do not see the point of this. Do you really want to see your out of state co-workers in high def?! How would that add to the meeting?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Pray tell, why do you need HD for face-to-face conferencing?
I have installed videoconferencing at 6 companies over the past 15 years. It has never received the widespread use it was initially purchased for. Videoconferencing solves a technical problem. In a purely technical environment, they may be successful.
However, put a bunch of PHBs in a room and if they encounter any problems using the equipment, the liklihood of it being used again is slim. One thing a PHB hates more than anything is knowingly looking stupid.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I don't care how good picture and sound quality are, f2f (face to face - we're geeks ... we love letters) won't be replaced. No amount of video wizardry can replace flesh and blood (my apologies to spielberg and lucas). The screen will always feel like a wall with which one can hide behind creating a latent sense of distrust. Face to face is really the only level playing field for the truly important meetings.
"It's difficult to meditate on amphetamines." - Joe Walsh
This was announced for the PlayStation 3. Probably using the USB2.0 port. 720p, even 1080p will come as technology marches on.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Sounds like a ruse to sell gigabit eth to the desktop, not to mention ridiculously large wan/net uplinks. I'd settle for video larger than a thumbnail that didn't sound like a 1st gen digital cellphone, thanks.
http://www.covitechnologies.com/products/analog/ev q-1000
I can't convince anyone to use regular teleconferencing. It's almost impossible to get everyone that I need to speak with in the same room at the same time, so I end up travelling and wandering the corporate office seeking out people to work with one on one.
I suppose this would be nice to have, but honestly we only use teleconferencing one time a year during our budget season. I suspect it is because you can't really ditch the budget meeting... everyone has to show up so the format works.
Trying to decode an HD stream on a Mac mini is probably not that good of an idea - a single G4 doesn't have quite enough power to manage it.
H.264 is designed to scale down to various processor architectures, so a lower-resolution stream would probably play acceptably, but I rather doubt that you'd get enough horsepower out of a Mac mini to acceptably decode HD content encoded with H.264 in realtime.
For more, see Apple's H.264 FAQ.
An iMac G5 should have the horsepower, however.
*Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon.*
How does one imply the other? It seems to me that it's far more likely that two companies getting into the game means that we'll have two wide-ranging and incompatible systems until the company with deeper pockets wins.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
The Axis 206M is a cheap 1280x1024 (12 fps) TCP/IP camera (it runs on Linux). More info: http://www.axis.com/products/cam_206m/index.htm
The internet isn't quite fast enough for videoconferencing on a small scale to be practical. How on earth is HD-video quality going to shoot through the pipes fast enough?
I know, corporate environment with coroprate-scale bandwidth, but it all has to pass through the backbones like the rest of us.
We're not at the Max Headroom age yet.
What i want to know is if anyone here has EVER seen actual 640x480 (720x480 if using a DV camera) 30fps cleanly being done?
While iChat in Tiger is hella good, i'm still only getting 15 fps... and i bet money that it still remains at 15fps when i get two machines chatting on the same subnet. (anyone? anyone tried this?)
The idea of using a Mac Mini for this only means that the submitter, while well intentioned, is totally missing the fact that what he's talking about is impossible without additional hardware.
Can anyone give a quick review of iChat in Tiger over fast ethernet on the same network?
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
cmos hd pov camera
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"... it is important to remember that the bulk of business travel still happens for the sake of face-to-face communication."
Yes, and teleconferencing, not terrorism, is why the airline industry is in such a slump. I'm surprised teleconferencing hasn't been banned to help the airlines. I guess the airlines haven't figured this out yet and started lobyying.
Unknown host pong.
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/A ppleStore.woa/73002/wo/BM6C0BMsZR0m3blExQHNWY99xZW /11.0.0.11.1.0.6.9.3.19.0.1.0.1.1.2.1.0.1
is the closest I could find. This implies that the tech needed to get such resolution is still not being mass produced enough to get the price down to "webcam levels". I say be patient for now.
