Megaconference

[Ben Fineman <>]

Hi Mark,

Incidentally, "cheap/DIY room systems" has been a hot topic in the Video Interoperability Group, and we're planning to have next month's call focused on this topic. You can join that mailing list here if you want to be updated on that meeting. 

On your specific question, we have done some of these experiments, and I have two issues: 1) Camera position and 2) user interface.

1) Camera position: If you are shooting one person in an office, you can certainly put something together on the cheap. But putting a cheap webcam in a classroom is asking for trouble if you're trying to include students. If you are able to position the camera to get 20 people in the shot, after video compression is applied their faces will be just big enough to be brightly colored smudges on the far end. If you can't see the non-verbal cues from participants, you might as well not use video. The other choice is to move the camera to track the active speaker, for which you would need a dedicated person to run the camera (asking a lecturer or participant to multitask will result in either sub-par camera operation, sub-par meeting participation, or both) and you will make the far end users motion sick unless done very carefully. There is just not a good <$1000 solution that I am aware of to solve the camera issue for a collaborative classroom. I will be happy to be proven wrong! For >$1000 you can start to think about the Polycom Director, Vaddio AutoTrack, multicodec telepresence, PTT mics, etc.

2) User interface: There are mixed opinions on this, but it's my opinion that the keyboard and mouse are not a great conference room interface. Don't get me wrong, I think the existing remotes with a zillion buttons are not a great interface either. But for conference rooms I prefer touch pads, but those are not cheap, although more vendors are starting to move controls to an add-on iPad/tablet app. If you are looking to deploy something on a budget and your users are trainable, yes you can do something with a keyboard and mouse.

There are <$1000 all in one codecs now that are great for the price and have a better user interface, but you're still stuck with the fixed camera problem.

Regards,

Ben

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From: <Leonard>, Mark <>
Date: Friday, May 24, 2013 2:15 PM
To: "" <>
Subject: [Megacon] Videoconferencing "Soft Client" vs Codec Hardware

Hello Megalister's--

I'm curious if anyone out there has run a side by side comparison of say a Cisco C-20 against a 'soft client' like this--

• Mac mini 2.6Ghz Intel Core i7
• Cisco Jabber (enterprise version- MOVI)
• USB Camera with pocessing within the camera
• Pretty capable USB speaker phone

Sure…in a perfect world we would always buy the dedicated codec for video collaboration-- right?   —  but I'm really starting to wonder about reasons not to run  the $1000 set up above in non mission critical events—

How about it?

Anyone out there running a H.323 soft client  in a classroom set up? 

And yes— to make it a little tougher… I must have 30fps, 1080, and connection speeds around 1000kbs  :>)

And no— I'm not so interested in the 101 web based videoconferencing services that have popped up as this is really a 'hardware' discussion. In my eyes— the weakest link in the soft client is the camera. Buying a $3K+ USB camera to compete with the Cisco HD camera kind of defeats the purpose of looking at workarounds to a dedicated VC codec.

Thanks for looking at this-

Have a great long weekend-

~Mark

Mark Leonard

Media and Collaboration, UNH IT