We’ve been led to believe that video calling is the best next thing. It hasn’t really happened, although there are signs of oil. To understand why video calling isn’t catching yet, we must look at the main problem today that hinders its growth - it’s not bandwidth, It’s not even money. It’s connectivity. Pure and simple.

If you look at today’s video telephony deployments, they are enterprise centric and they usually happen in large, multi-national enterprises, where you have multiple office locations spread all over the world. In these cases, there is an IT team that takes care of the video telephony network and equipment in the company - someone to call whenever something doesn’t work.

I know that because I actually work in such an organization. We sell equipment to these companies, but to be honest - I have never ever had a video call with people outside of RADVISION - unless they were located in a RADVISION office elsewhere.

And why is that?  Is it because firewall traversal is a pain for video calls?

Or is it because there’s a dial plan issue, where dialing others is a pain?

It’s probably a bit of both, and until these are fixed, video is not going to succeed: there are a lot of small and medium enterprises out there that have no use for video telephony simply because they have a single office - it doesn’t make sense to call within the office. But - if you can come to such an enterprise, and offer a video service that allows them to communicate better with their suppliers or customers - how many of them wouldn’t want to use such a service (cost aside)?

Solutions such as SCOPIA Desktop ARE solving this problem. They do that by offering a thin client that can be used by virtually anyone with a PC and a webcam, and it doesn’t matter if he is part of the organization that deploys the solution or not.

The missing links at the moment are the room systems, which still dominate the video communications market - they need to catch up with the desktop solutions and provide better connectivity out of the organizations they cater.

Once that happens - video will become the default communications tool of SMBs.

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CES is the world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow, with more companies than time allows to meet. I’ll be there with some of our closest partners for a new project we’ve been working on for the last couple of months.

I’ve spent the last few days going over the names of companies at the show and preparing a “hit list” consisting of the companies that can become potential customers for our technology or those that we can partner with for their own technology or services.

I’m really looking forward for this show. If you’re going to be at CES and would like to meet /leave me a note in my contact form, I’d love to read what you have to say.

Las Vegas - here I come!

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High Definition has many different definitions: it’s 1080p (1920×1080) for sure. It’s also 720p (1280×720). At times, 480p is considered HD as well (HTC Touch HD has 480×800 resolution). The term is being overused for so many things.

I prefer just taking Sagee’s perception regarding HD, stating that it is the best available resolution at a given point in time.

Number of pixels in different resolutions

I know people who don’t see the need for 1080p - they can’t see the difference from 720p. And now, there’s this TRUEDEF thing that does 4096×2048 resolution. Four times the pixels as 1080p. Hmm.

As for the technical differences of the video coding technologies of TRUEDEF from HD, I’ll leave that to others who are more suited to deal with them than I am.

Do we really need this kind of resolution? Isn’t 1080p enough?

I’d rather go for 3D than invest time and money into more pixels.

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We technical people always look at things from the spec sheet side of life: What protocol? What codec? What resolution? What I want to bring to you here is the opposite view of life, that of the non-technical user. By non-technical I don’t mean in the sense of someone not knowing the detailed differences between SIP and H.323 or between G.711 and AMR-WB but someone who doesn’t know the acronym VoIP.

I was onboard an airplane about to return home from Hong Kong to Israel. Next to me was an ultra-orthodox Jewish guy who looked to be in his mid-late 50s. I thought: Not much to speak about with this guy, good thing I have my Bose Noise Cancellation Headphones and iPod with me. As we started preparing for takeoff the flight attendants were taking the “turn off all electronic devices” thing seriously so they weren’t that happy with me when I kept my music rolling. I was forced to turn it off, and I ended up diving into a conversation with my neighbor.

He told me about his company that exports clothes from China and imports them to the US and South America. The guy lived in Hong Kong for some 20 years and is now living in Israel. He has offices in Hong Kong, Israel, the US and Brazil.

When it was my turn to talk, I looked for a simple, non-techie way to tell him we are into providing software building blocks for VoIP applications. When I got to our video stuff he started getting excited telling me he is using video on a day-to-day basis. In his offices he has video terminals from some of the leading vendors in this space, which each cost him thousands of dollars. These terminals are deployed at the desktop level, meaning not in meeting rooms but on some of his employees’ office desks. He said this is the only way for his people to really see their colleagues and bosses in other offices. All-in-all, he said, video is going to be found in every office. It’s going to be just like a FAX.

To me it was really fun hearing these words from a non-geeky, non-technical person who is excited not because of the technology but simply because of the value it brings him. He doesn’t know if what he is using is SD or HD and he is sure that H.323 is a special model of the Mazda 323 (a car that was once dominant among Israeli High-Tech employees). BUT what he does know is that some of his employees have never physically met yet they meet face-to-face daily through this technology.