-LLM
Annoy a Conservative...
wait.. am I missing something here? Are all other issues in video conferencing resolved that we are bothering our selves with HD?
fuvoo: watch something
When most video conferencing systems fail to present a full-resolution, uncompressed, full-frame-rate NTSC-quality image, I fail to see why there is a need to even think about HD.
I'd personally be incredibly happy with a 525-line 60i image that didn't look like shit and (most importantly) was properly synchronized with the sound from the other location, not several frames ahead or behind the picture.
While I'm sure there are a few applications out there now, doesn't most everyone have trouble with regular videoconferences now?
The company I work for has videoconferencing equipment that works over ISDN as well as IP over their internal corporate network. The picture is still jerky, the sound is always off, and it's almost more of a pain to set up than it's really worth. Kind of like talking to someone via a satellite link.
Maybe mine isn't the typical end-user experience, but I'm wondering how many networks out there could even handle the traffic from a HD videoconference session.
As far as most webcams go, they're good for 320x240@30fps nowdays. Instead, I choose to go with a bit of a rig job. I took an old ATi TV Wonder USB, a Panasonic Palmcorder (Model LV-780) and ran the video straight into the tuner. 640x480@60fps, crystal clear, beautiful image. And, given how old the hardware it, fairly cheap as well.
Everyone on Camfrog asks me how I can have such a killer-resolution picture without spending so much money. While Camfrog in itself does not broadcast the video at high definition resolutions, people can still tell the massive difference in quality of picture, and when they resize the video window (for those who registerd the software for $50USD) the picture is still crisp and clear.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Having better quality video isn't going to improve communication significantly over current capabilities. The value of face to face meetings will never go away. It's not what happens in a specific meeting that is so key, but rather the rappore that is developed around the meetings.
It's going into a room sitting down, shaking hands, chatting about the family before the meeting starts that makes all the difference. It's going out for lunch, playing a game of golf, etc, that build the real rapport. Talking over video conferencing does allow you to see body language, etc, so it's certainly an improvement over a mere phone call, but it is not even close to the same as being there in person.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Ikegami has a smallish multi-format camera, the HDL-240C.
The opinions expressed above are those off one side of my brain, the other side and my employer may not agree.
http://www.macnn.com/articles/05/05/17/sony.hdr.hc 1.handycam/
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..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
http://news.com.com/Sony+cuts+HD+camcorder+down+to +size/2100-1041_3-5710427.html?tag=nefd.top
I've seen demos of the HP Halo videoconferencing rooms. There is no equipment for the PHBs to fiddle with. Everything (microphones, cameras, and displays) is built into the walls and furniture. With multiple screens per room and great sound, it easy to see why executives want to buy these things. Why fly (even via a corporate jet) when you just walk into a Halo conference room and be seated across the table from who you want to see/hear. See a Halo room write up at:l ogy/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000729994
http://www.presentations.com/presentations/techno
assuming we've got two companies connected over the internet that allow outbound connectivity. is there an inexpensive turn key solution? Doesn't have to be HD.
no really!
I'm kinda wondering if the PS3 is going to do this. Sony has been rather close w/Apple lately, and the PS3 is supposed to have input for an HD camera, as well as Gigabit Ethernet & 802.11 b/g built in...
As an engineer who recently wrapped up a video camera project, here's are the problems we ran into:
- The CCD sensor can easily do full-motion XGA or SXGA video, but:
- The DSP has a very difficult time encoding MPEG video at full-motion frame rates for anything larger than VGA resolutions.
- 100 Mbit ethernet is just barely capable of supporting a VGA or D1 bitstream, and,
- XGA has ~twice the number of pixels as D1; SXGA is even more bandwidth intensive.
Now granted, we do build boards which could probably handle HDTV video conferencing. But the problem is that the 4 processors alone cost more than the average low-end PC. From a technical perspective, HDTV video conferencing is possible, but the hardware required is far more expensive than what the market would tolerate.Are you willing to pay $10k for HDTV versus a few hundred for a QVGA webcam setup?
