Desktop Videoconferencing

Desktop videoconferencing can be done from either of two types of desktop or laptop computers:

• Windows XP computers
• Dual-boot Intel Mac OSX

For a Windows XP or an Intel Mac using BootCamp booted in Windows, the best software is Polycom PVX software that costs just over $100 per copy. You will also need the following equipment:

• A web camera (the Intel Mac using BootCamp Windows XP can use the built-in iSight camera)
• A microphone (can use Intel Mac built-in mic)
• A speaker system, or
• A headphone with attached microphone

In order for the system to function satisfactorily, you must have good Internet connectivity. That means a connection with at least 384 Kbps of upload and download bandwidth. Connectivity between major universities is generally good, however residential or business Internet connections can be problematic.

In addition to interacting with others that are a part of the videoconference using audio and video, you will probably want to share data like PowerPoint. If all of the participants in your videoconference are using Polycom PVX software, you can share your desktop to all sites in order to give a presentation. See the document "Understanding Data Sharing" for more information.

If you have a mixed set of videoconferencing systems from different manufacturers, you will have to do your data sharing "out of band". This means that you will have to run a separate software application that will share your computer and the internet with the videoconferencing application, but not use the videoconferencing software to send or receive the data. We recommend the use of the VNC open source software. One site runs VNC in the server mode, and all other sites run it in the client mode in order to share the application (usually PowerPoint). VNC can be downloaded from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ultravnc

Academic & Research Technologies currently has a Pilot Desktop Videoconferencing Project staffed to further evaluate desktop videoconferencing. The project will be testing various desktop hardware/software platforms to evaluate interoperability between Windows XP and the Intel Mac. We are also investigating additional configurations such as Windows Vista, Intel Mac OSX with Parallels, and Mac OSX with XMeeting.