WHAT IS VIDEO CONFERENCING?

It's the technological age, there's no doubt about it. You look around and you see people speaking on cell phones everywhere; people working on their laptop computers or PDA's; People taking pictures with their digital cameras, or listening to music on their digital mp3 players. The technology is evolving so quickly that it can barely keep up with itself. One area in which we are seeing rapid technological developments as of late is within the video conferencing industry.

Although the technology that makes video conferencing possible has been around for a several years now, it is hasn't received too much attention until recently, now becoming more and more popular every day. What is video conferencing? Basically, video conferencing can be easily described as a telephone conversation that allows you to be face-to-face with one another. This technology will never replace the person-to-person meeting completely, but it does offer an incredible tool for better telecommunication & can save companies hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel costs; and these applications are just scratching the surface:

What can video conferencing be used for?

• Presentations
• Workers collaborating on a shared project whilst using shared resources
• Personal Communication between family and friends
• Business Communication between associates
• Education, online schools, online lectures, etc. (Bringing the classroom home)

So what about this technology? For those who think that videoconferencing simply consists of two people having a face-to-face conversation over a telephone, the application goes a lot deeper than that. The most standard usage for videoconferencing is what is referred to as "point-to-point" communication. (This is most common for personal use) Point-to-point communication involves both two-way audio & video, and represents the scenario mentioned above of two people having a face-to-face conversation over a telephone. The second general usage is what is referred to as "one-to-many" videoconferencing, through which one video feed serves multiple users connected to a main site. (This is like an online lecture available at many colleges) Basically, the "many" can only see the "one," whereas the "one" has the ability to see the "many." The third general usage is what is referred to as "many-to-many" videoconferencing or a multi-point connection, through which audio and video are provided between more than two sites. This can thought of as a large online meeting, in which everyone sees and hears everyone else. Now that you have a basic understanding of how videoconferencing works, why make it work for you?

What are some of the benefits associated with video conferencing?

• Less travel. Saving money on your business travel costs
• Increased connection to the outside world
• Quality education spread across the globe
• More efficient, easier collaborative working
• Getting to see who you're talking to

The nature of videoconferencing is that it takes place during real-time. That is to say that it is happening live, and is therefore requiring an incredibly large amount of data to be sent/received every second. Bandwidth (Baud Rate) refers to the amount of data that can be transmitted across a line every second. The higher the bandwidth, the more the information that can be transmitted each second, and the better the feed will be. Because of the extremely high number of bits per second that are required for a strong video/audio feed, a certain degree of compression is needed so that your PC can transmit/receive. The level of compression varies from system to system & generally tends to focus more on producing a very consistent level of audio than a consistent level of video.

For the most part, videoconferencing takes place across the Internet, from PC to PC. This is what is referred to as desktop video conferencing. There is a wide range of video cameras and corresponding software that is installed onto your PC containing codecs designed to compress the transmitted/received signals. The camera itself generally requires a USB port through which to connect to the PC. Desktop videoconferencing hardware components include:

• Video/Web Camera
• Microphone through which to transmit audio
• Speakers/Headphones through which to receive audio
• Network/Ethernet card through which to connect to required high speed line
• Video board through which to capture the visual feed & convert to a digital form