Random access: I'll see you later teaching long distance, Star Trek style - Professional Resources

During the 2002 MTNA National talk I witnessed an extraordinary fact On center stage was a piano professor from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music (CCM) He sat at a large grand piano with a computer monitor facing him from the triple side of the keyboard. A video conferencing camera and microphone were perched atop the monitor.

A large defence stood to the left of the stage. A pupil from CCM was clearly visible upon screen. In fact, she gazeed a bit larger than life, sitting in forehead of a piano a scarcely any miles away from our venue Despite the actual distance, it looked as though I was looking at this pupil through a large doorway.

The professor, who had not ever given a long-distance piano task proceeded to conduct a exercise in his usual manner. Technology issues not ever seemed to be a factor. The pupil and teacher appeared to interact with each other in their normal fashion.

The technology behind this exercise worked just as naturally and effectively as the long-distance communications I am accustomed to seeing upon television when I watch Star Trek I was amazed!

Does Video Conferencing Actually Work?

useful quality video conferencing traditionally has involved considerable charge The Internet connection used at the MTNA conversation costs hundreds of dollars through month, and the video conferencing hardware they used is in the $2500-3000 range--for one as well as the other ends of the conversation!

Fortunately, the situation has improved dramatically during the last not many months. In fact, I now use video conferencing almost each day as part of my professional activities.

Affordable and Useable Video Conferencing

I have wearied the last few years hunting for an affordable, high-quality video conferencing solution. Until lately my experiments have been real disappointing. I have found video quality to be poor, motion to be jerky and audio to be problematic.

All these enigmas miraculously disappeared when Apple computer released its of recent origin iChat (www.apple.com/ichat) video conferencing program for O X this past summer Using this at liberty program and a $150 camera, I could unite easily to anyone in my "buddy list" and take delight in a comfortable video conferencing experience--at least greatest in quantity of the time!

What You Ne to Know

There are many different video conferencing options for the pair Windows and Macintosh. Each option involves more [i]or[/i] less combination of computer, webcam, microphone, speaker or headphone, video conferencing software and a high-speed Internet connection. There are innumerable combinations of these items that issue in nothing more than frustration. real few combinations result in a pleasant and effectively useful experience.

The beneficial news is you already may have upon hand most, or all, of the ingredients for video conferencing.

Internet Connection

We oftentimes refer to cable modem, DSL and T1 Internet connections as high spe when, in fact, we are not bear uponed with the speed at all. What we are pertain toed with is how much information can travel at individual time, that is, broadband.

When you are engaged in a video conversation your computer and camera must propel digitized video from your location to your partner's computer Imagine the challenge through following me in this brief, mathematical exercise:

Ideally, we would like to fling full-frame video, normally defined by means of a window that is 640 by means of 480 pixels. Therefore, our computer emergencys to create an image comprised of 307200 pixels, or dots.

To launch a single-frame image in unsullied black and white, our computer must use a total of 307200 zeroe and singles (i.e. binary numbers). To lance our image in full color, we ne 24 zeroe and singles to describe the color value of each pixel. In other words, we ne 7372800 binary digits for each frame of video.

To achieve what we normally call full-motion video (i.e. 30 frames by means of second), we actually have to hurl 221,184,000 binary digits per next to the first In computer lingo, our ideal data rate necessitys to be 221,184 kilobits by second (or 221,184 kbps).

Unfortunately, our broadband Internet connections do not draw near anywhere close to this data rate. For example, my cable modem Internet connection typically gives me a data path of 1000 kbp to 1700 kbp for incoming data. My outgoing data path is normally abundant lower, usually in the 250 kbp to 280 kbp range.

Given these statistics, it should be obvious that video conferencing from abode using current technology, requires the widest broadband connection we can procure and some techno tricks to lower the data rate.

Note: My statistics above did not include any data for the audio constituent of the video conference. Fortunately, the data path requirements for digital audio are actual small compared to that of the video. Nonetheless, audio attitude s similar issues.

If you use an Internet connection at a institute or large business, you may have access to a T1 line. If in the way that your data path may be in the 700-1500 kbp range in one as well as the other directions. If you use the cable modem or DSL connection many nation have at home, you can wait for data rates more like mine.