I'd love to be building HDTV cameras, but the problem is that we can't find customers willing to pay the extra expense for the higher resolution.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
First, how does the fact that two companies demo'd products of similar nature imply pending ineteroperability? It doensn't.
/. story - but I don't see how the story has any bearing on anything other than the fact aht HD videoconferncing is now possible. Thats it. It is as if the parent was just stretching for something interesting in an otherwise ho-hum topic.
Second, what added benefit is there to HD videoconferencing? How would this possibly be the pancea of people wanting to meet in person. They still aren't meeting in person so they will still want to. A pretty picture doesn't change that.
I've never posted a a negative reply to a
I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition.
The cheapest consumer HD video camera I have seen is made by sony. It costs $3,500. The size is about 1 foot long, 6 wide and 6 high. Not sure if it is 720p or 1080i. Doesn't matter much in this case. Now, if you want something that will give you the 1280x720 resolution, try one of the still digital cameras that can give you just as good a resolution (and sometimes act as a web cam). They generally cost much less. Concord has a camera that should work for this, assuming the webcam picture is full res.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Still not exactly CHEAP, but $600 is at least getting there...
The processor by itself is nowhere close to being able to encode an HD stream in real time. In pretty much all general usage process cant. You should be able to find dedicated encoding hardware that can give you realtime performance.
HD cameras have just entered the prosumer market. They wont be as small as some consumer cameras. But generally, video quailty is much better.
Even if you compress the hell out of the video, it will still be fairly high data rate. You should be able to make it work over a lan or something like internet2. But i doubt your will get acceptable performace over regular internet connections.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
I'm sure Apple will release a iSight HD
I actually saw exactly what you are looking for about a month ago but i can't find the link now. It was slightly larger than your typical webcam and did an assortment of HD formats.
Just stabalize the damn framerate so we don't all get siezures and I'd be satisfied! Hell, you can even go lo-fi for all I care.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
It's not nearly as small as say a webcam but for hd on the cheap it may work. Maybe a small tripod or soemthing, one of those tabletop ones...Just a thought.
Will the idea of virtual conferencing ever stick? Do we think that people will actually like the idea of a virtual boardroom where people from around the world can come and meet? I think it is a neat idea, but then again I am biased since the project I am working on has something to do with it. What do the people of slashdot think? Will businessman like Donald Trump skip buying their own jets and helicopters for buying a state of the art virtual reality boardroom??
...out of a mac mini. I'm skeptical, anyways. I doubt that you can encode 720p H.264/MPEG4 in real time on a mac mini.
That, and the biggest problem with video conferencing in HD has more to do with the network transmission and upload speed. It's all fine and dandy to produce a product that'll work with a reliable megabit of upload speed, but most consumers don't have that much upload bandwidth.
Add that to the fact that most of these codecs you're dealing with are heinously intolerant to loss, combined with trying to stream them over a big, lossy, latent network (i.e. the Internet), and people will begin to get the picture.
You want a camera with dedicated hardware encoding:
The former requires specialized hardware and substantial processing on the host, where as the latter requires only an internet connection.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
We've had the tech for this stuff for decades and it hasn't really taken off in business because it's no replacement for 1 on 1 human interaction. It's just a phone conference you have to do your hair for.
Seriously, you can't get out of that stuffy breakout room and take the meeting to the bar if a change of scenery is required. You can't get a client to really open up to you regarding their needs if you're just a talking head.
The purpose of these 1 on 1 physical space meetings is interaction. Being able to play off each other. The only technological advance that will make this more efficient is teleporation. Maybe slacks that don't wrinkle.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
ITYM rapport. It's one of those silly words to help the French cheat at scrabble (yes that was a bash ref)
I am trolling
http://news.com.com/Sony+cuts+HD+camcorder+down+to +size/2100-1041_3-5710427.html?part=rss&tag=571042 7&subj=news
From the article summary:
HD video-conferencing. Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon. After seeing the massive pricing estimates for such products, I couldn't help but think that I should try my hand at my own HD product (a Mac Mini, some H.264, a pinch of AAC and the glue that is H.323 or SIP).
