sorry all, meant to send this to the list.
-tom
------- Forwarded Message
To: "Kenneth E. Lussier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Video Conferencing
In-Reply-To: Your message of "01 Aug 2003 09:17:11 EDT."
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2003 09:42:56 -0400
From: Tom Fogal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Hi All,
>
> Has anyone done any video conference work on Linux? My company purchased
> several Polycom systems for offices all over the world. However, only
> one of them allows for multiple (4) connections. I was wondering if
> there is a video conferencing server for Linux that would allow mulitple
> connections to tie more people together. Unfortunately, I know little to
> nothing about video conferencing technologies. I have found
> "Gatekeepers", H.323 proxies, and a few other things, but I don't know
> what any of them are, and the docs are scarce. Any pointers?
I used to work at a company called CUseeMe, who made videoconferencing
software. Unfortunately, all client work was windows based.
H.323 is a fairly standard protocol for videoconferencing. the pro is that its
common enough to be supported by a lot of software, including windows
netmeeting, which of course comes with every windows install around. the con,
which may have even been fixed by now (its been a few years :), was that you
only got one video window at a time. the window would switch to whoever was
talking, which, IMHO was not the greatest implementation i've seen.
CUseeMe originally acquired the code from cornel university, and then improved
upon it. For this reason and others, the protocol is semi-open enough; enough
so that a client or two was written totally independent of the company. I
believe the original cornell client (1.0) is still available, and I also
remember seeing another open source client on FM, although I don't know how
interoperable it was. I also recall that the non-company clients were not as
feature-full as the 'official' one.
If you found a workable linux client for the CU protocol, I would highly
recommend that. Their server software (Meeting Point Conference Server? no, I
think they changed the name to CU Conference Server) is top-notch, and runs
on linux. It supports a lot of connections (I remember the number 64 for some
reason) and also does H.323, now that I think of it. So you could just get
that server and still use the H.323 client software you've already found.
OTOH, there should be more H.323 clients out there, and I would imagine they
are better developed than the CU clients.
HTH,
- -tom
------- End of Forwarded Message
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