Megaconference

["Todd L. Austin" <>]

We ran a class with the Penn State law school last year and enjoyed the feed 
from their very nice setup. In larger lecture rooms, students sit at banks of 
long curved tables in a typical large classroom setting. One camera is 
trained on the professor and is the default. The other camera faces the 
students. Each student has a button and a microphone in front of them. When 
they want to speak, they press the button. The student-facing camera then 
becomes active and their microphone is also turned on. The effect is that the 
far site gets to see each participant full screen and with perfect audio. It 
was great.

I don't know exactly the technology behind it all, but with sufficient 
resources, it gives the effect that Ben describes below without depending on 
a computer to decide who should be the active speaker or on centrally-mounted 
microphones.

Todd

Todd L. Austin
Videoconferencing
LSA Instructional Support Services
University of Michigan

Office:  2012 Modern Languages Building
Mail:  G353 Mason Hall
419 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1027

http://www.lsa.umich.edu/iss

voice:  734-330-8996
On Jul 12, 2012, at 9:22 AM, Ben Fineman wrote:

> We had a demo unit for a while and it seemed to work well. It provides a 
> nice camera compromise when you have more than two people together in a 
> room, and you don't have a multicodec system. It is limited in terms of 
> range, but worked very well for us up to 15' (it can work farther than 
> that, but less seamlessly). It works best if you have good lighting (which 
> you should have anyway!).
> 
> I agree with Matt that in environments with multiple alternating speakers 
> the switching could be distracting (as can the little camera chasing voices 
> around the room, but that's just entertaining). This can be ameliorated 
> somewhat by turning down the switching sensitivity, but for our use cases 
> it didn't seem to be an issue. 
> 
> I think it's important to note that this isn't just a rehash of the old 
> voice tracking technology - facial recognition makes the tracking much 
> smarter, and the intelligent switching between two cameras means the camera 
> is never sent while it is in motion.
> 
> I'll close by saying that in my opinion technologies like this are 
> important to help us move toward an immersive video environment. Showing a 
> wide shot of a conference room with 15 people in it is basically worthless 
> if each person is only a few inches tall when they're displayed on the far 
> side. This technology offers a way to have people appear life-sized on the 
> far end even when you don't have a camera/codec per one or two people or a 
> camera operator.
> 
> Regards,
> Ben
> 
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> On Jul 11, 2012, at 11:41 AM, Sheets, John @ VTC wrote:
> 
>> Does anyone have experience with Polycom's Eagle Eye Director and does it 
>> work as well as advertised?
>> Thanks
>> John
>>  
>> John E Sheets II
>> Director of Technical Operations
>> Vermont Interactive Technologies (VIT)
>> 
>> 802.526.2099
>> Mobile 802.752.7366
>> www.vermontinteractivetechnologies.org
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