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Voice and Video Quality

• Bandwidth - video requires huge amounts of bandwidth. You simply can’t do video over the internet.
• Processing Power - CPUs can’t process video fast enough, and if they can, they cost too much.
• Latency - the bandwidth is good, but latency is killing the quality. You can’t have a conversation if someone can’t interject when you breathe or know when you finished a sentence.
• Packet Loss - the networks quality is lousy, and video is just so sensitive. If you work on a noisy network, you just can’t get decent video.

Management/Deployment

• Firewalls - firewalls and NATs (Network Address Translators) make video deployment impossible.
• Walled Gardens - today’s systems are closed islands of deployments that can’t interwork with each other.
• Complexity - video systems are too complex. You must have IT people handholding you on every video conference you make.

Pricing

• Cost - video costs a fortune.

Human Factors

• People Don’t Like to be Seen - when you place people in front of the camera they think about how they look and not about the conversation. Video conferencing reduces the communication level and focus, instead of increasing it.
• No Real Need - who needs video? Voice is good enough for almost everything.

I can say that nothing on this list strikes me as being true today, or as a barrier that can’t be overcome with good technical solutions.

The trend I see is that the technical problems are being solved one after the other. I’ll devote some of my posts in the beginning of 2009 to discuss the relevant solutions.

Oh - and if you think I missed a reason - feel free to add it by commenting.

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I have been reading the Presentation Zen blog for quite a while. The blogger behind the site, Garr Reynolds, is a master when it comes to presentations and what people should do with Powerpoint in the enterprise (hint - it’s not bullet points).

When it was time to make another large purchase of books from Amazon, I just had to put my hands on Garr’s book “Presentation Zen“. When the package arrived from Amazon, this book was the first I took. I spent several days reading it, and I must say it’s the best book about presentations I’ve read so far.

At the time I was reading it, an opportunity to try out the techniques in the book presented itself: a visit from VP of a large company was coming up, and I was called on to talk about one of our products. The occasion called for a new presentation, as the current presentation for this product was targeted at developers and product managers. It needed something of a different nature, so I wrote a new presentation, based on the book I was reading of course.

The result? I felt the Wow effect - The message was conveyed the way I wanted it. The meeting was successful. And now, I have been asked to fly to another meeting to give the same presentation.

If you need to give presentations at work, don’t pass the opportunity of improving them - purchase this book. Use it. The time it will take you to write presentations will grow, BUT: the presentations will be leaner, and they will convey the point you are trying to make more effectively.

Don’t forget to read Garr’s blog while you’re at it.

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No elves or reindeers were harmed in the making of this blog post…

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Video telephony on mobile handsets today requires a protocol called 3G-324M. It is one of the show stoppers for the use of video telephony, and the creation of services such as ringback tones. This is due to the long amount of time it takes to actually connect a call - from the moment you accept a call until you see the video, you have to wait for an average of at least seven seconds.

The technique that has been standardized for 3G-324M to reduce this time to below a second is called MONA, which is comprised of three different technologies. The most important technology, out of the three, is called ACP (Accelerated Connect Procedure). It has been invented and promoted by RADVISION and has just been granted a patent.

In order to be MONA compliant, companies must also implement ACP, which is mandatory in the video telephony standard. This means that every MONA compliant handset is using our patent.

If you are looking for technical information regarding MONA, I suggest reading our whitepaper on the different techniques for accelerating 3G-324M call setup time.

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A few weeks ago, when TMCnet approached me and asked if I wanted to open a blog in their network, I was thrilled. It took a few days of thinking and contemplating, especially trying to understand (and make sure) that I can actually add another activity to my already busy week, but as things go - writing won over common sense.

My “Talking Video” blog will focus specifically on video telephony. I’ll be writing there once a week, in addition to the two posts a week you are reading here. So if you find my writing interesting, I’d appreciate if you follow me over at TMCnet as well.

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As video over IP is becoming commonplace, more and more people are becoming involved with video applications development, integration, deployment and administration. As complicated as video coding is, it is not unmanageable. If it is your first step into video compression technology, you might find the terms I’ve collected below useful.

Video Encoder: Software or hardware device that enables video compression. Generally, compression is used to reduce the size of the visual content, either for storage purposes or for streaming over a network channel (reduce bit rate). Video encoder performance and quality is being determined by the encoder complexity.

Video Decoder: Software or hardware device that enables video decompression. In general, a video decoder is used to reconstruct the video content from compressed data into a visible displayed format. For real time streaming network applications, the decoder is used to convert video packets sent over the network into video frames which can be displayed on screen.

Bit rate: Rate of bits transmitted over a particular period of time on a specific channel. In video coding applications, video bit rate is determined by the number of the used bits per one second. For example: 1Mbps = 1Megabit (1 Million bits) per second.

Frame Rate (fps): Rate of frames used in one second of video stream.

Frame resolution: A term defining the size of the basic element of video content - the frame. Frame resolution describes the number of pixels on the horizontal and vertical axis of a video frame. There are several predefined popular acronyms for frame resolutions: CIF - 352×288, 4CIF - 704×576, D1 - 720×480 (NTSC) or 720×576 (PAL), 720p - 1280×720.

