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"Always On" Impromptu Video Conferencing Solution?
TristanBrotherton asks: "We have several geographically disperse offices all over the world. I thought it would be cool to make virtual windows in each office, linking a display panel with a mic and camera to the same set up in each other office. You could place these systems in public areas and in meeting rooms which would allow impromptu video conferencing, and 'hey bob nice shirt!' taunts to improve communication between our staff. I know you can get IP cameras, but I am looking for a simple all in one solution that can auto-connect, negotiate the best bit-rate, and remain real-time. Cisco charge tons of money for this stuff, but surely there must be a way to make a reliable system myself. Cringely thinks this might be built into apples iTv. Rather than wait on that, I am asking Slashdot what they would use to build such a real-time conferencing system, has anyone else attempted a project like this?"
I worked for a company that set up an impromptu video conference just between two cities 30 miles apart (Denver and Boulder). We chose these two sites because it was cost "effective" for that short a distance to see if video-conferencing worked.
It didn't. While the "conference room" drew heavy initial traffic, novelty was the bigger draw, not utility. We conducted several conferences and even with high-quality high-speed links video conferencing soon fell into disuse.
I don't know if today they still have that link, but I never felt it offered much in the way of effective communication and connectivity with other offices and I didn't know of any others who thought so either.
If you've got lots of money to throw away this might be fun for a while, but if you're counting your budget dollars carefully your money might be better spent on other communication methods. (Heck, with the savings you may be able to upgrade to Vista and Office 2007 for all.)
I don't mean to throw a wet blanket on the concept, but video conferencing is difficult. Face to face meetings require many interpretations of nuance that video conferencing just can't provide.
...but have you looked into using Flash?
There's Red5 as an open source streaming server, as a compiler you could use the open source haXe or the free-as-in-beer Flex 2 SDK.
Basically:
That is all.
you could go for a mac mini with isight. ichat sets up quick easy full screen video links. not super streamlined but quick and easy
How much bandwidth do you have to spare.
When you say "negotiate the best bit rate" do you mean "in real-time according to network conditions"? You could just run a webcam on some old piece of hardware, but you aren't going to get fantastic quality.
If that isn't what you meant, then just setup a realtime divx/xvid/H2.64(?) encoding (on more modern hardware) & just have a video stream from each location.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I did something similar, using VLC.
It captured a directshow video source (in this case, a video camera connected to a tv capture card.). Told VLC to encode the information from the card into MPEG, then stream it across the internet, where it could be viewed with any client that could decode MPEGs.
Check the documentation, it's not an obscure use, the documentation is fairly strong.
All you'd need do is mirror the setup, so you have recording and transmitting at both ends. If you had multiple instances of the media player open, you could even have multiple streams incoming (and, I believe, VLC supports multicasting, though I didn't use this feature so YMMV).
good luck with it
in my experience video conferencing sucks, and I'm talking 'proper' equipment over dedicated lines. As such do it on the cheap and see how you go. If it works for you, then spend more money.
---- Put Sig here:
If you've got the PC equipment to spare, Skype may not be a bad option.
... I ended up using Skype that was set up to automatically accept connections and start video.
I recently had to set up a kind of 2-way PA system in a public-use computer lab at the University of Rochester, where I attend school. We had several problems with people doing illicit (I'll leave it at that) things in the lab when the lab staff wasn't around (hey, 'lab staff' consists of 5 students who have lives outside the lab)
Now things are much better with security, as well. Thank you, sign that says "24/7 Video Surveillance"
Just hook your cell phone up to a camera and say hi to Uncle Sam.
We have some Tandberg systems in small conference rooms and offices at work and they work pretty well. They're an older version of this one, I think. I have no idea what they cost, how hard they are to set up, or how much bandwidth they use, though.
This does not have to be expensive, and it does not have to eat up the entirety of your pipes. The hardest part is going to be the 'conference bridge' (MCU) that everyone will call (a pair of offices can be point-to-point, many-to-many requires a bridge).
