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Communications The Internet

Group Video Conferencing? 31

Posted by Cliff from the three's-a-meeting dept.
darhaw asks: "What started out as a simple request has turned into a big deal. I work for a small firm with partners in 4 different cities, and we'd like to do weekly video conferences. There seem to be many different 2 PERSON video conferencing products -- but there are very few GROUP video conferencing products. Is there anything out there? Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated."
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Group Video Conferencing? More

Group Video Conferencing?

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  • iChat, supports up to 4 (Score:5, Informative)

    by danpat ( 119101 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @12:14AM (#14362578) Homepage
    http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/features/ichat/ [apple.com]

    Bandwidth will become a bit of an issue, as you need to serve your stream out to everyone involved, as well as downloading theirs.
  • Well, let's see. A quick Google for "group video conference" (minus the quotes of course) brings up 50M+ hits with the very first one being a canonical list of same.
          So unless you want to narrow your request down a bit the universal response here is likely to be "WTF? Google it!"
  • but check out accessgrid.org

    At a prior employer, we had one of these setups (actually, I did most of the work in setting it up) -- we had a 15 foot display (4096x2304 - 12 adjacent projectors), 4 cameras (two to zoom the speaker, two for general views), 8 (IIRC) desk mounted microphones, and a &^$%#-load of supporting hardware. It required a real multicast network -- we spent way too much time diagnosing routing issues with ES.net, but it was an awesome toy. Oh, and productive, too.

  • Since you didn't specify I'd have to recommend Polycom. Give them a call.
    • I'll agree with the caveat that I much preferred the Tandberg systems we compared them against.

      The reason we ended going with Polycom 7800a/s systems (despite the fact that they didn't seem quite as glitch-free) was that you couldn't share video from a Polycom unit to a Tandberg (and our parent company uses Polycom). Other way around worked fine, though.

  • I think some of the new mac's have some kind of 4 dimensional video conferencing thing. I've seen it in the demos, but personally I'm scared of it.

    Probably because I don't want to see 3 relatives simultaneously (unless I have to - like during the holidays!).

    It could probably be pretty cool if it was with friends tho.

  • .... I would recommend Jeffrey Katzenberg's "Halo" [economist.com].

    It might be a bit on the expensive side, but it seems to be stable and comfortable.

  • I'd reccomend ClickToMeet - you can find info on their website.. http://www.clicktomeet.com/ [clicktomeet.com] integrates nicely [sic] with M$ products and only caveat is that it does require a windows terminal - at least for app sharing, etc. Other than that , just about any endpoint will work.
  • AccessGrid (www.accessgrid.org) is exactly what you're looking for. It's not a cheap or simple solution but it works if you meet the requirements. Primary run over multicast and the reason is efficiency. Currently used at many supercomputing sites accross the country, it's possible because these sites are connected over Internet2 and have full multicast support.

    Microsoft Conference (research.microsoft.com) also another solution, there's another company that make a commercial spin-off of AccessGrid but I for
  • We're using a pollycom system VSX7000s and a bridge and do weekly team meetings. The idea works like this. The last person to speak get's the camra thier face on everyone elses projector. You can share data with these, power point presentations, phones, etc.. VSX7000 kick ass.
  • The Tandberg units, from when I used them, could do 3-way conversations natively, and they sold an appliance that would do 4 or more. Additionally, IIRC I set up a Open323 gateway (gatekeeper? http://www.gnugk.org/ [gnugk.org]) that did 4 - it would catch all 4 streams, combine them into one window, and rebroadcast that window. Heavier bandwidth, but potentially what you need.
  • As others have pointed out, the question's too vague to answer. There are a ton of hardware and software options.

    One that I haven't seen mentioned yet is H.323. Clients are implemented in Linux with GnomeMeeting (and a few others), in Windows with NetMeeting (and some other commercial options), and in Mac OS with XMeeting.

  • I tried Festoon with GoogleChat the other day. It did OK. Not sure how many it supports, but we did it with 3 -- and you see your own as well.

