What is video conferencing?

Video Conferencing is the medium to allow meetings to take place via video and audio being relayed from separate sites to allow for collaboration without having to physically travel to the meeting.

Traditional video conferencing has been in production for many years, and has traditionally been an expensive undertaking from a hardware and usage perspective. Historically video calls have been established utilising ISDN lines which is the equivalent of making multiple telephone calls at one time in order to establish the video connection, keeping in mind that the international call tariffs apply to charge multiple lines depending on the quality of the call.

The video system or codec is fundamentally a decoder and encoder for video and audio. The codec will decode video and audio that is incoming from the far end site, and broadcast the near end sites video and audio to the far end site. Both sites receive 2-way communication with both video and audio being transmitted between the parties involved, thereby allowing for a conversation or real-time meeting to occur as if the participants were in the same room.

Modern video communication platforms have evolved with the development of SVC (scaled video codec) and have the ability to establish HD communications with low to moderate bandwidth via the IP network.

This has given way to far more cost effective solutions and platforms, allowing organisations & general users to roll out mobile video communications platforms their work forces in a cost effective manner.

The need for AV integration is vast, as even with simple and cost effective conferencing solutions the User will still require the ability to attend the video call in an environment that lends itself to an integrated meeting room scenario. The integrated solution will incorporate and allow for the usage of boundary microphones, touch panel control interface, large screen displays.