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High-Definition PC Video Conferencing?
Posted by
Cliff
on Tue May 17, 2005 12:55 PM
from the don't-cross-out-the-travel-budget-just-yet dept.
from the don't-cross-out-the-travel-budget-just-yet dept.
dsginter asks: "This year's spring Networld+Interop has ended with little fanfare. However, I noticed that a small nugget slipped between the cracks - HD video-conferencing. Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon. After seeing the massive pricing estimates for such products, I couldn't help but think that I should try my hand at my own HD product (a Mac Mini, some H.264, a pinch of AAC and the glue that is H.323 or SIP). However, I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition. I've scoured Google but can't come up with anything suitable. Is there an answer? HD video-conferencing is an important step in complete communication between remote parties. While there will be those that joke about the possibilities, it is important to remember that the bulk of business travel still happens for the sake of face-to-face communication. HD video-conferencing might prove to be a panacea."
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The real acid-test of these technologies... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The real acid-test of these technologies... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The real acid-test of these technologies... (Score:3, Informative)
Potential difficulties (Score:5, Insightful)
Good luck! Only several 'pro-sumer' HD video cameras exist nowadays, and neither of them could be classed as small.
I've recently bought a Sony HDR-FX1e camera - for recording some music videos for my brother's band. The recording quality (1080i, 3CCD) is absolutely fantastic. However I'm not sure about it's suitability for video conferencing:
1. The camera is large. I guess in a fixed setup this isn't a major problem - the camera could be positioned on a tripod next to the screen or preferably projector.
2. Video is sent via firewire as MPEG, at DV datarates (18Mbit or something like that). Unless you have that kind of bandwidth to transmit the data without recompression, you need to reencode the video on-the-fly. Reencoding 60 mins of video to 720p WMV-HD takes me 8 hours on a 3GHz P4. My system struggles with realtime playback of the full-bitrate HD MPEG. I'm not sure if any codecs could easilly transcode the stream in realtime without some expensive hardware accelleration.
Re:Potential difficulties (Score:3, Funny)
to see those non-small pro-sumos this fall, in fact.
Re:Potential difficulties (Score:4, Informative)
The other problem you'll run into is the quality of the lens. On a small webcam, it wouldn't help you much to put a high-res CCD in it. The lens would be the bottleneck.
Parent
Re:Potential difficulties (Score:2)
Also consider that HD broadcasting is about 9 Gigs an hour which is also about 2.56 megabytes/sec completely realtime, I wouldn't hold your breath.
I wouldn't expect silly video conferences to be available until live porn to be available via HD. Plus after the latter comes out, I doubt anyone would be wasting their time going to work and stuff, let alone desiring HD video conferences with ug
Re:Potential difficulties (Score:3, Informative)
I am not aware of a real-time H.264 codec that can encode SD video in real-time, even on a 3.73GHz P4, let alone HD. With the advent of the upcoming dual core CPUs, real-time H.264 encoding of SD content may become a reality soon, but real-time encoding of 720p material on a general purpose processor is probably still a few years away.
There are a few companies working on special HW (i.e., chips) for real-time H.264 encoding, though most of the first generation products are focusing on
Re:Potential difficulties (Score:2)
I don't see the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I don't see the point... (Score:3, Insightful)
That depends on how many people are at the meeting. When you have more than half a dozen people around a conference table, it can be hard to get more than a few dozen pixels devoted to each person's face.
Re:I don't see the point... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh yeah, that's yet another solution looking for a problem.
Parent
Re:I don't see the point... (Score:2)
Re:I don't see the point... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hospitals already have high-def monitors, just email the X-Ray and use the videoconferenceing for a lower quality. I can't imagine a doctor holding up an X-Ray to the videocamera, you need more detail.
Videoconferencing not all its cracked up to be (Score:5, Interesting)
I have installed videoconferencing at 6 companies over the past 15 years. It has never received the widespread use it was initially purchased for. Videoconferencing solves a technical problem. In a purely technical environment, they may be successful.
However, put a bunch of PHBs in a room and if they encounter any problems using the equipment, the liklihood of it being used again is slim. One thing a PHB hates more than anything is knowingly looking stupid.
HP Halo Rooms (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.presentations.com/presentations/techno
Parent
Re:Videoconferencing not all its cracked up to be (Score:2)
I have seen enough people struggle with bringing in a third party to create a conference call that now it is hardly ever suggested. Instead we all have a personal 800 number with a passcode to call in to if we need to conference.
I can only imagine how much worse video conferencing is.
The most useful live-streaming tech I've ever seen was in 1997. We could watch class from our rooms over the net. The audio was a live stream and the video only updated once every few seconds. That way we coul
Does HD really matter in this instance? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Does HD really matter in this instance? (Score:2, Funny)
Of course, that might not be so great for the porn industry. Eew.
