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Communications The Internet Technology

High-Definition PC Video Conferencing? 206

Posted by Cliff 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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High-Definition PC Video Conferencing? More

High-Definition PC Video Conferencing?

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  • The real acid-test of these technologies... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blcamp ( 211756 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @01:57PM (#12557652) Homepage
    ...will be conducted by the Adult Entertainment Industry.

  • Potential difficulties (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zone-MR ( 631588 ) * <slashdot AT zone-mr DOT net> on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @01:57PM (#12557655) Homepage
    I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition.

    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.
    • Only several 'pro-sumer' HD video cameras exist nowadays, and neither of them could be classed as small.
      Me and my monkey are making tracks to the Mandalay Bay [tickettrader.com] Hotel
      to see those non-small pro-sumos this fall, in fact.

    • Re:Potential difficulties (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:10PM (#12557832)
      The bitrate of the MPEG-2 transport stream of the Sony 1080i camera is 25 Mbps. Hardware real-time MPEG-4 Part 10 (aka H.264, aka AVC) encoders do exist, but they're aimed at commercial broadcasters. As the parent pointed out, software encoding, even on the latest and greatest CPU, is *much* slower than real-time.

      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.
    • Good luck! Only several 'pro-sumer' HD video cameras exist nowadays, and neither of them could be classed as small.

      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
    • Good observations.

      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

      • 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.

        You're right, it can't be done on a Pentium 4. It requires a G5. [apple.com]

        • I am not sure if even a dual 2.7GHz G5 can run H.264 encode on SD (720x480) material in real time using the H.264 encoder that comes with QT7 pro. I was at the Apple store the other day and even dual 2GHz PowerMacs appeared to be struggling to keep up the frame rate when decoding 720p or 1080i H.264 streams. The complexity of encoding is at least 10X that of decoding, if not more.
    • A couple of other oddities with this particular camera (US version HDR-FX1). In HDV (1080i) mode, MEGS encoding and output take about 1/2 second. It's not much, but it takes a bit of work to sync any external audio (which you might have since this camera has no XLR jack) with the video. Note that the "pro" version of this camera, the Z1, doesn't have the delay and has an XLR jack for a mere grand or so more. Second, don't press the "expanded focus" button when running video out (don't know about during
    • I read here a few days ago that Motorola has a 5-inch prototype flat-screen HD display using carbon nanotube technology, and it said 40-inch displays 3/4 inch thick would be feasible for under $400. Give cameras a couple more years to evolve, and I think we will soon be taking remote-presence for granted, at least in the business world. The India half of your dev team will seem to be sitting right there in the room with you.
    • Reencoding 60 mins of video to 720p WMV-HD takes me 8 hours on a 3GHz P4.

      As an aside, that's what I keep telling people who doubt the need for more CPU speed: video encoding is still far from real-time. Even granny is going to want to be reencoding videos to email to the grand-kids soon, and she doesn't have the *time* to wait that long.
    • My system struggles with realtime playback of the full-bitrate HD MPEG.
      Check your setup. I have a 1.6GHz P4 and it plays HD MPEG4 (DivX, WMV, MOV) in 720p without any problems (Win 2k). MPEG2 should certainly not be a problem.

  • I don't see the point... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anita Coney ( 648748 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @01:58PM (#12557673) Homepage
    Unless you're doing a video conference with some hot starlet, I do not see the point of this. Do you really want to see your out of state co-workers in high def?! How would that add to the meeting?

    • Unless you're doing a video conference with some hot starlet, I do not see the point of this. Do you really want to see your out of state co-workers in high def?! How would that add to the meeting?


      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.

    • We want HD here... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by J Barnes ( 838165 )
      Actually, running a mid-sized governmental agency with a small handful of field sites nationwide, we have immediate need for a system like this.

      We're running semi-monthly meetings that are presented more like carefully timed television broadcasts then casual spitballing sessions. HD would be a GIGANTIC improvement over CIF.
  • Pray tell, why do you need HD for face-to-face conferencing?

    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)

      by ddebrito ( 33316 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:14PM (#12557895)
      I've seen demos of the HP Halo videoconferencing rooms. There is no equipment for the PHBs to fiddle with. Everything (microphones, cameras, and displays) is built into the walls and furniture. With multiple screens per room and great sound, it easy to see why executives want to buy these things. Why fly (even via a corporate jet) when you just walk into a Halo conference room and be seated across the table from who you want to see/hear. See a Halo room write up at:
      http://www.presentations.com/presentations/technol ogy/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000729994 [presentations.com]

      • Re:HP Halo Rooms (Score:2, Insightful)

        by dirty ( 13560 )
        The way things work in a demo and the real world are really much different. Video conferencing is still at a point where you need a tech at each end of the call, and you need time to do a dry run before hand to make sure that everything works ok. There is nothing more annoying than having the PHB complain that the video is chopy due to the poor upstream bandwith on the other side, while you're trying to figure out why they can't hear the audio.

