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Video Conferencing Systems You will probably have seen video conferencing in action on the evening news where you see a newsreader in the local television studio interviewing a "television monitor" which shows a foreign news correspondent reporting on news from that country. The basic setup for video conferencing, is to have a video camera in your meeting room that sends your image to a remote location and the remote office's video camera sends their image to you which is displayed on a large screen or simply a LCD monitor or plasma screen. This is normally referred to as point-2-point videoconferencing and is fairly straightforward. Your ProLingo Project Manager will ensure you have the necessary hardware equipment and the lines, then dial the remote office and away you go. Multipoint conferences is where your meeting room and two or more other remote offices all wish to join in the meeting. Connections are typically established through internet connections or ISDN lines. Of course there is much more a science behind it all, but that again is the responsibility of your ProLingo Project Manager. Please call us today for details and best results at 1-800-287-9755 or inquire by email! Video conferencing has great cost-saving benefits for many organisations as it saves on time, travel and accommodation expenses normally incurred by travelling to meetings. Simply put, a video call allows you to be in several places at once. It gives access to experts and consultants not otherwise reachable to all attendees. Real-time document sharing, regardless of time zones, enables executives to hold real time keynotes. Imagine trying to describe surgery over the telephone. With video conferencing you can see the surgery for yourself, and share it with medical professionals from around the world visiting one main conference hall. A video conferencing system normally comprises a camera, microphone, speaker, base unit where all the data compression takes place, plus a display screen. The camera and microphone captures the sound and image at one location, a codec converts the video and audio to a digital signal which is compressed and sent over the network. At the other end the codec decompresses the signal and the picture appears on the display monitor and the sound comes out of a speaker. As far as the user is concerned they simply dial the number and press connect. You can rent a video conferencing base and camera system and your display screen separately, or you can rent an integrated video conferencing system with LCD projector, screen, everything you need for your audio visual presentation. Quality of video conferencing systems varies so it is important to choose carefully so that your system will meet or exceed your expectations. The main factors contributing to the quality of the images is the quality of the codec and the amount of bandwidth available. Having good audio quality is also crucial to the success of your video conferencing. There are many new video conferencing systems on the market that allow a very low quality video conferencing over the Internet which normally need broadband to be installed at each site. The main problem with these systems is the image quality sent over broadband is limited to a maximum of 256kbps upload speed which is shared between a number of users on your exchange. If you have ever experimented with Instant Messenger and web cams to 'video conference' you will know just how small an image you see and the jerkiness of the image. Basically, one line gives you 128k, which only allows so much image data to be transferred, 2 lines can be combined to give 256k and 3 lines combined gives you 386k. Traditional video conferencing systems require 3 x ISDN lines to be installed at each site so that they can be combined into a single 386kps connection. This is not cheap as you have the ISDN installation and rental costs at each site plus phone charges whenever you are using the video conferencing system. However the image quality is excellent, smooth and full screen as the 386kps is reliable and dedicated to your conferencing. For details and best results call us today at 1-800-287-9755 or inquire by email! |
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