Affordable and Usable Video Conferencing?

Sabalon writes "I work at a state university with remote sites, minimal space, and all the other usual bits. We used to have some dedicated-circuit video conferencing tools but those have fallen into disuse. The administration is now interested in being able to stream a class from site to site, or at least have a student at one site have visual interaction with a person at another site. My thought is that if Skype, uStream and others can do live video, there has to be some things out there that don't cost a fortune but work effectively. Key things would be the ability to use commodity web cams as a source, viewable on a PC (preferably all the main OSes) and the ability to add in other devices (say H.323 encoders) or desktop/application sharing. Are there decent products and solutions out there for us mere mortals?"

Dim Dim

[ya really]

I've been recently setting up video streaming for a client and found that dim dim [dimdim.com] is free for up to 20 people (using their closed source software) and unlimited if you feel like building it yourself with the opensource version. It's not bad either, I can't complain for the price :)

Re:Does it need to be free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pidgin is wonderful, but doesn't do video

Have you checked out Google?

[RobertM1968]

Google offers videoconferencing, and I believe it is free (sans the cost of the cheap USB camera you will have to buy).

Check out this article, then check out the links for it on Google's site...
Google to offer Video Conferencing [blogspot.com]

Mbone & VIC

[JynxMe]

A few years back, my multi-site development group set up a web cam on just a regular PC running windows. Then we just set up Mbone [wikipedia.org] and VIC [google.com] to run the actual conferencing part. It worked really well and supported as many clients as we needed it to. I'm not sure if it's still around or under any development - but you can't beat the price ($0). And they have clients for most OSes.

EVO, developed at CalTech for physics community

[wdconinc]

You should take a look at EVO [caltech.edu]. It was developed by CalTech for use in the high-energy physics projects at CERN. It is a Java application, no installation required, but works surprisingly well even with consumer webcams in mac and linux. You can use it for free by just registering and organizing a meeting in the 'universe' group, or you can request that your own organization is added (and still use it for free). It has all necessary features: multiple video streams, collaborative white board, recording and replay, file storage,... At particle physics labs around the world the meeting rooms are basically built around EVO, and polycom has virtually disappeared. It helps if you are close to one of those labs, or on an educational backbone.

Microsoft OCS is a great fit

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Office Communications Server R2 would fit the bill. Federation support so you can collaborate with other edu organizations. Adaptive bit-rate codec that supports from QCIF, VGA all the way to 720p and great wideband audio. Customizable Mac OS and Windows clients including Pidgin support. Built in internal and external multipoint audio and video conference bridge with continuous presence. The best NAT traversal (huge!) and remote access out of all the video conference solutions, no extra routers or port forwarding needed and it's all secured and encrypted over SIP TLS. SIP trunking support if you want PSTN connectivity. Everything is encrypted, IM, video, audio and file transfers. Screen sharing works very well for collaborating with customizable color depths for faster screen refresh.

Things that I think suck: Public IM connectivity setup takes over a month and is licensed poorly and very hard to order with a handful of different options. E.164 normalization for SIP mediation is not for the faint hearted. No persistent chat support (cant IM people that are offline and get the IMs when you log on) and the group chat is a completely separate client from a merger. Mac Messenger does not support Enterprise Voice so you can use it for AV but not as a softphone.

The edu pricing for OCS would be cheap like dirt and there a lot of organizations and clearing houses that you can federate traffic with. Check this link out: http://wiki.uky.edu/ocs/Wiki%20Pages/Federation%20Partners.aspx [uky.edu]

Re:We do this...

[wooferhound]

Skype does have settings to control the audio just like a speakerphone. My wife uses skype to call from the US to Russia and the she turns up the incoming audio rather loudly and the microphone is 2 feet away from her and it works wonderfully without a headset.

Don't forget tablet, projector and whiteboard app

[pc_goes_hmm]

We've had good success with the following at each location:

- Mac Mini

- DVI Splitter (active not a simple cable -- bought ours at Fry's)

- Wacom Intuos (integrated tablet and video monitor -- the smaller model is recommended)

- DVI Projector (Sharp Electronics WXGA 2500) + screen

- Polycomm conference phone (new model with the cellphone noise-cancelling)

It's hard to have a technical conversation without a whiteboard, and while webex/dimdim/vyew/etc. have shared whiteboard apps, trying to draw with a mouse on a pad DOWN THERE while looking UP HERE while discussing your topic is just too danged disruptive (like trying to walk while rubbing your belly and patting your head). Drawing right on the "whiteboard" (screen) with a stylus removes most of the cognitive friction.

The only tricky bit is that you really need to project the screen if you'll ever have more than one person in the room. An *active* DVI splitter (passive cabling won't work) does the trick, but you have to ensure that the Mac only "sees" the Wacom monitor initially when it sets up it's display modes. Every time we have a power outage, we need to temporarily unplug the projector from the splitter then force the Mac to re-discover its displays (the Wacom needs the Mac to have the display resolution exactly right). It's also necessary to get a decent projector that can sync to the Wacom's resolution (we use the Sharp Electronics WXGA 2500 which has been terrific).

why?

[neuroxmurf]

Videoconferencing is, has always been, and will always be a solution in search of a problem. Nobody (who has any sense) has ever said "gee, I wish I could look at a grainy, postage-stamp-sized picture of the person I'm talking on the phone with". Nobody *cares*. Not for meetings, not for classes. Audio is critically important. Shared presentation is critically important. Shared whiteboard is criticall important for some purposes. Video? Video is utterly useless.

(I've worked with most of the videoconferencing technologies out there, in the context of a large University research group. I've even built custom videoconferencing platforms for clinical case conferencing. It's all useless. People *say* they want it. People *think* they want it. But even when you spend $50k on a pair of high definition Access Grid Node rooms, it's no better than a good speakerphone. And nowhere near as good as $150 plane ticket.)