        Video conferencing is just plain not worth it.
      • Why fly (even via a corporate jet) when you just walk into a Halo conference room

        Because along with flying comes nice hotel rooms and expense accounts, not to mention frequent flyer miles you can use on your own trips. Don't underestimate the allure of physical travel to PHBs.

    • Agreed.

      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

    • Pray tell, why do you need HD for face-to-face conferencing?

      Because we're spending $200k per pop on the TeleSuite [telesuite.com] product. The company for whom I work already has standards-based endpoints that do traditional videoconferencing but people favor the Telesuites or travel over these products. For reference, we have 30 traditional endpoints and 5 TeleSuites. Even with this disparity, the TeleSuites log about 2.5x more usage. That works out to 15x more usage per endpoint for the Telesuites.

      People just do
  • I don't care how good picture and sound quality are, f2f (face to face - we're geeks ... we love letters) won't be replaced. No amount of video wizardry can replace flesh and blood (my apologies to spielberg and lucas). The screen will always feel like a wall with which one can hide behind creating a latent sense of distrust. Face to face is really the only level playing field for the truly important meetings.
    • Besides, HD is never going to be anywhere near "f2f" until they perfect HD Smell-o-rama.

      Of course, that might not be so great for the porn industry. Eew.
      • > Of course, that might not be so great for the porn industry. Eew. Obviously you are not informed about the important role smells have in human sexuality. I mean of course we are strongly visual beings. But there is heavy stuff going on with us and the world of perceivable and unperceivable smells!
    • I don't care how good picture and sound quality are, f2f won't be replaced. No amount of video wizardry can replace flesh and blood...

      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)

    by WombatControl ( 74685 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:02PM (#12557726)

    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)

      by krove ( 623161 )
      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 != 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
      • From the article summary:

        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
      • H.264 != HD !!!

        As far as the internet and video conferencing are concerned, H.264 DOES equal HD. That's the only codec you're going to be able to use with video conferencing applications to use HD unless you know of another codec the ITU has specified.

  • *Two different manufacturers demonstrated such products which means that we'll probably have interoperability soon.*

    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)

    by British ( 51765 ) <british1500@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:04PM (#12557749) Homepage Journal
    The internet isn't quite fast enough for videoconferencing on a small scale to be practical. How on earth is HD-video quality going to shoot through the pipes fast enough?

    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)

      by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:16PM (#12557913)
      > How on earth is HD-video quality going to shoot through the pipes fast enough?

      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 ...do you hear us??? Desktop/laptop H.264 dedicated encoding hardware for FCP/Compressor users!!! We'll buy it if its under $500)

      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.

  • Lets first see 640x480 completely tapped (Score:3, Interesting)

    by gsfprez ( 27403 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:04PM (#12557752)
    What i want to know is if anyone here has EVER seen actual 640x480 (720x480 if using a DV camera) 30fps cleanly being done?

    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?

  • airlines (Score:3, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <k4_pacific@yah[ ]com ['oo.' in gap]> on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:04PM (#12557761) Homepage Journal
    "... it is important to remember that the bulk of business travel still happens for the sake of face-to-face communication."

    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.
  • wait.. am I missing something here? Are all other issues in video conferencing resolved that we are bothering our selves with HD?

  • Perfect the vidconfs we have now (Score:4, Insightful)

    by mtcrowe ( 86952 ) * on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:06PM (#12557786)
    While I'm sure there are a few applications out there now, doesn't most everyone have trouble with regular videoconferences now?

    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)

    by sterno ( 16320 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:09PM (#12557819) Homepage
    Having better quality video isn't going to improve communication significantly over current capabilities. The value of face to face meetings will never go away. It's not what happens in a specific meeting that is so key, but rather the rappore that is developed around the meetings.

    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.

    • ITYM rapport. It's one of those silly words to help the French cheat at scrabble (yes that was a bash ref)
    • *cough* Porn *cough*.

      It certainly will be a brave new world. Yet another lonely-geek driven technology!

    • Re:HighDef Face2Face (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Clod9 ( 665325 )
      > The value of face to face meetings will never go away.

