Video Conferencing – Understand The Basics

Internet video conferencing is an interactive tool incorporating the technology of audio, video, and computers with communication technology to allow people in different locations to hold meetings in real time (or live). Documents, sound and pictures can be shared by a group all at the same time, either via a free video conferencing facility online or a video conference set up by a business. Online video conferencing can be compared to the use of instant messaging or online chat programs but video is added to the connection so that you can see the people on the other end.

The History of Video Conferencing

For many years, a future was predicted where people could have telephone conversations and see each other at the same time via a computer connection.

There were a lot of problems with the video conferencing technology at first before this procedure became as widely known and used as it is nowadays. The first type of audio video conferencing goes back to the 1960’s, when the company AT&T introduced their Picture phone at the World’s Fair in New York. This device made it possible fro people to speak to each other and see the person on the other end of the line at the same time, for the first time ever. People were fascinated by this possibility but the device never became popular and was too expensive for most consumers when it was sold for $160 a month in 1970. More about the history of video conferencing can be found at: http://www.ezinearticles.com/?The-History-of-Video-Conferencing--- Moving-Ahead-at-the-Speed-of-Video&id=5369.

How Does Video Conferencing Work?

Videoconferencing devices process and compress video and audio signals so that these signals can be transmitted over different existing telecommunications networks all over the world. The technology is fairly complicated and hard to understand but the video conferencing basics are that video and audio signals get sent to a device called a codec (meaning a coder and decoder). These signals are processed by the codec and passed on to other people who are in connection with the codec via computers or a video screen.

The definition of video conferencing is that three more sites except for a sender can connect at the same time through a video bridge called a Multi-Point Control Unit (MCU). This bridge ensures that data such as sound and images will be transmitted correctly via the so-called codec, to other people using the video conferencing system. Devices needed to establish a video conference are:

• A codec device
• A camera
• A speaker
• A microphone
• A monitor to display images
• Compression software processing the images and sound sent by the codec
• A telecommunication network

Most phone companies offer digital networks capable of supporting videoconferencing

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