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Affordable and Usable Video Conferencing?
Sabalon writes "I work at a state university with remote sites, minimal space, and all the other usual bits. We used to have some dedicated-circuit video conferencing tools but those have fallen into disuse. The administration is now interested in being able to stream a class from site to site, or at least have a student at one site have visual interaction with a person at another site. My thought is that if Skype, uStream and others can do live video, there has to be some things out there that don't cost a fortune but work effectively. Key things would be the ability to use commodity web cams as a source, viewable on a PC (preferably all the main OSes) and the ability to add in other devices (say H.323 encoders) or desktop/application sharing. Are there decent products and solutions out there for us mere mortals?"
We used it the other day and were very happy with it - it's free to try for small groups.
Wait... You mean Cisco Telepresence doesn't fall in the category of "affordable and usable"?
Damn. All those certifications (read: hours of watching "24") have gone to waste...
Cisco WebEx seems to fit the bill, although I'm not sure if it'll run on *nix.
I'm a firm believer in the philosophy of a ruling class, especially since I rule.
I work for a large retail operation. We use a product called ePop http://www.nefsis.com/ It's affordable and does the job. Or as I like to say... it's GOOD ENOUGH. ;-)
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
Since then I have been hesitant to try it again but it did work very well.
After reading the article...why not just use Skype or Ustream as they mentioned?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Are there decent products and solutions out there for us mere mortals?
Just about anything will work -- unless your internet service provider sucks. Then you're kinda doomed. So do your homework on what low-latency providers are available or get a leased line between the sites.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've been recently setting up video streaming for a client and found that dim dim is free for up to 20 people (using their closed source software) and unlimited if you feel like building it yourself with the opensource version. It's not bad either, I can't complain for the price :)
Is there any specific reason not just to use skype to send the video?
You can then upload the video to YouTube afterwards.
My team just bought an iMac with a nice display and put it on one conference room, while the guy on the other end has a little MacBook. You can do 2 or 3-way videoconferences with iChat over Jabber.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Google offers videoconferencing, and I believe it is free (sans the cost of the cheap USB camera you will have to buy).
Check out this article, then check out the links for it on Google's site...
Google to offer Video Conferencing
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
You're not going to be able to usably capture a classroom lecture with webcam and associated microphone.
-Peter
A few years back, my multi-site development group set up a web cam on just a regular PC running windows. Then we just set up Mbone and VIC to run the actual conferencing part. It worked really well and supported as many clients as we needed it to. I'm not sure if it's still around or under any development - but you can't beat the price ($0). And they have clients for most OSes.
My thought is that if Skype, uStream and others can do live video, there has to be some things out there that don't cost a fortune but work effectively. Key things would be the ability to use commodity web cams as a source, viewable on a PC (preferably all the main OSes) and the ability to add in other devices (say H.323 encoders) or desktop/application sharing. Are there decent products and solutions out there for us mere mortals?
H.323 is a signaling protocol, similar to SIP. I have no idea what you mean by an H.323 encoder. I am also a bit lost by the phrase "us mortals." Are you looking for a solution that the infamous Joe Sixpack can set up? Since you have not mentioned in what capacity you work at the "state university" I must conclude that it is in a non-technical role. Why not leave the project to those with the technical qualifications (not to mentioned google skills) to handle it.
Ask Slashdot: Where bad ideas meet poor googling skills.
I recommend EVO
Cisco Telepresence is the best - also least affordable in terms of required bandwidth and setting up a special room, but it is awesome!
For a small number of sites, you might try SightSpeed, they can do 9-way conferencing. I like its quality for a PC-based system.
Google Videochat is horrible quality, but has the unique quality of being able to make it through almost any firewall when you use HTTPS access to your Gmail.
Mac iChat is good as well.
Being an audiovisual engineer at a large University in the US, I can tell you that Skype DOES NOT work well for group videoconferencing. Skype was designed to be used with a microphone and headset, and for that purpose it works great. When you try to blast audio through a room with enough microphone pickup to get everyone in the room, feedback is your enemy. In order to do videoconferencing *right*, you'd need a dedicated videoconferencing codec such as a Tandberg C60 or other device that has built in audio-negating capabilities. While costly, they do things marvelously well.
Set up a water cooler inside an empty conference and the workers will gravitate there for a meeting. Of course, some of the biggest liars will try to dominate the water cooler. The plunger from the restroom will take care of that problem.