      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

  • - Prostitutes
    - Drugs
    - Gambling

  • PS3? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by utexaspunk ( 527541 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:22PM (#12557990)
    I'm kinda wondering if the PS3 is going to do this. Sony has been rather close w/Apple lately, and the PS3 is supposed to have input for an HD camera, as well as Gigabit Ethernet & 802.11 b/g built in...

  • The market is the problem (Score:5, Informative)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:25PM (#12558020) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • You want a camera with dedicated hardware encoding:

      • XGA @ 24 fps with RGB color is 56 megabytes per second uncompressed.
      • Even D1 (720 x 480) is ~ 25 megabytes per second uncompressed.
      • By contrast, MPEG encoding of D1 can move across a 12 megabyte per second pipe. Your best bet for video conferencing is probably to leave the Mac behind and get a camera with an RJ45 jack.

      The former requires specialized hardware and substantial processing on the host, where as the latter requires only an internet conne



    • I wouldn't be surprised if Mark Cuban hires a team of engineers to cobble together a prototype of this system. Then he could dog-and-pony-show it around the country and get a crapload of investors to fund a startup based on this concept. Then just before hitting the market, where your points would all be clearly demonstrated, Cuban would sell his stake in the startup to the rest of the goofs who invested in it. mo-money, mo-money, mo-money.

      Seth
    • H.264 should take care of the network bandwidth issues. Encoding it real-time is extremely intensive, however the cell processor in the PS3 should have no difficulty with it. If the software is done well and everything goes as planned, The PS3 may indeed end up being more popular as a videoconferencing vehicle than a gaming machine.
    • As I recall, nVidia chips (soon or now?) will have HDTV output. That is, there will be an encoder on the chip so you can output directly to an HDTV. If they provide a way to send the bits back to the CPU, you could just use the video card as an encoder. OTOH that would be an MPEG-2 stream. How about writing a custom encoder to run on a GPU?

      The first problem is a lack of 720p cameras of any sort other than very high end. I've been waiting several years now for a HD video camera under $1000.

  • First, how does the fact that two companies demo'd products of similar nature imply pending ineteroperability? It doensn't.

    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 /. story - but I don't see how the story has any bearing on anything other than the fact aht HD videoconf
    • My thoughts exactly. I don't really see the need for HD in a video conference, especially when there are still so many issues with regular video converences, and they're so rarely used.

      The whole "interpersonal thing" aside, when Joe on his Polycome Videophone in the conference room can talk with me in an iChat session, that will be a good first step. But I just don't think HD is going to add much to a video conference... 512x384 or whatever with reasonably good frame rates seems, with actual interoperabi

  • 1 HD Camera? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ironsides ( 739422 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:27PM (#12558051) Homepage Journal
    I'm missing one piece - a small, 720P camera for video acquisition.

    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)

    by Krehbiel ( 708327 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:28PM (#12558058)
    Here's one: http://store.yahoo.com/securitysupplies-store/coev hidevica.html [yahoo.com]

    Still not exactly CHEAP, but $600 is at least getting there...

    • How does this work? It says it puts out 720p in NTSC format. Equipment to deal with 720p in NTSC (presumably composite video) is not common, is it? I wasn't aware that you could even deal with that much bandwidth in a typical composite cable, which is why everybody else uses a form of 3 channel component video for this amount of resolution.

      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
  • The processor by itself is nowhere close to being able to encode an HD stream in real time. In pretty much all general usage process cant. You should be able to find dedicated encoding hardware that can give you realtime performance.

    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
  • I'm sure Apple will release a iSight HD

    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.
  • ...out of a mac mini. I'm skeptical, anyways. I doubt that you can encode 720p H.264/MPEG4 in real time on a mac mini.

    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)

    by mr_burns ( 13129 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @02:41PM (#12558224)
    We've had the tech for this stuff for decades and it hasn't really taken off in business because it's no replacement for 1 on 1 human interaction. It's just a phone conference you have to do your hair for.

    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.
  • Video conferencing (even in HD) might be ok to a point or be useful in specialized fields (a Dr remotely assisting a surgery) but it is no substitute for being in the same room with someone. Half the goodness of meeting in person is not during the actual meeting, but the time around the meeting, figuring out their personality and how well they hold alcohol...
  • FYI, the Mac mini can barely play back 720p and averages 10-20 fps and in no way can encode 720p at better than a couple of frames per second or thereabouts. h.264 is extremely processor intensive.

    A mini can drive a modest h.264 video chat through iChat, but don't worry about the 720p camera, just get an iSight.

