Powerful Video Conferencing
Unit at Your Service
By
Joe Chow
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Videoconferencing
breaks the barrier between two partiesat separate andremotelocationsto
communicate face to face with each other. It is particularly useful
for organising seminars across local/overseas institutions and
distant learning courses or facilitating collaboration among students/researchers
who are distance apart. Staff who are out of town or tied up with
their work in offices can attend conference meetings via videoconferencing.
Overseas interviews can also be arranged for university students
without the need to travel abroad, thus saving time and money.
Ever since the system was launched on campus, a number of joint
courses with some overseas universities were conducted. Needless
to say, videoconferencing has indeed opened up a greater wealth
of information to the CityU community.
Until recently, videoconferencing
in CityU can only be achieved in two separate and remote locations.
In order to extend the facility further as well as to make it
more powerful, a Multipoint Conferencing Unit (MCU) is required.
The idea is bring several locations into the same conference,
creating a so-called virtual meeting room. In other
words, a MCU can be used to connect three or more video conferencing
systems in the same conference, managing audio and video from
each participant to the others so that group communication can
be achieved. The MCU comes in two general categories, software-
and hardware-based. Whitepine, PictureTel, and DataBeam are examples
of software-based MCU while Accord, VideoServer, and RADVision
offer hardware-based solutions.
So here is the good
news. Through the effort of the Joint University Computer Centre
(JUCC), a top-level MCU from Accord was purchased for sharing
among all institutions (including CityU, HKU, CUHK, UST, HKBU,
LU, HKIEd and PolyU). The MCU allows a maximum of 12 concurrent
participants in 4 different concurrent sessions. The wonderful
thing about this MCU is that its multi-way transcoding
ability allows the use of different signal standards, i.e. H.320
(ISDN) and H.323 (IP network), with different speeds, to co-exist
in a single conferencing session.
Who can use the MCU and how to
apply?
Like the other videoconferencing
facilities provided by the CSC, all staff are welcome to use the
MCU for teaching and research purposes. Students are required
to fill in a Videoconferencing Request Form with an authorised
departmental signature if they would like to use the MCU facility.
No fee will be charged for using
the MCU except the cost of ISDN usage (if any) and the overtime
charge (if any) of the facilitator.
Any well-planned videoconferencing
session can fall apart when technical problems occur. To avoid
disasters from happening, it is advisable to plan a rehearsal
session at least 2 days in advance so that both audio and
video qualities can be tuned to satisfaction and that there is
enough time to identify potential problems prior to the actual
event. If you require more information on the MCU or the other
videoconferencing facilities, please call the CSC Help Desk at
ext. 7658 or direct your queries to cc@plink.cityu.edu.hk.