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Alkit Confero User Manual

1. Bandwidth limit kbps Export to SDP File Figure 7 Adding a new contact to the address book 10 Change or delete an entry Edit entry Delete entry POINT TO POINT COMMUNICATION If you need to change or delete a contact in the address book all you need to do 1s to select the entry and press either the Edit entry button to edit the contact or the Delete entry button to remove the contact from the address book You can also press the mouse s right button which makes a pop up menu appear where you can make your choice Connecting to the other Party To use an entry in the address book when setting up a connection either double click on the address entry or select the desired entry and then press the OK button at the bottom of the window If you choose to enter an address in the Quick Connect entry just press the OK button to connect Once you have pressed the OK button or double clicked an address book entry the session management window will appear as depicted in Error Reference source not found below You are now ready to start transmitting and receiving media streams How this is accomplished is discussed in Chapter 5 11 MULTIPOINT COMMUNICATION CI Multipoint communication When there are several parties involved in communication it sets really interesting hes chapter shows you how to set up a multipoint COMIRIUIICARON SESSION ith several parties participating in a communication ses
2. 28 The User nterface tab se 29 The Sessioni 30 NES AUGIOVAD utili lisi 34 The Applications Sharing tab 35 SUMMATY lalla 38 USING SIP INVITATIONS 39 Sending a SIP Invitation 39 Sending a SIP Invitation using the Address Book St Se ge th N Ar 40 Pitfalls accasa 41 Using SIP behind a NAT Firewall 41 Receiving and answering a SIP Invitation 41 Usmo YIO als 42 Answering incoming Calls 42 SUMMALyY ni 43 STREAMING MEDIA IN COMMUNICATION SESSIONS ini 44 PIerequisitesicncra 44 Streaming Media Gala 45 TEXT MESSAGING tini 47 Sending and Receiving Text Messages 47 SHARING APPLICATIONS cooocccccccnoccconnnnaaoos 49 Using the Application Sharing tool 0 49 Working with the Alkit VNC server 50 TRANSFERRING FILES 52 Using the file transfer tool ses 52 Point to point file transfer 52 Multipoint file transfer via reflector 0 00 53 INTRODUCTION Introduction Les chapter gives a brief introduction to Alkit Confero Ikit Confero is a versatile multimedia communication and collaboration software It allows you to communicate in real time using video audio text whiteboard drawings application sharing media streaming and more The main focus of the Alkit Confero software hereafter refe
3. Magnus work Jessica EE AM Quick Connect Settings About Confer Help Exit Figure 6 The window that greets you when starting Confero To add an entry to the address book CONFERO ATION lol x I Reflector gt ZI simply click the Add entry button When pressing the button the window in Figure 7 pops up In the top frame you have the name of the contact Just below the name there are checkboxes for three types of contacts For the moment let the type be Host and we will later get back to the other types in Chapter 5 In the lower frame you type in the address of the remote patty either in the form of a hostname or an IP address into the Destination entry It is best to leave the Video port and Audio port fields unchanged However if you need to change this it is important that you and the other patty agrees on which ports to use or you will not be able to receive any video or audio Ports on a computer are used to have several connections open simultaneously Leave This is a reflector checkbox unchecked for now The use of a reflector is explained in Chapter 4 When you are done click the Save and close button to save your new contact If you for some reason would not like to save the contact click the Cance button instead 2 Alkit Confero Address Book Editor Sele Name Type Invitation SIP Invitation H 323 2 Host Wideo port Audio port _ This is a reflector
4. Standard k Tools Menu Tools Statistics Compression Quality Bandwidth Error correction Preprocessing Chroma keying Stereo Captions Custom video image Render RTP padding Take Floor Motion detection Contrast detection Privacy filter Pause Ctrl w Ctrl q Ctrl F Ctrl o A A A E COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO The Input menu presents you with three different menu items In case you have more than one video capture device installed in your system 1 e more than one camera you can use the Source menu item to choose which device to use With the Format menu item you can change depending on the hardware you have the input format to use For example if you have a video card with several video input connectors such as Composite S Video etc you decide from which of these inputs you want the get the video you are sending If your hardware does not support this the menu item will not be present The Standard menu item gives you a choice change the connected camera s video standard The most common standards to choose from are either PAL or NTSC Normally you will not have to change the default value The Tools menu has many interesting menu items From the top we have the Statistics menu item which presents you with statistics about the video stream being transmitted The Video transmitter Statistics window 1s shown in Figure 11 The statistics presented include the video c