  • Why iChat is better (Score:3, Informative)

    by feijai ( 898706 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @12:31PM (#14365150)
    I had to go through exactly this to do conferences with places like Paris and San Diego (I'm on the east coast) with DARPA funding agents etc. The video had to be good, and the audio had to be good. We tried all sorts of PC-to-PC options and PC-to-Mac options, pretty much everything that could be done for under $200. And iChat (using iSights) was better than all of them by far. The video was clean and fast, the audio was excellent. Eventually my DARPA program manager broke down and just bought an iBook, and is glad he did it.

    Apple has done a really, *really* good job. Don't fool around with crap like NetMeeting and H.263. Do it right.

    Now, if you're willing to put in some serious $$$, there are other options with higher fidelity still. One of the big problems with iChat is that its resolution -- good as it is -- isn't good enough to read Powerpoint slides off the screen. There ought to be some mechanism by which everyone can see PowerPoint or Keynote being broadcast in real-time.
    • Given a good connection you could use a VNC based approach... Use your machine for the host... and let everyone connect to it and take turns controlling the pointer if needed... or just let them watch it in full screen mode while you control. Refresh times should be good enough for slides.

    • Even if you figure on one new iMac for each end of the conference, as a dedicated videoconferencing "appliance," the cost of an iChat system is very low for what you get. It's easy to set up and use, it works very well through firewalls and doesn't require a lot of tinkering with your network, doesn't need dedicated lines or anything, and isn't intimidating to use.

      At the very least, anyone interested in videoconferencing should go down to an Apple store with a few friends when they're not busy and get a dem

  • lots of web conferencing options (Score:3, Informative)

    by RobTerrell ( 139316 ) on Friday December 30, 2005 @12:52PM (#14365303) Homepage
    There's lots of internet conference options out there:

    1. Avacast (cross-platform, browser-based, small groups or large audiences) http://www.avacast.com/ [avacast.com] (note: my employer)
    2. Citrix GoToMeeting
    3. Adobe Breeze (also browser-based, small to medium sized audiences)
    4. Microsoft LiveMeeting (video not supported)
    5. Webex (video not so good)
    6. NetMeeting (H.323, have big bandwidth at the ready)
    7. Other H.323 products from companies like Polycom, Tandberg, Sony (big bandwidth)
    8. Skype (for limited audio and video conferences)
    9. iChat AV (if everyone is on a Mac)
    10. WiredRed (no Mac support)

    You can google for more. There's probably 50 vendors, all told. Of the commercial options, I'm gonna have to say that I think Avacast is the best.

    In the world of open source:

    11. OpenH323-based products like Xmeeting & GnomePhone

    With Red5 on its way, expect more open source SWF-based web conferencing solutions soon.

  • Take a look at the Sony PCS-1 [sony.com] video conferencing settop unit. It is the low-end of the stand alone business class models, and it has multicast and other high-end capabilities. You can get a PCS-1 for about $3500 from a videoconferencing reseller.

  • What you're looking for (especially if you're H.323 VOIP friendly) is what's called a MCU.
    Most commercial providers will have their own implementation.

    If you want to "roll your own" in house, the openh323 project has an open source/MPL'd implementation called openmcu.
    These devices will essentially allow your H.323 based video phone/soft-phone to connect to a common conference.
    openh323.org has the info.
    If you need any pointers, let me know. Did quite a bit of work w/ voip/h323 professionally.
  • There is a free multi-person video conferencing system. Let me know if you want access. Amber
  • If you've got a reasonable amount of bandwidth, and not too much packet loss, it's great. Even better if you're multicast capable. It's also open source.
  • Thanks everyone for your super-helpful responses. For now, we'll be using Festoon (www.festooninc.com) -- we've already had 14 people on it during a single call from our 4 locations. Once the call is started, it seems to work great. The call initiation is pretty clunky -- you have to start calls using either Google Talk or Skype. -Darren

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