I still have my Connectix black-and-white QuickCam. Found it the other day whilst in search of cables known to exist, but alas, never to be recovered from the Big Cable Box in my office. It brought back memories of videoconferencing in B&W across dialup lines, with spotty audio, feedback problems, jerky video, random disconnects, but also a feeling that this was simply the beginning... Five Years Later While I still have my Connectix black-and-white QuickCam. Found it the other day whilst in search of cables known to exist, but alas, never to be recovered from the Big Cable Box in my office. It brought back memories of videoconferencing in B&W across dialup lines, with spotty audio, feedback problems, jerky video, random disconnects, but also a feeling that this was simply the beginning… Five Years Later While I’ve done a lot of work in support of video conferencing applications recently, I’ve done little in more modern PC-based video conferencing, and decided to see what was out there. One Logitech QuickCam 4000 Pro and -$100 later, I had a USB webcam that would work with Windows, OS X (with expire-ware drivers from IOExperts) and Linux (with the Philips USB WebCam drivers). Soul did require a reboot for the new kernel, but I took the opportunity to optimize the kernel the way I should have when I built the system, so it was worth it. Also necessary for communication with the world at large was a non-insignificant firewall configuration, with more than 15 TCP and UDP ports requiring redirection at the firewall. The other option — h323 gatekeeper proxy config — wasn’t worth the effort. So we have video; now the applications. Linux Since everyone and their brother uses NetMeeting on Windows, and I’m not all that interested in using Windows, I fired up the obvious Linux videoconferencing application Gnome Meeting. Since soul runs almost-RedHat 7.3 with Gnome 1.1, and the Ximian desktop, it appears that I was stuck with Gnome Meeting 0.85, while all the cool tools seemed to be in GM 0.96. Gnome Meeting 0.85 works reasonably well, but I found the video somewhat sub-par, and NetMeeting compatibility to be flaky at times. I wasn’t in the mood to upgrade the desktop on soul to Gnome2, which is required for GM 0.90+, so I went in search of other alternatives. OpenH323 was the obvious starting point, and within a few minutes, I had everything I needed. Not surprisingly, the OpenH323 project’s CLI-only OhPhone was the easiest package to work with. The video quality was better, both with NetMeeting and OhPhoneX. OS X The aforementioned drivers from IOExperts enabled quick camera installation, and I was quickly running OhPhoneX. Simple, functional application, even if it’s v0.1. It’s simply a GUI to OhPhone. There are missing features, like resizable video displays, but it’s all that’s really necessary.Interestingly, the USB microphone on the camera wasn’t the best, and there seemed to be issues with OhPhone and GnomeMeeting’s audio processing, as the audio at the other end of the conference was a few octaves lower than reality. The Darth Vader effect was amusing to begin with, but proved tiring. Also, the built-in microphone on the PowerBook seemed to cause no end of problems during a conference. This little experiment also underlined some of the USB audio issues in Linux, as enabling USB audio on all the Linux machines caused erratic behavior in other audio applications, and we simply couldn’t have that. Insert one $10 el-cheapo microphone and we’re in business — sort of. Meeting in the middle What have we learned from all this? Seems that we’ve gained color, several advances in A/V codecs, advances in protocol standardization, open-source alternatives for H323 conferencing, but we’re still dealing with spotty audio, feedback problems, jerky video, and random disconnects. Why are we still here? Partly due to cheap hardware, partly due to user apathy — especially when I consider that I would rather not have a videoconference with my editor at 8:30am, when I’m still in my bathrobe — but also due to a certain lack of maturity in VC software on all platforms. It occurs to me that most of the enduring problems in the computing world directly relate to the physical world. The concept of networks first came along as a means by which to share costly resources, such as printers, to a group of users. Printing is definitely easier today, but it’s also a consistent cause of great consternation. Security is in that category, as are application interfaces. Video conferencing is widely used in corporations, but is generally implemented via PolyCom VC units, or similar products. Incidentally, PolyCom does market the ViaVideo personal VC solution, but it’s at a fairly significant cost. Until I can get the same results with a $99 (or less) camera, reliable, useful desktop VC won’t exist for the average user. It’s coming, though, very soon. Promise. Today’s random audio track: March From A Clockwork Orange (Ninth Symphony, Fourth Movement, Abridged) from the Clockwork Orange Soundtrack