5. Whenever an incoming call is received by invite a ringing sound is played unless silent mode is enabled and the dialog window show in Figure 35 is displayed 42 USING SIP INVITATIONS 2 Alkit Confero ALKIT COMMUNICATIONS CONFERO Do vou want to accept an invitation From mathias to the session Test Figure 35 The invitation dialog window Click Yes to accept the invitation and No to decline If the call is accepted Confero proceeds to the session management window and media streams are established Summary In this chapter we have seen how SIP invitations can be used to set up communication sessions Sending an invitation is done either by using the address book or the SIP invitation button depending on the invitation is to a new session or an ongoing session SIP calls are received by the SIP User Agent Invito which alerts the invited user and starts Confero 43 STREAMING MEDIA IN SESSIONS Streaming Media in Communication Sessions In situations where you have stored video and or audio dips you would like to share with other partiabants Confero can easily do this for you Typicalh you have carter recorded a video sequence that you would like to share with others 1 his 15 accomplished by connecting to a streamang media server Alkat Servo part of the Confero Collaboration S ofhuare Suite on your corporate intranet Before publishing it however you want to discuss it with your team members Some pa
6. and then go through the different features associated with that After that we do the same thing with audio Note that if a specific menu option or feature that is described seems to be missing in your Confero GUI that might be because of the user level selected Setting user level to Expert should make all options and features visible Transmitting video To start transmitting video to the other party click the Transmit Video button In just a moment you are presented with a local preview window of the video you are currently transmitting see Figure 10 The Video Transmitter window has a menu bar consisting of five menus Each one will be described below 15 COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO Video Iransmitter m ES a PS a B vee Transmitter window is to ini a gt transmitting and to provide controls for changing different aspects of the transmitted video such as frame rate resolution etc Figure 10 The preview window of the transmitted video stream The Video Transmitter Window Menu Bar This menu bar includes Fr Geometry Input Tools and Help File Menu From the Fv Menu you can start saving the transmitted video stream to disk You Save to file can also save a snapshot picture from the video By selecting Close you will stop Save picture Ctrl transmitting video and close the video transmitter window Exyf quits Confero CRE SERE completely To the right of the Close menu item you have the keyboard shor
7. connected via the IEEE1394 interface select DV If you happen to have any type of Matrox video grabber card installed select Matrox to use this as the orabber device The Automatic transmit on start up setting controls whether video transmission should start automatically once a session has been established Star in paused mode sets a video transmitter in paused mode when it s started Start minimized starts the video transmitted window minimized Automatic receive will make the video receiver window pop up automatically whenever a new video stream is received Other options deal with the video window size the video compression algorithm and various video quality parameters You can also select a maximum bandwidth that the transmitted video stream should be kept below To do this you must also check the checkbox labelled Restrict video bandwidth 31 Video signal settings MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES When a video transmitter is started the default window size and corresponding video resolution is controlled via Default transmitted video size The default frame rate quality compression level and codec is controlled by the next three choices Confero User Preferences User preferences for mathias User interface Session Yideo Audio Application sharing Miscellaneous Video device Logitech HD Webcam C270 Yideoimput Any C Automatic transmit on start up _ Start in paused mode _ Start minimized Au
8. the Session Management window or the Conference Participants window This window lists the participants of an ongoing communication session Until someone else has connected the list will be empty The window also contains a row of buttons used to invoke the different sub tools of Confero alkit Confero Enterprise Edition The buttons we will use here are the two leftmost at the top of the window in Figure 3 Conference Participants Note The exact appearance of the window depends on which sub tools of Confero are enabled and which software version of the software 15 installed lt None gt Figure 3 The session management window Transmitting Video Once you have connected as described above it is time to start transmitting a live video stream from your computer To do this just press the Transmit Video button depicted with a camera symbol in the toolbar in the session management window In a moment the Video Transmitter Window see Figure 4 should appear showing what your camera is pointed at This is all that is needed for others to see the video stream from your camera Yideo Transmitter Jo x Confero Geometry Input Tools Help Figure 4 The preview window of the sent video stream GETTING STARTED Transmitting Audio To transmit audio from your computer all you need to do is to press the Transmit Audio button in the toolbar in the session management window Figure 3 The window i