Software: Ekiga on Ubuntu
Protocol: SIP? H.323? Whichever you can find a cheap MCU for (H.323 OpenMCU sorta works, don't know about SIP)
PC Hardware: Cheap ass, last generation PCs with TV-in cards
AV hardware: Cheap ass, last generation DV cameras with integrated mics and (preferably) wide angle lenses. You'll also need a tripod ( 1/8" inch headphone jack converter.
Hardware config: wire up the DV cam (audio and video) to the TV-in and MIC jacks on the PC.
Software config: Configure a user to auto-login, add an Ekiga call to your session startup (call the MCU, not a site - don't know how to do fullscreen via CLI).
Errata: You probably have firewalls. Firewalls screw with videoconferencing in many ways. Besides needing to poke the necessary port holes, they will timeout sessions after a certain number of hours. PIX's are notorious for this. Additionally, your MCU and clients will need to have their session timeouts set. You may just want to cron call restarts every 12 hours or something. If you use OpenMCU, remember it will ONLY work with the crap-tastic H.261 video codec.
Alternatively you may want to look at the open source ACCESSGRID project (warning: requires multicast - hope you have good network staff) or Microsoft's ConferenceXP ('free' for the time being). Good Luck.
A long time ago (5+ years), I thought about doing something like this -- not for corporative use, though.
My wife and mother-in-law talked a lot and were very united, so I thought a permanent link would make the lives of both easier.
With moderate amounts of money, one could use free software voip solutions to make a constant webcam always-on link over broadband connections. Very low-resolution, low-colordepth etc. With some very optimising codec (like "no data transmitted" for still images), this could even be bandwidth-economic.
An example of usage would be coming to the webcam room and just yelling to call people on the other side. I called that "magical mirror", after the one in fairy tales (like "Beauty and the Beast", for instance).
In addition to what other posters mentioned,you can also use Live Meeting
Microsoft Netmeeting has been around since Win95osr2, and its successors are still supported. It wasn't a stunning product, but it had basic functionality, ran standards-based H.323, and was free. Cameras cost $29 these days, if you don't get them free with your breakfast cereal. Take one of those PCs that won't support Vista and fire it up in the conference room...
Bill Stewart
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After looking at all the brain bending going on here, I'll second the motion to use a Mac with an iSight (built-in or not) and iChat. Sorry, it's not expensive, difficult or proprietary (NetMeeting, indeed) but that doesn't mean it's no good (I know how you people think!). It's so easy, I use this system with my inlaws, for chrissake.
We have two offices and I set up one of these rigs in each of the public areas with essentially an "open mic". It was sort of the "window to the other world". After a day or two of people showing off in front of the camera, it turned into a walkup window to ask questions and get work done. It's not heavily used but it has brought a good social understanding of the two offices closer together. Each of the Macs were set to auto-answer an iChat call (open the terminal on the Mac and put in the following:
defaults write com.apple.ichat AutoAcceptVCInvitations 1
defaults write com.apple.ichat AutoAcceptACInvitations 1
Of course, put a zero at the end of the statements to undo the hack. The link seldom went down and was easy to reconnect. It's a cheap cheap cheap but fabulous solution. Bandwidth is limited to 200Kbits on purpose and plays well with our T1 connection. Just do it.
Most of the stuff on
Are they also internationally panglobal? To save on videoconferencing call charges, try removing the redundancy from your style.
Dlink's DVC-1000 is what you need. I work with deaf people and they use these to communicate via ASL. It is good enough for them to read their sign's. They cost about $200 and work on residential broadband with a TV, no computer required. They also have a microphone.
Cheap storage VM.