Re:Does HD really matter in this instance? (Score:2)
In my experience, cheap videoconferencing technology isn't about replacing flesh and blood, it's about replacing the telephone, or replacing no contact at all. A videoconference has lots more personal contact than a teleconference or no conference at all.
A Mac mini? (Score:4, Informative)
Trying to decode an HD stream on a Mac mini is probably not that good of an idea - a single G4 doesn't have quite enough power to manage it.
H.264 is designed to scale down to various processor architectures, so a lower-resolution stream would probably play acceptably, but I rather doubt that you'd get enough horsepower out of a Mac mini to acceptably decode HD content encoded with H.264 in realtime.
For more, see Apple's H.264 FAQ [apple.com].
An iMac G5 should have the horsepower, however.
Re:A Mac mini? (Score:2, Informative)
H.264 != HD !!!
H.264 is a codec that can encode video at any size, including standard definition down to sizes that fit on mobile phones up to HD. A raw high definition stream that is not encoded with such a computationally-intensive codec as H.264 will probably play on a Mac mini. There was a big hubbub about this over in the MacNN Forums [macnn.com] about whether PowerBook
You == moron. (Score:2)
HD video-conferencing. Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon. After seeing the massive pricing estimates for such products, I couldn't help but think that I should try my hand at my own HD product (a Mac Mini, some H.264, a pinch of AAC and the glue that is H.323 or SIP).
The poster wants to put together a H.264 HD video conferencing solution. He wants to encode and decode video simultaneously at HD res
No the commentator is quite clear on them (Score:3, Informative)
Yes a Mac mini can do H.264, no it cannot do it at HD rates.
Interoperability? (Score:2)
How does one imply the other? It seems to me that it's far more likely that two companies getting into the game means that we'll have two wide-ranging and incompatible systems until the company with deeper pockets wins.
My only concern: bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
I know, corporate environment with coroprate-scale bandwidth, but it all has to pass through the backbones like the rest of us.
We're not at the Max Headroom age yet.
Re:My only concern: bandwidth (Score:4, Interesting)
easy.
decent quality standard def video at 30fps is quite wonderful at 768k... with "talking head" type content, 512kbps is freaking overkill, if you want to know the truth. (yes, i've spent the last week at work doing all kinds of encoding testing, since we're going to be moving to h.264 for our engineering video for our customers)
As for HD content... H.264 can make clean HD content flow at as low as 2mbps at 720p... so nice it makes you do a double take. With 100 meg ethernet being the low end standard... you can do the math as to how HD content is going to shoot thru pipes. Hell, many people get pretty decent speeds over their cable modems these days...
the bigger problem is still the encoding/decoding. Well, its a problem now.. but i'm waiting for a H.264 Firewire thumb-drive gizmo that will do it all for you offline using one of TI's h.264 encoder chips. I'm ready for hardware H.264 encoding for my Mac that's QuickTime/Compressor-ready...
(APPLE... TI.... 3rd PARTY DEVELOPERS
for those of you interested in actual products which exist now - check this link [radio.irt.de]. They have everyone's stuff listed here, including Polycom's new stuff.
Parent
Lets first see 640x480 completely tapped (Score:3, Interesting)
While iChat in Tiger is hella good, i'm still only getting 15 fps... and i bet money that it still remains at 15fps when i get two machines chatting on the same subnet. (anyone? anyone tried this?)
The idea of using a Mac Mini for this only means that the submitter, while well intentioned, is totally missing the fact that what he's talking about is impossible without additional hardware.
Can anyone give a quick review of iChat in Tiger over fast ethernet on the same network?
jvc has an offering (Score:2)
airlines (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, and teleconferencing, not terrorism, is why the airline industry is in such a slump. I'm surprised teleconferencing hasn't been banned to help the airlines. I guess the airlines haven't figured this out yet and started lobyying.
HD in video conferencing? (Score:2)
Perfect the vidconfs we have now (Score:4, Insightful)
The company I work for has videoconferencing equipment that works over ISDN as well as IP over their internal corporate network. The picture is still jerky, the sound is always off, and it's almost more of a pain to set up than it's really worth. Kind of like talking to someone via a satellite link.
Maybe mine isn't the typical end-user experience, but I'm wondering how many networks out there could even handle the traffic from a HD videoconference session.
HighDef Face2Face (Score:5, Insightful)
It's going into a room sitting down, shaking hands, chatting about the family before the meeting starts that makes all the difference. It's going out for lunch, playing a game of golf, etc, that build the real rapport. Talking over video conferencing does allow you to see body language, etc, so it's certainly an improvement over a mere phone call, but it is not even close to the same as being there in person.