You should take a look at EVO . It was developed by CalTech for use in the high-energy physics projects at CERN. It is a Java application, no installation required, but works surprisingly well even with consumer webcams in mac and linux. You can use it for free by just registering and organizing a meeting in the 'universe' group, or you can request that your own organization is added (and still use it for free). It has all necessary features: multiple video streams, collaborative white board, recording and replay, file storage,... At particle physics labs around the world the meeting rooms are basically built around EVO, and polycom has virtually disappeared. It helps if you are close to one of those labs, or on an educational backbone.
Skype does have settings to control the audio just like a speakerphone. My wife uses skype to call from the US to Russia and the she turns up the incoming audio rather loudly and the microphone is 2 feet away from her and it works wonderfully without a headset.
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
Seconded. I work on an experiment at the LHC, and we use EVO to collaborate with teams across the world. +1 goodness.
Disclaimer: I work for LifeSize Communications, so I might be biased...
Anyway, in the dedicated hardware area, you've got HP and Cisco at the high end (100k++++), Polycom and Tandberg (merging with Cisco) in the middle end (10k++) and LifeSize and a host of other smaller players at the low end (<20k). If you want HD (720p30 minimum), you're not really going to find it on PC based implementations, most are limited to 640x480p15 - 30 due to the compute required to encode the stream efficiently. Polycom and Tandberg offer a mix of SD and HD products with the SD products generally being cheaper than the HD ones. Everyone in the "professional" video conferencing space is moving to HD. LifeSize offers products from 2.5k (passport - 720p30 only, point to point only) to about 17k (room 220, 1080p30/720p60, 8 way multipoint, H.323) with a variety of products in between. We pride ourselves on needing the least bandwidth to achieve certain levels of performance (e.g., we'll do 720p30 in 768kbps, 720p60 in 1mbps and 1080p30 in < 2mbps). Polycom and Tandberg offerings are generally 2x the bandwidth at the same resolution/frame rate. Cisco's telepresence stuff needs (I could be wrong here, but I think I'm in the right ball park) something like 18mbps for the 3 screen solution you've seen on 24 and a couple of other shows (that's 6mbps/screen).
There are plenty of pc clients, but truth be told, they look like a** compared to the (HD) professional ones in my opinion. Of course, I'm starting to realize that HD TV looks like crap too, so it might just be me.
We've had good success with the following at each location:
- Mac Mini
- DVI Splitter (active not a simple cable -- bought ours at Fry's)
- Wacom Intuos (integrated tablet and video monitor -- the smaller model is recommended)
- DVI Projector (Sharp Electronics WXGA 2500) + screen
- Polycomm conference phone (new model with the cellphone noise-cancelling)
It's hard to have a technical conversation without a whiteboard, and while webex/dimdim/vyew/etc. have shared whiteboard apps, trying to draw with a mouse on a pad DOWN THERE while looking UP HERE while discussing your topic is just too danged disruptive (like trying to walk while rubbing your belly and patting your head). Drawing right on the "whiteboard" (screen) with a stylus removes most of the cognitive friction.
The only tricky bit is that you really need to project the screen if you'll ever have more than one person in the room. An *active* DVI splitter (passive cabling won't work) does the trick, but you have to ensure that the Mac only "sees" the Wacom monitor initially when it sets up it's display modes. Every time we have a power outage, we need to temporarily unplug the projector from the splitter then force the Mac to re-discover its displays (the Wacom needs the Mac to have the display resolution exactly right). It's also necessary to get a decent projector that can sync to the Wacom's resolution (we use the Sharp Electronics WXGA 2500 which has been terrific).
I hated video conferencing for years because of tragic experiences with crap software on PC's that give you a fantastic postage-stamp sized video at 15fps over a 512/512k connection...
... lets just use the conference phone next time"
Then we were sold a Lifesize video conferencing solution at about $5,000usd per endpoint, which gave 720p room to room comms at 1mb/1mb (or PAL at 512/512k)
We did extensive testing of software solutions to try to find cheap options for people on the road, and found they were all cheap and nasty.
Lifesize now have a product called "LifeSize Passport" that sells for $1,000 - $2,000 USD... it's dedicated hardware, it just works. and for that price it's about the same price as any corporate SOE desktop.
