Re: Home Videoconferencing (NOT Cusm)

Steve Loboyko (slob@mindspring.com)
Sun, 29 Jan 1995 12:47:28 -0500

The Sharevision system is an example (i think) of a system that does
compression in hardware (indeo?). I think that the V compression in CU is as
good as can be expected given the fact that it is software based and has to
be reasonably fast, but it can't compete with a hardware compressor (not
from lack of programming talent, just because of a lack of raw processor speed).

I know that the following statements will get the CU developers mad, but
when the source code is released, I'm going to try having my Mediavision
board (with a MS codec compressor in hardware) do the compression on max,
which seems to deliver a pretty darned good bytes per frame on its
"videoconferencing" setting (you can play around with it to get a
quality<>compression tradeoff); the CU compression would be bypassed. "The
other end", if its a PC, can hopefully decompress this if its got the MS
codec. The same principle could be applied to Indeo, although I don't think
that Indeo will compress enough for POTS (I played around with an Indeo
board, and I don't think the Intel board I played with can be set for 256
color palletized).

Note that neither the PMS and Indeo boards (of which I am aware) decompress
in hardware...so processor speed's still going to be important.

Unfortunately, this kind of setup probably would kill the interoperability
of the program between Mac's and PC's, a laudable goal; however, in my case
(trying to set up video point-to-point) this is not important.
Steve Loboyko
Software Engineer
cR Solutions, Incorporated
11285 Elkins Rd suite G-1
Roswell GA 30076

slob@mindspring.com
hhtp://www.mindspring.com/~slob/home.html

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