The poster wants to put together a H.264 HD video conferencing solution. He wants to encode and decode video simultaneously at HD resolutions on a mac mini. In other words: it's not going to happen.
The person you replied to clearly understood this.
HD or non-HD, there is no substitute for face to face communication. I frequently travel across the country just to meet with someone for a day. It costs a lot of money for the company, but things are more productive that way (instead of wasting a week trying to get in touch with someone)
Video conferencing (even in HD) might be ok to a point or be useful in specialized fields (a Dr remotely assisting a surgery) but it is no substitute for being in the same room with someone. Half the goodness of meeting in person is not during the actual meeting, but the time around the meeting, figuring out their personality and how well they hold alcohol...
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/17/technology/persona ltech/sony_camcorder.reut/
Sony Announces Under $2,000 HDV HDR-HC1 High Def 1080i Camcorder:e s-Under-$2000-HDV-HDR-HC1-High-Def-1080i-Camcorder -.htm
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content/Sony-Announc
In order for the technology to work, it needs to become invisible. I should have known the future was bleak when our own company didn't like using the technology.
Angleyne: You can't bend that girder - it's unbendable! Bender: Well I don't know anything about lifting, so that ju
FYI, the Mac mini can barely play back 720p and averages 10-20 fps and in no way can encode 720p at better than a couple of frames per second or thereabouts. h.264 is extremely processor intensive.
A mini can drive a modest h.264 video chat through iChat, but don't worry about the 720p camera, just get an iSight.
We'll either need way more CPU horsepower than even the dual G5s deliver for real-time HD encoding or, more likely, wait for either hardware encoding in the box or on the camera itself.
There is already some h.264 hardware video surveillance gear showing up, but nothing consumer level, AFAIK.
http://news.com.com/Sony+cuts+HD+camcorder+down+to +size/2100-1041_3-5710427.html?tag=nefd.top
$1700 is still spendy!
A clue.
h.264 takes more horespower to encode in real-time than a mac mini is capable of, especially in HD.
BetaNews is running a story right now (which is showing adjacent to this story on /. if you're using the RSS feed boxes) titled Sony Launches Consumer HD Camcorder. Numbers in the article include $2,000, 1.5 pounds, 90 minutes of recording time on a single charge, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio, still picture 2.8 megapixel camera.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Peace
Check out Lifesize.com Its the buzz of the industry. The giant of video Polycom is in a BUZZ, as the the founders are X-Polycom... could be trouble brewing but... dead-on regarding wanting HD Video conferencing... interestingly enough Polycom and Tandberg are slowly announcing their plans for HD video conferencing... http://www.wainhouse.com/files/wrb-06/WRB-0614.pdf
I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Cuban hires a team of engineers to cobble together a prototype of this system. Then he could dog-and-pony-show it around the country and get a crapload of investors to fund a startup based on this concept. Then just before hitting the market, where your points would all be clearly demonstrated, Cuban would sell his stake in the startup to the rest of the goofs who invested in it. mo-money, mo-money, mo-money.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
There are high resolution webcams available from some Asian manufacturers.
Typically it is a run-of-the-mill USB 2.0 video controller chip combined with a high resolution CCD sensor.
The cheap flavors of these cameras come in VGA resolutions, but manufacturers claim to also offer higher resolution models.
Mac drivers would be a problem, though.
--- Eat my sig.
No.
That camera has "QVGA" video. Quarter VGA. Meaning that it's a quarter of 640x480, which is 320x240.
Not very impressive.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
H.264? Pah. Raw SMPTE-292M videoconferencing is where it's at - all you need is a bunch of incredibly expensive equipment and a network capable of sustained 1.5 Gb/s. Each way.
You should take a look at the Elphel 333 fpga security cameras. They can do real-time encoding in the free Theora video format at HD resolutions, and provide the stream over ethernet.