We've used VLC to do similar things. Salient facts:
* VLC has about a 1-2 sec. internal latency. That's just enough to severely disturb the flow of a back-and-forth conversation. (Recall the many slips of the news agencies when they started reporting over sat phone links). H323 conferencing units like Tandberg, Polycom, operate with about 0.5s of latency, which is just about the maximum a typical human conversation can tolerate naturally.
* Multicast works very well, just remember to set your TTL high enough to traverse all of the routers. Assuming all of those routers are set to pass on multicast. Unicast works pretty well too, or even unicast-to-multicast bridges and vice-versa (just remember the additional latency if you transcode too) Also, if you're using mpeg4 over a WAN, however, remember to check "Strict rate control", or else you'll get some pretty high bursts of bandwidth utilization over your set average.
* In a converence room where you're not using a headset, you need AEC (acoustic echo cancellation). This prevents your microphones from picking up the sound of the remote end from your speakers and sending their audio right back at them. Skype manages to do this in software, but VLC and surprisingly many other VoIP softphones do not (at least the last few versions of SJphone, X-lite, Netmeeting I tested did not). If you can't find any software AEC, you need to spend money on some decent AEC hardware that will sit between your computer, mic, and speakers, preferably one with noise reduction as well.
For all these reasons, plus documentation and maintenance we ended up shelling out the big bucks for Tandberg units instead. I've never been happy with the Tandberg video quality, though, even at high bitrates (2Mbps h263 or 768kbps h264). So we still use VLC for transmitting computer graphics (esp. 3D and animations) that go along with a presentation.
For your purposes, it sounds like video Skype or the Apple thing would give you the best results for little more than the cost of a computer. Anything more sophisticated and then you'd probably want to look at some good H323 software/hardware to give you much more flexibility with MCUs, easier configuration etc. Just mind that different manufacturers' H323 products don't interoperate as well as they should, so test first.
it's worth a try. my org uses it across the state. 1.5mb/s connections
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Uh, huh. And you all wonder why you get crappy, or over complicated answers.* Here's a challenge for you all. Do a follow up to all the "ask slashdots" and see just how many impliment any of the suggestions given, or go with something else.
*Me I don't care. I'm through. Google your own answers next time.
"So we still use VLC for transmitting computer graphics (esp. 3D and animations) that go along with a presentation."
Depends on what kind of 3D and animations. Choices are, send the video, send the source, or choose a different graphic/video format.
we use it with DSL, works great!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
iChat is also the only "solution" (rather than hack) I'm aware of that would allow you to have multiple connections open at once (seems to be what they're going for), with up to a four-way chat. The VLC hack mentioned elsewhere might be able to achieve this also, and with larger numbers. I hope they have lots of unused bandwidth lying around...
I don't think this provides all that you ask for, but software-wise it ticks a lot of the boxes.
Originally an academic project it's now used by many universities around the world. Still sometimes a little rough around the edges, but if you want to do it yourself, then I'd reccommed you take a look at www.accessgrid.org. Software is free of charge, and available for Windows, Linux and OSX.
I've been very pleased with SightSpeed, which will support a small conference (up to 4 people) cross-platform (Mac/Windows) at 30 fps. One-to-one video chat is free to registered users, but organizing a conference requires SightSpeed Pro, which is US $5/month or US $50/year.
I've also been watching DimDim, an open source video conferencing startup. Their solution is still at the Alpha stage, so it is too early to see if it will be competitive. They are promising that it will be free, so it's worth keeping an eye on their site.
For a while we had two workstations set up, one in Dallas and one in Northern Virginia, each running Yahoo Messenger hooked up to a web cam with Skype for audio. Skype was really good at handling the feedback you normally get with an open microphone plus speakers, but speaker and microphone placement was critical. The setup was eerily effective, and allowed people in the cubicles neighboring the workstation to yell across from one office to another. We turned it on the morning and left it running all day. Eventually the people at the remote office decided that the setup was a little too effective for comfort and stopped turning it on, leaving them free of annoying interaction with their putative colleagues.