9. view as earlier but enhanced with a y axis and some controls to change how the graph is displayed You can change how many n pixels each band Ok s axis step size in ponts 15 dai ie width sample should cc et occupy by changing the number in the box below the graph This number defaults to 5 and can be varied between 1 and 50 To the right below the graph the two numbers indicate what the y max and y min values are for the currently displayed graph Figure 20 The bandwidth window Summary This chapter covered how to initiate video and audio streams in an established communication session In addition you have also learned how to receive and present such media streams We also covered a multitude of options and features associated with sending and receiving media streams 27 User Preferences MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES Managing Your Preferences Confero has a lot of settings that can be configured according to your needs and preferences This section explores how the user information and preferences are managed ach Confero user can set up Confero with personal like name and email address Each user also can configure a wide variety of user preferences Since Confero has a lot of configuration options it is important to know how to set and manage your preferences Confero User Information and Preferences You can configure Confero the way you want it and save your settings as well as provide user informa
10. 25 fps motion M Simple indicator Call user defined function Actions remote Hide show video window Toggle privacy filter Scale video window 4x Toggle video transmission on off Change frame rate M Simple indicator Call user defined function OK Cancel Figure 26 Motion detection settings window than desired and specifically being triggered even though the conditions have not really changed The set of check boxes indicates what should happen locally and or remotely when motion is detected The last option Cal user defined function is primarily for 33 Contrast detection Audio options MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES application developers For more information on this please contact Alkit Communications In order for the remote actions to take place you must enable Notify remote user s in local actions If not no events will be sent over the network Clicking the Contrast detection button will open a similar window to Figure 26 with the exception that you have a choice on what algorithm to use for contrast detection The algorithms in question are Michelson and Laplacian high pass The main difference is that instead of detecting motion events are triggered by an object coming into focus of the camera To calibrate contrast detection press Ctrl o when an object is in focus and what for the Sensitivity threshold to be updated as this is the indication that the calibration phase is over The privacy
11. Confero User Information and Preferences on page 28 As above this also affects the behaviour of Confero It is turned on or off The difference to the above choice is that the detection algorithm uses the contrast in the video instead of motion To define what should happen when the detection algorithm triggers is defined in the User Preferences window explained in Confero User Information and Preferences on page 28 The idea behind a privacy filter is that when you would not like the camera to send video you turn the privacy filter on and a still image will be displayed for all other receivers If you for some reason would like the video stream to be paused simply select the Pause menu item When you do not want the video stream to be paused anymore select the menu item once again and the video stream will recommence The Help Menu consists of two different choices Transmitting video and About Confero Selecting the first choice brings up a window where you can find online comprehensive help on how to use the Video Transmitter Window The second choice brings up a simple window where you can see which version of Confero you use when yout licence expires and some contact information Transmitting Audio So far we have established a video stream connection with the other party It would now be nice if we could hear each other as well To make this possible you need to press the Transmit Audio button When the button is pressed the a
12. Misc Statistics Ctriv Camera Ctrl Stereo ty Sync Postprocessing Li Render j Give Floor Ctrl F Statistics Window COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO Mirror and Rotate lets you display a mirrored or a rotated view of the video stream respectively No frame and No menubar if present let you remove the window frame and the menu bar respectively which can be useful in some applications There are five menu items in the Misc menu Firstly there is States that opens a statistics window for the specific video stream Secondly and optionally depending on the remote system a camera control option item Camera Ciri letting you remotely control the movement of the camera Requirements are that the remote system runs the application amd remote camera control daemon and that the camera is controllable by VISCA commands over a serial cable Please consult your camera documentation on how to connect your camera in order to control its movement In case the sender is sending stereoscopic video stream you can render the streams by turning this feature on However you will need special glasses to get a true stereoscopic view If you have not the displayed stream will seem blurred For more information on stereoscopic video contact Alkit Communications Next there is an option called A V Sync It simply turns active synchronization of the audio and video streams on or off The Postprocessing menu item opens into a submenu that lets
