Live Webcasting for Long Distance Learning

HD Video Conferencing, 720 & 1080, Using Standard Video Peripherals 

In business-to-business video conferencing, HD is a core component of high-end telepresence offerings. It is also finding its way into traditional boardroom systems, and – this is the interesting part – now available in desktop video conferencing software and online services too. In short, a good solution is high definition ready, boardroom to desktop, using widely available and cost-effective HD computer peripherals.

For most suppliers of video conferencing equipment, high definition requires a platform that is capable of encoding and decoding the HD video conferencing stream. Vendors such as Polycom developed a new line of codecs with greater processing power in order to support HD. In the case of Nefsis, the ability to encode and decode HD video was simply a matter of the peripheral environment (camera and bandwidth). The main reason is that Nefsis was originally designed to handle HD content and other compute intensive applications.

There was a time when standard PC's lacked the processing power to handle a video conference. Companies, such as Polycom, Tandberg and Lifesize emerged with dedicated hardware or "box" solutions. This approach was the paradigm for video conferencing for the past two decades. When HD standards began to materialize, box vendors set about on new custom hardware designs to handle the additional load associated with HD content. Thus, perpetuating the cycle of dedicated boxes for each technological advancement.

But times have changed, the PC's of today are powered by multi-core processors. Think of it as multiple processors on a single chip. Instead of a single processing core, there are now multiple cores working in unison to deliver a new standard of performance and power to the desktop.

Furthermore, digital video has permeated the consumer electronics and desktop computing industries. In addition to their multi-core capabilities, a typical desktop computer sold within the last two years also features extremely powerful video and multimedia processor extensions such as Intel® MMX and SSE. Indeed, the PC has become a common platform for watching HD movies, clips and films, dramatic proof that the PC is many times more powerful than box solutions of the past decade.

Nefsis is the only multipoint video conferencing application that was designed specifically to take full advantage of multi-core processors and MMX extensions on a PC. This is one of the reasons why our solution can effortlessly encode and decode multipoint HD content.

The following background information on HD should help you gain a better understanding of the components that make up a complete high definition solution.

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