Re:HighDef Face2Face (Score:2)
Re:HighDef Face2Face (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree with you on this point, I also think that the first company that gets videoconferencing to work right is going to make a killing, because there's still no product that finds a usable middle ground between a phone call and actually being there.
The middle ground will have several streams (so you can see both the speaker's face in detail and the rest of the remote environment), will not need extreme resolution (i.e. bandwidth) except f
Face to face communication? You forgot.. (Score:2)
- Drugs
- Gambling
PS3? (Score:4, Interesting)
The market is the problem (Score:5, Informative)
As an engineer who recently wrapped up a video camera project, here's are the problems we ran into:
- The CCD sensor can easily do full-motion XGA or SXGA video, but:
- The DSP has a very difficult time encoding MPEG video at full-motion frame rates for anything larger than VGA resolutions.
- 100 Mbit ethernet is just barely capable of supporting a VGA or D1 bitstream, and,
- XGA has ~twice the number of pixels as D1; SXGA is even more bandwidth intensive.
Now granted, we do build boards which could probably handle HDTV video conferencing. But the problem is that the 4 processors alone cost more than the average low-end PC. From a technical perspective, HDTV video conferencing is possible, but the hardware required is far more expensive than what the market would tolerate.Are you willing to pay $10k for HDTV versus a few hundred for a QVGA webcam setup?
I'd love to be building HDTV cameras, but the problem is that we can't find customers willing to pay the extra expense for the higher resolution.
One more thing... (Score:2)
You want a camera with dedicated hardware encoding:
The former requires specialized hardware and substantial processing on the host, where as the latter requires only an internet conne
This makes no sense whatsoever (Score:2, Insightful)
Second, what added benefit is there to HD videoconferencing? How would this possibly be the pancea of people wanting to meet in person. They still aren't meeting in person so they will still want to. A pretty picture doesn't change that.
I've never posted a a negative reply to a
1 HD Camera? (Score:3, Informative)
The cheapest consumer HD video camera I have seen is made by sony. It costs $3,500. The size is about 1 foot long, 6 wide and 6 high. Not sure if it is 720p or 1080i. Doesn't matter much in this case. Now, if you want something that will give you the 1280x720 resolution, try one of the still digital cameras that can give you just as good a resolution (and sometimes act as a web cam). They generally cost much less. Concord [concord-camera.com] has a camera that should work for this, assuming the webcam picture is full res.
High-def security cameras (Score:3, Interesting)
Still not exactly CHEAP, but $600 is at least getting there...
Re:High-def security cameras (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, then you have to capture it, which requires a faster A to D than would be found in most video capture cards, though this should not be too hard to get toda
Need more Hardware (Score:2)
HD cameras have just entered the prosumer market. They wont be as small as some consumer cameras. But generally, video quailty is much better.
Even if you compress the hell out of the video, it will still be fairly high data rate. You should be able to make it work over a lan o
Just wait a few months (Score:2)
I actually saw exactly what you are looking for about a month ago but i can't find the link now. It was slightly larger than your typical webcam and did an assortment of HD formats.
Good luck getting the processing power you need... (Score:2, Interesting)
That, and the biggest problem with video conferencing in HD has more to do with the network transmission and upload speed. It's all fine and dandy to produce a product that'll work with a reliable megabit of upload speed, but most consumers don't have that much upload bandwidth.
Add that to the fact that most of these codecs you're dealing with are heinously intolerant to loss, combined
Won't replace face-to-face meetings (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously, you can't get out of that stuffy breakout room and take the meeting to the bar if a change of scenery is required. You can't get a client to really open up to you regarding their needs if you're just a talking head.
The purpose of these 1 on 1 physical space meetings is interaction. Being able to play off each other. The only technological advance that will make this more efficient is teleporation. Maybe slacks that don't wrinkle.
iSight (Score:3, Informative)
Peace
Elphel HD Theora cameras (Score:3, Interesting)
You should take a look at the Elphel [elphel.com] 333 fpga security cameras. They can do real-time encoding in the free Theora video format at HD resolutions, and provide the stream over ethernet.
The cameras don't have sound, so you'd have to use the mac mini to handle the audio, and the image quality isn't as good as one of the "prosumer" HDV cameras. On the other hand, by doing the compression in hardware you don't have any resource problems like you would transcoding an HDV or component HD feed, and can concentrate on just decoding the stream. :)
Best, you'll be supporting free multimedia instead of the MPEG patent holders.
There's an article [linuxdevices.com] describing the camera if you want more details.
Re:JVC HDV 720p (Score:2, Interesting)