13. and Encoding The local monitor makes you receive your own audio transmission Be advised however you could end up having a sound feedback loop where you hear a loud whining sound Usually it is annoying to hear oneself with a delay but it can be used to hear your own transmission if necessary The Encoding frame gives you four choices 1 16 bit PCM This is the best sound quality and hence uses the most bandwidth about 256 kbit s 2 GSM This is the worst sound quality and uses less bandwidth accordingly about 13 kbit s 3 DVI This is something in between the two encoding schemes above 64 kbit s 4 G 722 1 This is a high quality low bandwidth audio codec that is recommended for most situations 32 kbit s 5 G 711 PCMU This is a medium quality 64 kbit s encoding 6 G 711 PCMA This is a medium quality 64 kbit s encoding just a slight variation of the PCMU encoding 7 Speex This is a high quality low bandwidth encoding that can be used with good results When low bandwidth consumption is of importance silence suppression can be used Silence suppression stops sending audio if the volume level is below a certain threshold which can be set either with the Silence Sensor Threshold slider or automatically if you check the box Automatic when silence suppression is turned on If the silence suppression is turned off the Automatic check box is disabled and cannot be checked When you pull the slider manuall
14. bits per sample Linear PCM wav files when streaming to Alkit Confero 45 STREAMING MEDIA Select the file you would like to stream and select Finish see Figure 38 When you have comp leted the last step a control panel window will open see Figure 39 Here you can start stop and pause the video audio and much more Checking the Loop check box will start the stream over from the beginning automatically when the end is reached If you use a streaming setver on another com puter don t be alarmed when the stream has a different sender address than your computer s address This is perfectly correct because you have instructed the server to IN SESSIONS gt Streaming Media Server Setup Please select media scrollkeeper temptile 4 scrollkeeper temprile 3 ecrollkeeper temptile 2 ecrollkeeper temptile 1 scrollkeeper temptile 0 sandboxpids trip orbit jorias Server N Target Ea Media recon train Cancel lt Back Finish Figure 38 Choosing with file to stream is the last step Streaming Media Control Panel video moytabasil 00 00 00 00 T Mute audio Loop Hi e Il res POSITION command OK Server Ea Target Ea Media Y Status Quit lt Back Figure 39 The streaming media control panel send the stream for you To view the stream each participant simply selects Video in the presence awareness box for the streaming server once again in this
15. close when you are done and use this entry whenever you need to connect to this reflector to participate in the session identified by the chosen name There can be several entries containing the same reflector address but different 13 MULTIPOINT COMMUNICATION session names This corresponds to different group meetings that are using the same reflector for multipoint communication Note that it is certainly possible to connect only two parties through a reflector thus in effect enabling a point to point session relayed through a reflector There are indeed many good reasons for doing so instead of connecting the endpoints directly as discussed in Chapter 3 including firewall traversal access control and additional reflector based services Having established your session you are now ready to start communicating using audio video and other media 14 COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO Transmit Video eg Communicating with Audio and Video When a conmunica on session has been established ether point to point or moultapoint you will want to start to send and receive audio and video streams This Chapter will describe how this is done in Confero Moreover you will be introduced to some of the basic settings that influence the quality of the video and audio you send T section will go through what you need to do in order to transmit a video stream as well as an audio stream We start with showing how video is transmitted
16. filter image to use can be configured with Privacy filter image If automatic captioning is desired it will be enabled by selecting an image in Automatic video caption image Stereoscopic rendering mode selects between Shutterglasses and Autostereoscopic rendering when stereoscopic video is presented The Video window positions setting defines how video windows are presented onscreen Random pops up a new window for each signal and places the window at a random screen position chosen by the window manager of the operating system Fix arranges the windows in a predefined order Template lets the user specify the window positions specifically using a configuration file AW video in one window renders all video signals in one big window side by side and Two screens uses full screen rendering on two displays The next four options control various other aspects of the video window presentation onscreen Automatic screen grabber transmission on start up enables automatic transmission of video from a preconfigured screen grabber The bottom part of the Video settings tab not shown in Figure 25 contains settings for automatically saving video to disk and for user defined video buttons The Audio tab The fourth tab Audio shown Figure 27 contains settings related to audio transmission and playback Automatic transmit on start up controls whether the audio is to be transmitted automatically whenever a session is initiated You can set th