The cameras don't have sound, so you'd have to use the mac mini to handle the audio, and the image quality isn't as good as one of the "prosumer" HDV cameras. On the other hand, by doing the compression in hardware you don't have any resource problems like you would transcoding an HDV or component HD feed, and can concentrate on just decoding the stream. :)
Best, you'll be supporting free multimedia instead of the MPEG patent holders.
There's an article describing the camera if you want more details.
Forget HD videoconf for a while.
Been on the side of this road for many years (not HD tho). Even trying to get video from a firewire webcam at 15fps (which most biz people, I would think, would like) is a challenge.
Two person isn't too hard, but it get's really difficult when scaling above that. Plus, offices are behind firewalls and so that's always a pain as you have to (usually) piggyback port 80 or (for slower rates) 443 as these are pretty commonly opened ports in the biz world.
I expect Skype to come out with some vidconf tool soon, but prob only face to face.
He states "H.264 is designed to scale down to various processor architectures, so a lower-resolution stream would probably play acceptably"
Yes a Mac mini can do H.264, no it cannot do it at HD rates.
meetings, then what is it for? Everyone is thinking it, but nobdy has said it: Pr0n. Obviously...
A couple of years back I got to talk to some researchers doing work in the area of high def video conferencing. The thing is, hi-def is more than just high bandwidth. Psychologically speaking there is evidence that when a video conference gets to the quality where it looks like you are talking to someone through a hole in a wall or a real window vs a screen the interaction becomes more like a 1 to 1 real life meeting.
The easiest analogy to think of is when we watch a movie...even though we KNOW we are watching a movie but because of the content get sucked in and forget that it's not real (subconciously that is).
Its not perfect, but you probably get the idea. Life like high def video conferencing is definitly worth the time and effort!
ugh.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
from researchchannel.org...
At SC2004, ResearchChannel, Intel, AJA Video Systems and the University of Washington demonstrated two-way, uncompressed, high-definition (HD) 1080i videoconferencing running at 1.5 gbps in each direction between Canberra, Australia, Seattle and Pittsburgh.
This unprecedented high-quality, low-latency interactive videoconferencing transited AARNet, University of Hawaii, Pacific Wave, Pacific Northwest Gigapop and National LambdaRail (NLR) 10 gigabit wavelength.
The technology was developed by Jim DeRoest (Director, Streaming Media), Michael Wellings (Director, Engineering) and Matt Hodge (Software Engineer) and demonstrated a previously unattainable level of reliable data traffic between two WindowsXP platform computers. The total bi-directional data-rate reached 3 gigabits per second.
The first problem is a lack of 720p cameras of any sort other than very high end. I've been waiting several years now for a HD video camera under $1000.
A bewoulf cluster of mini macs... "My ManyMac totally ruelz"
Actually, running a mid-sized governmental agency with a small handful of field sites nationwide, we have immediate need for a system like this.
We're running semi-monthly meetings that are presented more like carefully timed television broadcasts then casual spitballing sessions. HD would be a GIGANTIC improvement over CIF.
:::: the insomniac's digest
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT3888835064.html
The cameras, w/lenses and add-ons will cost more than your Mac Mini, but these are capable of 1280x1024@30fps w/Ogg Theora encoding.
http://www.elphel.com/
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
They used videoconferencing on an almost religious basis. They'd mostly use them to connect teams of engineers in the states with teams of engineers in japan.
one time there was a three day weekend and they had their meeting and walked out of the room without shutting off the system. the system stayed connected the whole time till they got in on monday.
a conference call to japan... four 128k isdn lines... 3 day weekend
inevitably they got the phone bill
you do the math...
their managers screamed and yelled but they couldnt fire any of them because they are indispensible, they'd just go work for a competitor, but man. what a f^%kup.
Today's teleconferencing is very far removed from standard definition television. It's highly compressed, jerky, and - worst of all - has a significant latency problem. Fix those issues first, before you move to HD.
After all, more pixels input + same bandwidth line = even higher compression ratio.
Once teleconferencing approaches the video and audio quality of the nightly TV news, then I'll get excited.
*cough* Porn *cough*.
It certainly will be a brave new world. Yet another lonely-geek driven technology!