PAL: A term used to describe playback video on a PAL TV. In general, PAL refers to standard definition (SD) video with vertical resolution of up to 576 pixels and horizontal resolution of up to 720 pixels. PAL frame rate is 25 fps. PAL broadcasting can be found in Western Europe countries, Australia, various countries of South America and assorted Asian countries.

NTSC: A term used to describe a playback video on a NTSC TV. NTSC generally includes standard definition (SD) video with vertical resolution of up to 480 pixels and horizontal resolution of up to 720 pixels. NTSC frame rate is 29.97 fps. NTSC is used in United States, Canada, Japan, and various Asian countries.

High Definition: Usually refers to frame resolutions of 720p and up.

Frame Types: In video coding, there are several common frame types. I or Intra frame is a frame that is coded independently of any other frame, using only spatial redundancies for prediction and coding. An I-frame uses relatively more bits compared to other frame types. I frame coding complexity is relatively less than other frames types.

P or Inter frame is a predictive video frame. This coding is done according to predictions made on the current frame following the previous I or P frames. A P frame is coded by using temporal redundancies from the previous frame. P frame uses relatively less bits than I frame and its complexity is higher. B frame refers to a Bi-directionally predicted frame and requires information from previous and following I, P or B frames. B frame uses relatively less bits than all other frame types and its coding complexity is greater than all other frames types. Usage of this type of frame introduces system delay. Hence, it is not popular in real time low delay applications.

Picture Aspect Ratio: Representation of an image width to its height. A general notation is the form of X:Y where X represent the image width and Y represent the image height. While there are several video standards that are currently used in video applications, it is necessary to keep aspect ratio stable when converting from one display standard to another. Avoiding that may cause the resultant frame to look distorted, squeezed or stretched.

Packet Loss: Packets are units of information sent across a packet switched network from their source address to a destination. Packet loss occurs when one or more packets fail to reach their destination. On network protocols such as UDP that provide no recovery mechanism for packet loss, applications should handle that error efficiently and should be able to conceal the lost data. In video conferencing applications, packet loss is the most frequently encountered error type and it reduces video quality and quality of service.

H.26x, MPEG-x, WMV x, Real Video, VPx: Commonly used video standards and video codecs. Some of those widely used video codecs are specified in international standards while the others are based on proprietary standards.

• The H.26x term refers to ITU standards while the MPEG-x term refers to ISO/IEC standards.
• WMV (its latest version known as VC1) is Microsoft’s standard for high efficiency video coding. RealVideo is a popular video codec, developed by RealNetworks mainly used in PC and mobile applications.
• VPx is a proprietary video codec, developed by On2 Technologies and is commonly used by Adobe flash player and internet video platforms.
• Common MPEG codecs are MPEG 2 and MPEG 4. MPEG 2 is widely spread as a popular storage and broadcasting codec. MPEG 4 and its derivatives are common in mobile device applications as well as storage formats, and supported by many DVD players.
• Common H.26x codecs are H.263 and H.264. H.263 is widely used by video conferencing applications. H.264 is a joint development of ITU and ISO/IEC and currently is the latest video standard available in the industry. H.264 goal was to provide good video quality at substantially lower bit rates than previous standards without increasing the complexity of design.

Lossy compression: A term used to describe a compression method where the compressed data cannot be reconstructed exactly as the original form. This type of compression is mainly used in visual and audio applications where a partial loss of data is acceptable by the human visual and hearing systems. As opposed to a lossless compression where the compressed data can be reconstructed precisely, lossy compression methods require significantly less bits in the compressed form.

Jitter: A term used to describe the variation in packet delay. In packet switch applications, where data is carrying over network packets, there is a variance in the packet arrival timing. In order to overcome this variance and to provide a smooth usage of the received packets, a delay buffer is added to the system. In most cases, the buffer size is being determined by the max introduced variance.

Lip Sync: A term used to refer to the relative timing of audio and video portions during playback. In general, it used to describe the matching of lip movements with voice. Generally, human perception is sensitive to non synchronized audio and video with a relative phase of ~100 msec. In contrast, there are some people that are sensitive to much lower durations.

Video Artifacts: The big challenge in most video applications is to provide the highest video quality with a minimum cost of bit rate. As a result of lossy compression techniques, non optimized network conditions and other application restrictions, video quality is affected and quality of service may reduce. Video artifacts may be generated from non optimal settings and environment characteristics, causing an unpleasant visual view. The most popular video artifact is the quantization noise, generated as a result of bit rate reduction. Network packet loss, when accruing frequently, increases the video artifacts dramatically. Other artifacts like ringing noise, blocking effects, blurred images, un-sharpness and more are a result of the codec processing and in some cases, may be compensated with post processes after the decoder task.

I guess that some of the readers will jump with a statement - I didn’t know that but I wouldn’t consider myself a dummy. On the other hand, others will claim that there are many other terms that were not introduced. All are right and these terms are just the beginning.

To be continued.

Amit.

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