[cisco-voip] cool stuff - video-to-usb capture feed into WebEx, Spark, Jabber, etc.

[Lelio Fulgenzi]

I wanted to share this in the event that it could be useful to others.

I was thinking about how to integrate standard A/V solutions with computer based conferencing solutions answering two questions: (i) how can we continue to use existing investments in A/V solutions around campus with computer based conferencing solutions, and (ii) what are the alternatives to expensive room based conferencing solutions.

The answer was fairly simple in the end : a driverless video-to-usb capture device. And to be honest, quite impressive. The hardest part was selecting the device to test with. I ended up selecting the Inogeni HDMI-to-USB3 device. Based this on price as well as I like to support local - Quebec being more local than any other source region. ;)

Some important points I had to consider:


*         It had to be driverless - otherwise it may not work with all software

*         Support had to be great and quick - the Inogeni engineers quickly identified and resolve a Spark problem

*         It had to be as close to line rate as possible - most of the expensive solutions had only 1-3 frames of delay

*         It had to off-load CPU - this was when downscaling/upscaling was happening

*         Knowledge of the web conferencing world - wide array of apps and tools, from Facebook to Jabber

While investigating, though, I found some very interesting devices out there that (could potentially) solve this problem in interesting ways. Some devices are more complex than others, but give more features. Some support multiple feeds. One, quite interesting, only outputs 720p low frame rate for web broadcasting to save bandwidth. Which was weird in my opinion considering bandwidth availability and that it maxes out at this rate and is not user selectable.

Some interesting links:

https://inogeni.com/

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/blackmagicwebpresenter

https://www.epiphan.com/products/

My next step is to integrate audio mixing into things. I will have to choose between sending audio through cam-corder to ensure audio/video frame matching -or- through an RCA-to-USB audio device and select it separately.


---
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A.
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure
Computing and Communications Services (CCS)
University of Guelph

519-824-4120 Ext 56354
lelio at uoguelph.ca
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs
Room 037, Animal Science and Nutrition Building
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: winmail.dat
Type: application/ms-tnef
Size: 18255 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-voip/attachments/20170418/fb51c96e/attachment.bin>