VideoConferencing Products-II

From Visionaire



The

most popular product from Visionaire is the AVCS 384 PRO video-conferencing

end-station unit, which costs Rs 393,000. It’s H.320 compliant, and will

therefore directly hook onto an ISDN line.

It supports up to 3 BRI, which basically means a

384 kbps connect. Other products include a PCS 1600P, which is an entry-level

system, AVCS 4500, and PCS 6000P on the higher-end.

Video-conferencing Software



Here’s some video conferencing software.

CineVideo



This is a desktop vide-conferencing application that allows text, voice and

video over IP networks–LAN or the Internet. You just need to select the

appropriate bandwidth that is available. So, LAN would configure the application

to produce better quality video and frame rates. The program also has sound

alerts (akin to Instant Messengers) to warn you of incoming calls, outgoing

calls and the like. A ‘Statistics window’ allows you to view the data

transmission and receiving statistics.

And just to prevent anybody from directly

connecting to your transmission, you can specify a password for connections.

Anyone dialing to you then will be prompted to enter a password. The application

uses TCP ports 1225 and 1227 for connections. So make sure that your corporate

firewall lets them through.

C U See Me



This

is another video-conferencing software that works over IP and also does NETBIOS

name resolution. If you also have its application’s Conference Server, you can

use it on a network to have group chat/conferencing. The software keeps track of

clients by means of their e-mail id or even phone numbers (a Gatekeeper).

‘Blocking users’ is a chat option that is

also present in the application. Thus you have access control. For the

connections, you can specify the connection speed that you want. Additionally,

you can fine tune audio and video encoding parameters based on the encoding

algorithms. By default, you will never need to fiddle with them.

Iris



Iris is a one-to-many kind of video conferencing application, which is

identical to regular chatting in MSN Messenger. Adding video element to the same

concept, a user can have video chat sessions with multiple users at the same

time. However, no cross talk is possible between the users themselves.

This again works over IP and also stores an

address book locally to map names to IPs. Unlike the other software that we talk

of here, Iris also supports whiteboarding. It also archives conversation

sessions (text, whiteboard and even video) using its ‘Store’ option. For

preventing eavesdropping on transmissions, Iris can encrypt the video and audio

data, which will only be shown if the receiver has the key.

Eyeball



Eyeball is a concept similar to most instant messaging software. So it

allows text, voice and video like Yahoo Messenger for instance. To use it, you

need an eyeball identity, which is a registered user ID. It’s a Universal IM

allowing you to log on to AOL, MSN and Yahoo messaging networks. It even alerts

you if you receive a new mail in any account.

Desktop video conferencing with other users can

be done using a web cam. However, if you are behind a firewall/ proxy, you may

not be able to use it because it has no network settings option and just uses

your default gateway. All conference connections are through the Eyeball

Internet server.