Setting a New Standard

One of the reasons why traditional video conferencing has never really taken off in quite theway Web conferencing has is that it was designed for an entirely different world than the one we find ourselves in now. That is, unlike the Web — the ultimate in distributed computing — traditional video conferencing was designed to rely almost entirely on centralized Multipoint Control Units (MCUs), dedicated high-bandwidth lines, and special conferencing facilities. And doesn’t that sound like a throwback to the old mainframe days? So, guess what — it turns out the clunky old video conferencing systems are painfully out of place in a Web-powered world. Surprised?

When people think about conferencing, they think in terms of universal connectivity — that is, the ability to call from anywhere to anywhere. And people also want to be able to include all kinds of users in their discussions — ranging from the people in corporate headquarters who can gather in video conferencing rooms to those individuals who will be connecting over the Internet from home offices. But that’s just the sort of flexibility and affordability that has never been associated with traditional video conferencing.

Given all these concerns, Vidyo founder Ofer Shapiro (who was also the inventor of RADVISION’s Gatekeeper and MCU) long ago saw that a whole new approach was called for — one that would enable high-quality video conferencing over general-purpose networks. And so he became one of the earliest advocates for a new Internet Protocol (IP) video compression algorithm to provide for high-quality video at relatively low transmission bit rates — thus eliminating the need for dedicated lines. Ultimately, this vision was realized with the creation and adoption of the Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extension to the H.264 video coding standard.

And now, as CEO of Vidyo, Inc., Ofer Shapiro has the privilege of presiding over the release of the first video conferencing products designed to take full advantage of SVC technology. Video conferencing will never be quite the same again. Thankfully.