    We'll either need way more CPU horsepower than even the dual G5s deliver for real-time HD encoding or, more likely, wait for either hardware encoding in the box or on the camera itself.

    There is al
  • BetaNews [betanews.com] is running a story right now (which is showing adjacent to this story on /. if you're using the RSS feed boxes) titled Sony Launches Consumer HD Camcorder [betanews.com]. Numbers in the article include $2,000, 1.5 pounds, 90 minutes of recording time on a single charge, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratio, still picture 2.8 megapixel camera.

  • iSight (Score:3, Informative)

    by midifarm ( 666278 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @03:02PM (#12558494) Homepage
    It's a rather inexpensive solution and it supports 640x480, 30fps and a stereo mic. It's not quite 720, but it's pretty damn close.

    Peace

  • There are high resolution webcams available from some Asian manufacturers.

    Typically it is a run-of-the-mill USB 2.0 video controller chip combined with a high resolution CCD sensor.

    The cheap flavors of these cameras come in VGA resolutions, but manufacturers claim to also offer higher resolution models.

    Mac drivers would be a problem, though.

  • Elphel HD Theora cameras (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rillian ( 12328 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2005 @03:18PM (#12558659) Homepage

    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.

  • Forget HD videoconf for a while.

    Been on the side of this road for many years (not HD tho). Even trying to get video from a firewire webcam at 15fps (which most biz people, I would think, would like) is a challenge.

    Two person isn't too hard, but it get's really difficult when scaling above that. Plus, offices are behind firewalls and so that's always a pain as you have to (usually) piggyback port 80 or (for slower rates) 443 as these are pretty commonly opened ports in the biz world.

    I expect Skype to come
  • meetings, then what is it for? Everyone is thinking it, but nobdy has said it: Pr0n. Obviously...
  • A couple of years back I got to talk to some researchers doing work in the area of high def video conferencing. The thing is, hi-def is more than just high bandwidth. Psychologically speaking there is evidence that when a video conference gets to the quality where it looks like you are talking to someone through a hole in a wall or a real window vs a screen the interaction becomes more like a 1 to 1 real life meeting.

    The easiest analogy to think of is when we watch a movie...even though we KNOW we are watc
  • from researchchannel.org...

    At SC2004, ResearchChannel, Intel, AJA Video Systems and the University of Washington demonstrated two-way, uncompressed, high-definition (HD) 1080i videoconferencing running at 1.5 gbps in each direction between Canberra, Australia, Seattle and Pittsburgh.

    This unprecedented high-quality, low-latency interactive videoconferencing transited AARNet, University of Hawaii, Pacific Wave, Pacific Northwest Gigapop and National LambdaRail (NLR) 10 gigabit wavelength.

    The technology was
  • http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT3888835064.html [linuxdevices.com]

    The cameras, w/lenses and add-ons will cost more than your Mac Mini, but these are capable of 1280x1024@30fps w/Ogg Theora encoding.

    http://www.elphel.com/ [elphel.com]

    -Charles

  • What do you need HD for? There are video conferenceing programs which can remotely open presentations or webpages on PCs, so unless the people on the other end need to see every one of your eyebrow hairs, there is really no point.
  • Have you seen the above company's solutions?

    The were featured on Engadget [engadget.com] a while ago...

  • The solution is simple - start with low resolution. That way you don't need expensive hardware and can start working on the code right away. Then, in 1 year you may have a functioning system and there will probably be some cameras that you could use.
  • I'd like to know when we'll get VoIP calls that sound better than the 8KHz crap we've been getting since the original days of the telephone. I think it would be great to talk at 32KHz or 44.1KHz in high fidelity - the benefits may be subtle, but once you get used to it, it'd be much more lifelike and you probably couldn't go back.

    The technology is certainly there, even 64Kbit MP3 would sound good, not to mention the more advanced stuff out there. The bandwidth is there (hell, it uses about the same as your
  • Your whole point here is to set up a testbed for your HDTV. That means you don't want to spend a lot of money, but you do want to be able to test it out. For that, it seems to me that an acceptable purpose would be to use 2 cams, side by side (or one on top of the other), and one set to a wide angle view, and one set to a short view. Then with your computer overlap the images (hi-res, lo-res wide), and output it like that. Or just append three images side by side into a single image. Shoot, you could d
  • ..to do h.264 at that resolution with any speed. Perhaps a custom bit of hardware could. Perhaps you can find a less compressed method and just use a higher bitrate pipe. --Michael

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