Megaconference

[Paul Bonnett <>]

Our schools (and HE) use desktop clients quite a bit now and although it does pose some horrible support scenarios, on the whole people do accept they are doing VC ‘on their own terms’ and we can only support them so far.

 

We strongly advise people (although they do ignore it) to close every non essential application whilst in a VC as applications like outlook can grab your processing capability that was doing HD video capture, just at the wrong time.

SVC helps enormously with this; and multi core processors help too, but many of our schools/academics are still running low spec hardware (but still have the Star Trek VC expectation), so it is a challenge.

 

The biggest challenges we find are admin rights on machines & firewalls (local and institutional)

 

We provide the Codian designed ConferenceMe on our service (which we branded Janet Desktop) and to make life easier, we built a test area for uses to check functionality, prior to meetings. Feel free to check it out:

www.ja.net/desktopcheck

 

 

Regards,

 

Paul Bonnett

Videoconferencing Technical Coordinator

Direct line: +44 1235 822 332

www.ja.net/janetvc

Janet, the UK’s research and education network.

 

From: [mailto:] On Behalf Of Rusty Presley
Sent: 30 May 2013 15:25
To: David Devereaux-Weber;
Subject: RE: [Megacon] Videoconferencing "Soft Client" vs Codec Hardware

 

We have not seen this particular problem using ScopiaDesktop. We have seen problems with soft clients when they try to have more than one type running at the same time on windows machines, eg skype, scopiadesktop, google hangouts etc in regards to resource assignment.

Rusty

 

Rusty Presley

IT Specialist VI

Alabama Cooperative Extension System/Auburn University

67 Extension Hall, Auburn University, AL 36849

(334) 844-3504 Office

(334) 750-8863 Cell

 

 

 

From: [] On Behalf Of David Devereaux-Weber
Sent: Thursday, May 30, 2013 9:03 AM
To:
Subject: Re: [Megacon] Videoconferencing "Soft Client" vs Codec Hardware

 

Mark,

 

One negative experience I've had using a software codec (Cisco Jabber Video) is when a user was demonstrating a statistical analysis software program.  There was contention for CPU between the stats program and the video codec.  When CPU contention happens, both functions suffer.

 

Dave

 

 

-- 
David Devereaux-Weber, P.E.
Room B111
Network Services
Division of Information Technology
The University of Wisconsin - Madison
1210 W Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53706

(608)301-5481 (Google Voice)

sip:
http://cable.doit.wisc.edu/

 

On May 24, 2013, at 1:15 PM, "Leonard, Mark" <> wrote:

 

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

 

 

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