Are shift keys optional on the Mac? I'm just wondering after seeing replies to the parent.
I use iChat because the video quality is beautiful even with home-grade DSL.
Are shift keys optional on the Mac? I'm just wondering after seeing replies to the parent.
Like two button mice, shift keys are available to Mac users, but most haven't figured them out.
You can get a couple of VBricks. The MPEG4 models are what you want. They have a videoconferencing mode which is low delay.
We use them specifically to do what you're describing to do some surgical training. One box in the OR, another in a conference room attached to a projector. They even support a really nice echo canceling microphone, which normalizes audio levels no matter how far the people are from the mic.
The vbricks also have scripting, support SNMP puts and contact relays. So there are a number of different ways you could have non-technical people control the conference, if you didn't want it running 24/7.
You could buy the model with the internal hard drive, and have a big red button to start/stop recording the whole conference.
Best of all, they run a hardened RTOS. No patching the OS, updating virus software or whatever. It'll take under an hour to setup, including opening the box, and you won't have to worry about the things ever again.
Because video conferencing is ever-so-slightly less convenient than just saying "Bob, let's walk to the conference room", it discourages useless meetings. If the meeting was at all useful, it would still get conducted with the video link. A great way to reduce "conferenceitis".
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
I work at a company that uses videoconferencing pretty heavily. We have all dedicated equipment and lines for it. I have heard numbers tossed around for the cost of the end-units (which look to be about 10 years old now) and I suspect $10k might be on the low end. It runs over dedicated ISDN lines (two of them!) and has a camera and several microphones, and the capability of supporting multiple cameras (for document viewing, etc.). The cameras have fun features like remote pan/tilt/zoom and auto motion-seeking, which is creepy. (The system this thing uses would be great on a gun turret.) This is a photo of the type of machine we use. (Note strange "antennae" on top; that has something to do with the motion detection.) Formerly made by Picture-Tel, which is now owned by PolyCom. Their newer stuff doesn't seem to be quite as impressive as the old gear, but probably does more without looking like it's plotting the demise of humanity.
We use it all the time. It's not well set up for impromptu meetings, but neither is our company or organizational structure. We use it several times a week for scheduled meetings across locations, and it's good. There are people that I've only ever met via the VTC; if not for it, they'd just be disembodied voices on the telephone.
I think videoteleconferencing is not something you can do on the cheap. Or rather, the money you're going to put into it is going to directly influence the quality of the results. If you're willing to spend $50k, you can get something totally usable; but it's going to require ISDN lines (or special tap into your IP network, more likely today), a room to itself, and space in people's schedules when they want to use it.
But not having to actually work in the same office with some people? Priceless.
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Skype supports video conferencing. I use it with my parents, and it's very good quality. I think you can configure it to auto-answer, but I'm not sure if you can configure it to auto-dial.
No, I will not work for your startup
I am a member of IET and just now I got their magazine, and here's what the cover article says: "For working meetings, you need good audio and the ability for everyone to see the same working documents. You don't have to look at each other." - Tony Gasson, Vice President for EMEA, Interwire. You need to quit the video meeting = face meeting mentality! In fact, in a videoconference, your brain may lose much more energy and time in processing your colleagues's behaviour, body language, and faces than focusing on what really matters to all of you: Your work. Focus on the f***cking document and the laptop with the software code, not on that nice woman's face!
We have done this at my company - as we have 4 locations for our departments (3 spread in the same city and the 4th about 200km away) we set up 4 20" imacs to run a little apple-script at login to start a 4 way iChat video-conference (using a jabber server installed on a linux machine).
With the new 24" iMacs it'll look even better and the have brighter screens and more powerful speakers.
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Would you consider sharing details of your applescripts? T
So far I like the Dlink i2Eye, but it runs a quite low res. (Designed to plug into a TV.) My ideal device would plug into a computer monitor(cheaper), run at say 1024x768 and crucially support multiple connections...