Quack, quack.
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sydney to usa , video delay 50ms @30 fps
on a 512k adsl.
single 350k exe file ( no codecs needed, or
any drivers ).
Have you not wondered why Polycom and Tandberg (the two largest VC vendors out there) don't offer HDVC? Do you realize even with a 1MBs up AND downstream, you're just able to get NTSC broadcast quality over dedicated PRIs. HDVC, real time, no hiccups over IP?
I want some of what you're smoking.
In serious VTC, 10k is about the buy-in point for one or two installations, so why not go HD at those numbers?
It's what people have been paying for the past 10 years for sub-NTSC quality, so you're not talking about any real difference in outlay but a substantial increase in quality (when it becomes effective to carry that bandwidth of course).
:::: the insomniac's digest
and hope that they get the free webcam. im sure u could find sum horny hotties on that xbox360 live ;)
Have you ever tried video chat? You see a weird picture of yourself looking down and a weird picture of the other person looking down. It doesn't make for a pleasant viewing experience.
The only way this will ever go away is if you can see the other person when looking directly into the camera. That's what a teleprompter does.
While I agree with you on this point, I also think that the first company that gets videoconferencing to work right is going to make a killing, because there's still no product that finds a usable middle ground between a phone call and actually being there.
The middle ground will have several streams (so you can see both the speaker's face in detail and the rest of the remote environment), will not need extreme resolution (i.e. bandwidth) except for occasionally transmitting a high-res snapshot of a whiteboard or some found object, and will have better audio than a telephone. It will require no more effort to connect to a remote conferencing station than making a telephone call by pushing a speed dial button.
I work frequently with people that I have never met, and though I've "known" them for a year or more I wouldn't recognize them in the street. I think there would be high value in being able to teleconference at least a few times with people I've not met, so that I can develop a mental image of who the person is. It would make working with them more effective in so many ways, even if I haven't played golf with them.
I agree with the bulk of the comments, that there is little to no market for HD video conferencing, but if you want to give it a go check out this camera. It's not terribly expensive (about $1000). The output is firewire. The resolution is 1024x768, so you may have to do some croping or scaling if you want it to match TV formats. Other industrial cameras may be just as good. You will just have to do some coding to turn the data from the camera into something usefull.
"Uh... yeah, Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?" --Pinky
people complain (and rightly so) that video conferencing will never replce face to face communication. That its difficult to build rapport in a video conference, etc, etc. But no one seems to be really addressing the issues that cause this. Its not the quality of video that makes video conferences a second rate form of human interaction, but the quality of human interaction. The problem is that human interaction is mediated on the basis of lots and lots of subconscious, but critically important visual cues. Perhaps the biggest of these is eye contact. The eye contact problem is the big one that I haven't seen addressed, which is a shame as its got to be emminently addressable. The way I see it, there are two main aspects to this problem: 1) the fact as long as we're busy looking at a camera, we can't, almost by definition, be looking at a screen (and vice versa) this makes eye contact impossible. If we seem them looking at us, it looks to them like we're looking away. This is a recipe for interpersonal disaster. You never know you've been heard because in a video conference you're violating the most basic conversational principle! Look them in the eye to show that you've understood what was said! The second aspect to this problem is related. Video screens have nice resolution, and even a pretty good refresh rate, but they're stuck in 3d. Again, eye contact must be with both eyes, and in 2d this is just not going to be possible. Usually there's a little dance of looking in one eye, then the next, then focusing in between. But until people can replicate on a computer the social protocols that govern face to face interpersonal communication, video conferencing is always going to be disappointing. I keep holding out hope that someone will develop a nice 3d monitor with 2 built in pin hole size cameras BEHIND the screen, either that or some sort of fancy 3d interpolated technique with one camera that can reproduce the effect convincingly. But I haven't seen it. I have a feeling, though, that when someone manages to do that, video conferencing will actually have a chance at realizing its potential.
