VIDEO CONFERENCE

The VC could be separated in two main kinds: Dedicated systems and Desktop . The first one it is usually much bigger that the second. Telepresence is a kind of a dedicated system. Whole rooms are dedicated for this purpose. Usually this kind of equipment is being bought by a company as a whole set of tools (i.e you cannot by your own camera from the local store). Fixed cameras are used the most of the times and video projectors or large screens are usually in a fixed position. Also the room has some set of chairs which is also usually fixed. The reason that dedicated system are like this is because they serve a specific purpose. For example they are used for bussinnes meetings which require to have an formal behaviour. Also usually in a telepresence system your are not only buying the hardware but you are also paying for having good video and voice quality without interuptions. That might seem not so important but many surveys suggested that after two or three fail calls (i.e skype calls) the people get frustrated and they don't use the service.

On the other hand Desktop systems serve the perpose of every day user. They are much cheaper in terms of hardware and most of the times you don't have to pay even for the service(hangouts,skype,oovoo). The obvious drawbacks in Desktop systems are that the video quality is not so good and sometimes you cannot make a video call even if you try ten times or more. Conferencing layers The components within a Conferencing System can be divided up into several different layers: User Interface, Conference Control, Control or Signal Plane, and Media Plane. Videoconferencing User Interfaces (VUI) can be either graphical or voice responsive. Many in the industry have encountered both types of interfaces, and normally graphical interfaces are encountered on a computer. User interfaces for conferencing have a number of different uses; they can be used for scheduling, setup, and making a videocall. Through the user interface the administrator is able to control the other three layers of the system. Conference Control performs resource allocation, management and routing. This layer along with the User Interface creates meetings (scheduled or unscheduled) or adds and removes participants from a conference. Control (Signaling) Plane contains the stacks that signal different endpoints to create a call and/or a conference. Signals can be, but aren’t limited to, H.323 and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Protocols. These signals control incoming and outgoing connections as well as session parameters. The Media Plane controls the audio and video mixing and streaming. This layer manages Real-Time Transport Protocols, User Datagram Packets (UDP) and Real-Time Transport Control Protocol (RTCP). The RTP and UDP normally carry information such the payload type which is the type of codec, frame rate, video size and many others. RTCP on the other hand acts as a quality control Protocol for detecting errors during streaming.

Multipoint videoconferencing Main article: Multipoint Control Unit Simultaneous videoconferencing among three or more remote points is possible by means of a Multipoint Control Unit (MCU). This is a bridge that interconnects calls from several sources (in a similar way to the audio conference call). All parties call the MCU, or the MCU can also call the parties which are going to participate, in sequence. There are MCU bridges for IP and ISDN-based videoconferencing. There are MCUs which are pure software, and others which are a combination of hardware and software. An MCU is characterised according to the number of simultaneous calls it can handle, its ability to conduct transposing of data rates and protocols, and features such as Continuous Presence, in which multiple parties can be seen on-screen at once. MCUs can be stand-alone hardware devices, or they can be embedded into dedicated videoconferencing units.

The MCU consists of two logical components: A single multipoint controller (MC), and Multipoint Processors (MP), sometimes referred to as the mixer. The MC controls the conferencing while it is active on the signaling plane, which is simply where the system manages conferencing creation, endpoint signaling and in-conferencing controls. This component negotiates parameters with every endpoint in the network and controls conferencing resources. While the MC controls resources and signaling negotiations, the MP operates on the media plane and receives media from each endpoint. The MP generates output streams from each endpoint and redirects the information to other endpoints in the conference. Some systems are capable of multipoint conferencing with no MCU, stand-alone, embedded or otherwise. These use a standards-based H.323 technique known as "decentralized multipoint", where each station in a multipoint call exchanges video and audio directly with the other stations with no central "manager" or other bottleneck. The advantages of this technique are that the video and audio will generally be of higher quality because they don't have to be relayed through a central point. Also, users can make ad-hoc multipoint calls without any concern for the availability or control of an MCU. This added convenience and quality comes at the expense of some increased network bandwidth, because every station must transmit to every other station directly.

Standards The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) (formerly: Consultative Committee on International Telegraphy and Telephony (CCITT)) has three umbrellas of standards for videoconferencing: ITU H.320 is known as the standard for public switched telephone networks (PSTN) or videoconferencing over integrated services digital networks. While still prevalent in Europe, ISDN was never widely adopted in the United States and Canada.[citation needed] ITU H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is a compression standard that enables videoconferencing systems to achieve highly error resilient Internet Protocol (IP) video transmissions over the public Internet without quality-of-service enhanced lines.[28] This standard has enabled wide scale deployment of high definition desktop videoconferencing and made possible new architectures, which reduces latency between the transmitting sources and receivers, resulting in more fluid communication without pauses. In addition, an attractive factor for IP videoconferencing is that it is easier to set up for use along with web conferencing and data collaboration. These combined technologies enable users to have a richer multimedia environment for live meetings, collaboration and presentations. ITU V.80: videoconferencing is generally compatibilized with H.324 standard point-to-point videotelephony over regular plain old telephone service (POTS) phone lines. The Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF), a non-profit alliance between communications vendors, launched in May 2010. The organization's vision is to maximize the interoperability of UC based on existing standards. Founding members of UCIF include HP, Microsoft, Polycom, Logitech/LifeSize Communications and Juniper Networks

4.Social

It would be also useful to put it from the perspective of how the conversation in VC is carrying out. More specificity the characteristics of VC are limiting our ability of fluent communication in comparison with real communication. Factors like the frames per second, the position of the body make the conversation more difficult. Also the angle of the body is the same, so the body language is very much restricted.Not even to mention micro-gestures as a small lip movement which in real life someone can tell if the person who is speaking with, is lying or not. Moreover due to the nature of internet (packets and not dedicated lines like telephony) makes it vulnerable to errors which mean that the voice a lot of times might be corrupted. That is to mean that the conservators are in a king of situation , wait to hear the other and then respond, which in real life doesn't happen because we have much more interruptions. All these things make the communication with VC much more unnatural.That is why people still prefer the telephone, because they rely only on their voices instead of trying to adapt to this simulation of real conversation.

