VIDEO CONFERENCING

Video conferencing is a powerful communications tool in the modern business world. The ability to share important business discussions with body language and facial expressions delivers enormous benefits compared to any other conferencing media. In many ways, video conferencing has truly become “the next-best thing to being there.”

Many Fortune 500 companies are frequent users of video conferencing solutions based on Video MCU (Multimedia Conferencing Unit) technology along with ISDN-based networks and video terminals. However, the expense of these systems often limits the deployment of conferencing technology to room-based systems in each corporate location. Video MCU products are typically tight, proprietary integrations of a conferencing application and video processing hardware. Video MCU solutions limit third-party feature enhancements, and also limit the reuse of the video processing resources with other applications. The result is a relatively expensive single-service solution with limited flexibility and scalability.

RadiSys Convedia Media Servers are bringing video application development into the Internet era. Convedia Media Servers are purpose-built to economically deliver the DSP-intensive video media processing capabilities essential in next-generation IP video conferencing solutions. Service providers and application developers, using familiar Internet technologies such as SIP and XML scripts, can now develop video conferencing applications to control Convedia’s advanced video bridging, streaming, and transcoding features, including multi-image display options and continuous presence. This “best-of-breed” approach not only reduces the overall costs for a video conferencing solution, but also facilitates the reuse of Convedia’s media processing capabilities across any IP-based audio or video telephony application.
Video codecs supported: H.263, MPEG-4*
Video bridging, switching, and mixing
Video conference recording and playback
Video transcoding and rate matching*
Advanced continuous presence*
External video media storage
Open standards-based control interface based on SIP and MSML/MOML facilitates integration with videomail application servers
Software-only upgrade to existing RadiSys Convedia Media Server platforms
Interoperability with existing ISDN-based terminals or emerging 3G-H324M mobile video terminals can be achieved through appropriate video gateway devices. When deployed with any QoS-enabled IP network (such as an IP VPN or an MPLS backbone network), video conferencing quality is comparable to existing ISDN-based solutions, at a fraction of the initial capital and ongoing operational expense. The result is an improved ROI, which will drive the economic migration and service benefits of video conferencing solutions out of the conference rooms and towards desktops and 3G mobile phones.