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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."
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
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.
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
> How on earth is HD-video quality going to shoot through the pipes fast enough?
...do you hear us??? Desktop/laptop H.264 dedicated encoding hardware for FCP/Compressor users!!! We'll buy it if its under $500)
easy.
decent quality standard def video at 30fps is quite wonderful at 768k... with "talking head" type content, 512kbps is freaking overkill, if you want to know the truth. (yes, i've spent the last week at work doing all kinds of encoding testing, since we're going to be moving to h.264 for our engineering video for our customers)
As for HD content... H.264 can make clean HD content flow at as low as 2mbps at 720p... so nice it makes you do a double take. With 100 meg ethernet being the low end standard... you can do the math as to how HD content is going to shoot thru pipes. Hell, many people get pretty decent speeds over their cable modems these days...
the bigger problem is still the encoding/decoding. Well, its a problem now.. but i'm waiting for a H.264 Firewire thumb-drive gizmo that will do it all for you offline using one of TI's h.264 encoder chips. I'm ready for hardware H.264 encoding for my Mac that's QuickTime/Compressor-ready...
(APPLE... TI.... 3rd PARTY DEVELOPERS
for those of you interested in actual products which exist now - check this link. They have everyone's stuff listed here, including Polycom's new stuff.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
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...
Still not exactly CHEAP, but $600 is at least getting there...
...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.
I suck, I put specs instead of model number. The model is JVC GR-HD1US, but still nothing say an Apple I-sight HD if that beast were to exist.
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)
> Of course, that might not be so great for the porn industry. Eew. Obviously you are not informed about the important role smells have in human sexuality. I mean of course we are strongly visual beings. But there is heavy stuff going on with us and the world of perceivable and unperceivable smells!
Have you seen the H.264 conferencing in iChat? The H.264 supports HD, 1920x1080, 24fps but at a datarate of 7-8 Mbps.
Hospitals already have high-def monitors, just email the X-Ray and use the videoconferenceing for a lower quality. I can't imagine a doctor holding up an X-Ray to the videocamera, you need more detail.
iChat AV encodes SD H.264 in real time. It's very CPU intensive, however, and the quality is necessarily variable depending on the content. You can't two do-pass encoding in real-time. ;-)
For real-time high-def conferencing via H.264 you only really need about 2 Mbps of bandwidth. I'm not sure where this 6 Mbps shit is coming from.
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.
H.264 can encode 1080p HD content down to as little as one megabit with no objectionable loss in quality. For a videoconferencing application, you could easily go lower.