5.Competition

• Adobe Connect “Universal Voice: Enabling audio integration regardless of platform”
• Avistar “Integrated applications for unified collaboration”
• Cisco Unified Meeting Place “Enhance Productivity with Virtual Meetings” Conference Group “Global. Experienced. Customized.”
• DimDim “Web Conferencing That Just Works”
• Ekko Elluminate “Where Bright Ideas Meet”
• FlashMeeting
• GatherPlace “Effective Remote Communications”
• Gizmo5 Glance “Desktop Sharing With One Click”
• Google Video Chat
• GoToMeeting “Online Meetings Made Easy” World”
• HP SkyRoom “The visual sharing power to work from wherever you have network access”
• IBM SameTime “Your onramp to unified communications and collaboration”
• IChat
• ilinc “Web \& Video Conferencing” Conferencing Solution”
• iVisit “Meet Anywhere, Anytime for FREE”
• Logitech – Lifesize
• Logitech – SightSpeed
• MeBeam
• MegaMeeting “Video & Web Conferencing For ALL Of Us”
• Microsoft Office Live Meeting
• Microsoft Communicator
• Nefsis
• Netviewer Meet
• ooVoo “Amazingly simple crystal clear video chat”
• Palbee “World has never been smaller!”
• Paltalk
• Persony “Cost-effective Private Label Web/Video Conferencing”
• Polycom PVX
• Radvision SCOPIA “Delivering the Visual Experience”
• Saba Centra “The People Management Solution”
• Skype “Say, Hi World!” — You might also be interested to read our article here: VSee – Free Alternative to Skype Video Conference – Comparison
• SnapYap “Instant Video Calling and Video Messaging”
• Vawkr “Instant group video chat that you can paste anywhere”
• VeaMea “A Fresh Way To Communicate and Collaborate”
• Vidivic “Your partner in web conferencing”
• Vidsoft “Increase Productivity. Save Time and Money”
• Vidyo “Personal Telepresence” — You might also be interested to read our article here: VSee – Free Alternative to Vidyo Telepresence Business Video Conference – Comparison
• ViVu “Better than being there”
• VTEL Ipanel “All-In-One Room System”
• Vyew “Share Your View”
• Webex Wormhole Web Conference “Easy, Fast and Affordable Web Conferencing”
• Wimba “people teach people”
• WorldVuer “Touch the world”
• YuuGuu
• Zorap “Hang out and enjoy”

This is only a small list of all of the business solutions that they are available on the market a companied with a title slogan. That is to mean that there is a lot of competition out there both on the free and commercial services.

6.Future

The following years video conferences are very prominent. There is a tense of installing video plug-ins in the browsers instead of using VC in a separate application.But from May 2011 you are able to communicate from your browser, not even using plug-ins.This technology it is actually called Web RTC (Real-Time Communications).So it is like an embedded plug-in on the browser which has the ability to access the microphone the camera and make video calls\cite{WebRTC,wikiWbRTC}. Now we are seeing that Mozilla is about to release Firefox hello which actually a service that you are able to make video calls or communicate via chat. Google has also brought hangouts in the browsers. Microsoft’s next step is also to put skype on the browser game. As we can see the game is going towards the browser area. Firefox Hello is already launched in the Firefox Beta Edition (16/10/2014) and is about to be launched in the standard edition the next months. Google hangouts, the equivalent VoIP service is already available on chrome browser. Apple has do the same as it is available to make FaceTime calls via Safari. That is to mean that the companies are aiming rather on the browsers than a stand alone application. Also a great deal of attention is focus on mobile and tablet application. For some reason Microsoft released a major update for the skype application on iPad and iPhone. But all these has to do with the current technology. What have taken the technological world by storm is the oculus device for virtual reality. In fact is an advanced head set that can be used in multiple fields such as gaming but also in VoIP. The reason why it is the talk of the town Is because people will be able to sit in virtual rooms and communicate like sitting next to each other. That brings communication to a very different level. It facilitates a lot the communication process. This technology is very prominent, the people of oculus are promising that the users will be able to interact with objects. People will be more flexible in their communication as they will be able to interact with physical objects like white boards. That will also will facilitate professions like architects that deal a lot with 3d structures. There is a big future in this area.

What also show that there is in general a lot of future in video conference in the numbers? Statistics show that a lot of money are being invested and the profits from VoIP telephony are rising. That has to do with the increase to the video quality and the cost that they are falling. One of the main factors why companies use more and more the video conference communication is due to the fact that in our age there are a lot of employees that work miles apart. So video conferencing cuts down the travel costs. A web can see from the research conducted by the ” Infonetics Research” enterprises are going to buy more and more Video conference and telepresence products.

Getting into more technical stuff we are also waiting for the future a lot of changes in VC in mobiles. That is because of the great acceptance of the LTE networks. LTE mobile networks provide grater data capacity, as a matter of fact with this technology we are able to use HD voice which makes the video calls through mobiles much more better. In 2020 we are expecting the adoption of 5G networks which will bring much better performance in VC conference for smartphones.

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