I read here a few days ago that Motorola has a 5-inch prototype flat-screen HD display using carbon nanotube technology, and it said 40-inch displays 3/4 inch thick would be feasible for under $400. Give cameras a couple more years to evolve, and I think we will soon be taking remote-presence for granted, at least in the business world. The India half of your dev team will seem to be sitting right there in the room with you.
What do you need HD for? There are video conferenceing programs which can remotely open presentations or webpages on PCs, so unless the people on the other end need to see every one of your eyebrow hairs, there is really no point.
The were featured on Engadget a while ago...
you can import one from japan soon...D UCTS/HDR-HC1/index.html/
http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/handycam/PRO
The solution is simple - start with low resolution. That way you don't need expensive hardware and can start working on the code right away. Then, in 1 year you may have a functioning system and there will probably be some cameras that you could use.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
I'd like to know when we'll get VoIP calls that sound better than the 8KHz crap we've been getting since the original days of the telephone. I think it would be great to talk at 32KHz or 44.1KHz in high fidelity - the benefits may be subtle, but once you get used to it, it'd be much more lifelike and you probably couldn't go back.
The technology is certainly there, even 64Kbit MP3 would sound good, not to mention the more advanced stuff out there. The bandwidth is there (hell, it uses about the same as your standard video-conference, and has the same quality-of-service requirements).
The only thing I can think that's stopping it is the same thing as HD video-conferencing: people think that our current system is "good enough" and never being exposed to anything better. Or thinking that it should be perfected before trying to go further.
Video-conferencing may the future, but I've read that in Cananda a VoIP operator got into a fix because the local telco objected to providing the link for 911 calls. Cell phone companies provide 911 service even if your service is turned off, it's law. And Wi-Fi provides the link if Vonage has a cellular service company that isn't owned by the local telco. At least that is the connection that I make, and it addresses a very real concern for VoIP providers.
The JVC HD1 series of HD cameras shoot in 720P and are the only prosumer camcorders to do so to my knowledge. I own this particular camera and the pictures it shoots are stunning, however I don't believe the time for HD conferencing is upon us yet.
Once we get 100 foot viewscreens for the front wall of the bridge on our Intergalactic Warp capable starships, I don't think this technology will find much adoption.
The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.
Your whole point here is to set up a testbed for your HDTV. That means you don't want to spend a lot of money, but you do want to be able to test it out. For that, it seems to me that an acceptable purpose would be to use 2 cams, side by side (or one on top of the other), and one set to a wide angle view, and one set to a short view. Then with your computer overlap the images (hi-res, lo-res wide), and output it like that. Or just append three images side by side into a single image. Shoot, you could do that with a simple 8051XA processor, 3 images in and 1 out. [ 0 ] [ 0 ] [ 0 ]
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,67551,00 .html?tw=wn_tophead_8
seriously, go buy a disposable camera at a drugstore for $10. those shoot onto 35mm film, which can be scanned at the equivalent of many times larger than even 2kHD. your average person wouldnt even notice the quality difference of a 2k scan of 35mm shot with the $10 camera or 35mm 2k'd from a $10k+ cine lens. and that would obviosuly be 2k uncompressed or lightly compressed.. now let's talk 1k @ 2mbps H.264 or WMVHD.. the lens is going to be the least of anyone's problems haha.
there are hardware encoders that do exist today, and plenty more on the horizon. as well, comapnies like altasens (etc) are producing plenty of small factor 720 capable chips or HDheads that are essentially webcam sized. that would be 10x better idea than using an HDV camera, as you could address the signal as it comes directly off the A/D converter as an uncompressed signal and hardware compress directly to the codec of your choice.
the real downside is see if that it's just plain useless for most applications. sure, some surgeon can remote conference in on a surgery or something.. but for the most part i think regular video conferencing is overrated, and i dont expect this to be any different. it's like a hot tub.. seemed like a great idea when you first bought it, but after 2 weeks you find you only use it once a year.
ymmv
..to do h.264 at that resolution with any speed. Perhaps a custom bit of hardware could. Perhaps you can find a less compressed method and just use a higher bitrate pipe. --Michael
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