The first of the AARNet RealTimeComms roadshows has just
wrapped up and we've been delighted by the attendance, the interest of
the delegates in the information being presented, and the feedback the
RTC team have received in relation to the topics being presented.
The RTC roadshow crew are hitting the road again with the next venue
being University of Newcastle. Registrations have now closed for the
NSW roadshow but the Vic, SA and WA events remain open - details on the
AARNet News page.
One of the most interesting questions to come out of the Qld roadshow
was in relation to room design and the elements which need to be
combined in order to offer a 'best fit' for a particular venue in
designing a video conferencing solution.
Brett Rosolen spoke of the
'good production values' required of video conferencing which are
difficult to achieve in a fixed camera installation.
Attendees of my session heard about the developments in presenter
tracking cameras and I promised to dig out some references to these and
try and gather some further information from the VVC-l group in
relation to real life user experiences.
A recent system that seemed to fulfill a lot of the user requirements
are the 'ultrasonic pendant' tracking "Polycom PowerCam Presenter"
(PPP?) cameras which integrate best with the VSX 7000/8000 but also
work with other vendors conferencing equipment.
I had seen some interesting presentations (recorded with StarBak) from the University of Buffalo (US) with these - scroll down to the PowerCam ones to see them in action.
Does anybody else have experience with implementing a similar solution?
Is voice tracking of use in a lecture theatre situation/better suited to meetingrooms?
Any ideas on how this could be extended to HD cameras or retrofitted into a room?