So my advice, after many years of using this stuff in the business world: Stop screwing around with second-rate software on a PC platform and buy something that is going to make your end-users walk away thinking "wow, video conferencing was almost as good as being in the same room. As soon as someone invents violence over IP, I won't need to do in person meetings" not "gee the audio was pretty good, and you could almost make out his face if he didn't move around too much!
Videoconferencing is, has always been, and will always be a solution in search of a problem. Nobody (who has any sense) has ever said "gee, I wish I could look at a grainy, postage-stamp-sized picture of the person I'm talking on the phone with". Nobody *cares*. Not for meetings, not for classes. Audio is critically important. Shared presentation is critically important. Shared whiteboard is criticall important for some purposes. Video? Video is utterly useless.
(I've worked with most of the videoconferencing technologies out there, in the context of a large University research group. I've even built custom videoconferencing platforms for clinical case conferencing. It's all useless. People *say* they want it. People *think* they want it. But even when you spend $50k on a pair of high definition Access Grid Node rooms, it's no better than a good speakerphone. And nowhere near as good as $150 plane ticket.)
Full disclosure: I work for Polycom.
The industry is booming right now with tons of high-quality options in the marketplace. I'll avoid discussing Skype and other freebies, and tell you about the "pro" stuff. Everyone else is covering the freebies adequately, other than to point out that the things you want to know are... Resolution and frame rate. When something uses a non-technical term like "HD" to describe the box, as "HD at what resolution and frame rate?".
I'll stick to generalities below:
- Polycom, Cisco, Tandberg (now merging with Cisco), and LifeSize all make useful dedicated hardware at various price-points.
- Company histories: Cisco is selling video as an add-on to the "full Cisco religious experience". They bought Tandberg recently.
- Tandberg is well-respected and also has a large percentage of their business selling specialized boxes for video broadcast/cable TV, etc... that have nothing to do with videoconferencing. (Similar technology, obviously...) No one really knows why Cisco bought them, but it's interesting what will happen to all of their product lines. (Does Cisco really want to sell on-the-fly video transcoding devices to TV stations? Odd.)
- LifeSize is former Polycom people who left to do HD. Polycom immediately did HD as soon as that happened. (LOL... hey, that's just MY personal opinion. I'm sure someone would argue with that, but I've seen that pattern happen at LOTS of companies.)
- Polycom and LifeSize are the only two pure videoconferencing, focused on just videoconferencing players.
Other generalities:
- People say you don't need video. I used to say that too, I came from a company that was acquired by Polycom and figured audio was all you ever needed. I've gotten completely hooked on being able to see real human emotional responses during meetings, etc. It's more useful than you think. Granted, if you're in a tech group or not using a room-based system or even an entire RPX room... you're never quite looking "eye to eye"... techies especially have multiple monitors, and tend to be looking off to one side. But you can still see the other person winces when bad news is given... something you could only "imagine the worst" on an audio conference.
- Getting the video "job" OUT of your PC, even with two monitors on the PC (or more) is best if you do it a lot. Sooner or later, Windows is going to barf on itself during your call, or worse, you need information to CONDUCT the call, and you've got to reboot the thing you're talking through. I use our proprietary desktop client (CMA Desktop) when road-warrior-ing it, and it's great, but when I'm at my desk, a desktop unit like one of the switchable units that doubles as your second monitor, or to me, even better yet... the VVX 1500 I'm currently using, work very nicely.
Really general stuff:
- On modern dedicated hardware everyone does HD. Remember however that HD has to be compressed heavily if you're not wanting to burn 14 Mb/s of bandwidth per call. No one does.
- Everyone has something proprietary built in on top of the standards.
- Everyone has complete ROOMS available that they'll build that include multiple HD units that act in conjunction to give you a "I'm looking into the other room" effect. HP started that with their HALO system, but it was rapidly mimicked by all.
- Everyone makes desktop clients. Some do SIP, some do H.323, some do both. They're all limited by the quality of cameras available for the PC marketspace.
- No one supports Mac well. (Stupid, since the Mac has a camera built-in)
Final note:
- Tons of businesses are also moving toward everyone having Microsoft OCS for the desktop webcams, etc. It's 100% possible to completely integrate OCS desktops to dedicated room units, like ours, and vice-versa.
#1 Answer to your ENTIRE question: Find a Value Added Reseller that knows what they're doing. In the education environment I can tell you that the customers who found a clueful VAR who worked with them to INTEGRATE room-base
+++OK ATH