Between yesterday and today I pretty much realized streaming is out of the question. I am going to use e-mail to send it.
Thanks for your reply,
JOe K.
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Lowband with Video Chat, webcams
Hi,
I work for a non-profit agency that does home energy audits. We work in rural areas but would like internet access from our clients homes. Because we are in rural areas 3g is out of the question.
However, dial up internet works and because there is no cell phone reception our clients have land lines.
One of the main reasons we want to do this is so our crews can show our field supervisor anomalies found on the job via the internet (video chat) as opposed to him driving 3 hours there and back.
We are going to use netbooks and external webcams.
Is there a low-ish bandwidth video chat application that would work well for this? We don't need 30fps but a higher resolution with lower frame rate may work better.
I have never used a video chat program so I am not sure of the bandwidth requirements. I am thinking of using a .33MP webcam for lower-res picture (if necessary) to conserve bandwidth.
Would a 1.3MP webcam chew up bandwidth?
What video chat application will allow us to modify settings to accommodate low bandwidth connection?
Thanks,
JOe K.
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Answers
The main issue you would need to look for in a videoconferencing provider is flexibility in the stream that they are sending for your webcam. There are services that do this automatically dependent on the number of people that are in the meeting (www.oovoo.com is a free one I know of. The more people in the meeting, the smaller the streams get.)
This might or might not work for you as with a one on one meeting, you would be receiving a full strong stream that your network might not be able to handle. An ideal provider would be able to set your stream to a constant low level.
My company provides streams from 80k to 1.2MB and the window sizes vary with the rate of the stream. Ours is set server side and that is something I think you should look for in a provider. A constant rate that works for your situation and you will always know what you get.
The quality of your camera will not be a factor is you are guaranteed a specific stream from your provider. Your camera sending .33 or 1.3MP is still going to stream at 200k with our service set to that level. In this situation, the better quality camera would hardly be noticeable as most of the information would be dropped anyway and you would just have a steady stream. Don't worry about the camera. Concentrate on the provider service offering.
I'd be glad to do some test meetings with you if you like in a mock VideoConference. You can contact me through my profile here on EE.
Good luck,
Anthony
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by: devinnoelPosted on 2009-01-08 at 11:20:36ID: 23328900
Basically a webcam in any kind of streaming video over a dialup modem won't work, they just require too much bandwidth, even with very low quality streams. If feasible, I'd look at digital cameras and just E-mail or otherwise transmit better quality still photos.
Higher quality and lower frame rate with be just as bandwith intensive as lower quality higher frame rate, unless you drop it down to multiple seconds per frame.
http://sorenson-usa.
Giv
Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wi