17. network Note however that some NAT firewalls are SIP capable which means they inspect SIP messages and automatically translate the IP addresses If you have a firewall like this you don t have to supply the public IP address the firewall will do it for you Receiving and answering a SIP Invitation If someone sends you a SIP invitation you will hear a ringing sound and a dialog will open where you will see who sent the invitation and the name of the session You either answer Yes or No to accept or decline the invitation respectively In order for your computer to be able to receive and process SIP invitations a software components known as a SIP User Agent needs to be running The SIP User Agent of the Confero software suite is called A kit Invito 41 USING SIP INVITATIONS Using Invito When you install Confero a SIP user agent called Invito is also installed Invito can be started when Confero is started by enabling this feature is the User Preferences The Session tab on page 30 It is absolutely vital as without it you will not be able to receive and respond to SIP calls XL B ali Ares BE once Invito will continue to run in the background after 1 ee La i Figure 33 The system tray Confero is exited You can see that it is running by inspecting the System Tray in the lower right corner of the screen as depicted in Figure 33 If the icon does not show you need to manually start Invito You can do this by enter
18. offen very convement to be able to easily share files This can be done with the file transfer tool of Alkat Conjera onsider a situation where you ate engaged in a collaborative work session using Alkit Confero Maybe you are jointly producing a text document or some kind of digital presentation material Of course you will then need to distribute the document to your co workers You can do this with very easily with the File Transfer tool in Confero Using the file transfer tool The file transfer tool in Confero will appear a little bit different depending on whether you are using a reflector with multipoint file transfer functionality enabled or not Whichever applies to you you initiate sending of a file by pressing the Fre Transfer button in the session management window Point to point file transfer If you are using Confero in point to point mode or if your reflector do not support multipoint file transfer you will see the window depicted in Figure 47 Press the Browse button to bring up a file selection dialog where you can select which file to Send file Browse transmit Then select the 5 Confero File Transfer E O x conference participant you wish e Recipient to send the file to in the Recipient Send file Close dropdown list You can also type in the hostname or IP Figure 47 The file transfer dialog point to point address of the computer to which you want to send the file
19. received indicating the number of audio packets that has arrived Finally Packets dropped indicates the number of audio packets that have been dropped Jonas Jalminger Codec PCM 16 bit Packets received 29882 Bandwidth 264 2 kbit s Packets dropped 0 Figure 16 The audio statistics window Transmitting Screen as Video In some circumstances it might be useful to send part of the screen as video This can be accomplished by using the screen grabber You can choose which part of the screen that should be sent by using the arrow keys If you would like to move faster hold down the shift key while using the array keys By choosing Geometry gt Transmitted size gt Custom in the transmitter window you can enter the desired size to send It is also possible to remotely control what part of the screen that should be captured Use the same set of keys as above but use them in the receiver window instead Sometimes it can be handy to have pre configured screen positions and sizes and be able to quickly switch between the preset values To save such a setting you start by selecting the desired size and position of what should be grabbed from the 23 Screen grabber can be CPU intensive Receive Audio Iw Audio Receive Video M ideo COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO screen To save that specific setting press Ctrl Alt F1 through F4 Thus you can have four different settings to switch between at any time To recal
20. the session management window see Error Reference source not found on page Error Bookmark not defined This is regardless of whether you are about to send audio or not Receiving Video To start receiving the other party s video click the Video checkbox The moment you check the box a Video Recezver window appears see Figure 18 There are a few things you can do with the video receiver window The receiver window menu bar consists of three different menus 24 COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO 1 File where you can save the received video M Johanson stream to disk or close the window File Geometry Misc 2 Geometry where you can change the size of the displayed video 3 Misc an assortment of features which depends on the particular system you are on 4 Help where you get online help on the video receiver window features Figure 18 The video receiver window File Menu There are three menu items in the Fz e menu The Save to File submenu the Close ence menu item ctrl c which closes the receiver menu and the Ex menu item Save to File gt Record Ctri s A A do ate asa which exits Confero The Save to file menu item in turn consists of three sub menu Exit Sk db items 1 Record ctrl s for recording the received video stream and if present an audio stream in QuickTime format When you click to save the stream a window opens where you can select the name of the file
21. to save to and where to save it 2 Pause ctrl p pauses the current recording A second click resumes the current recording 3 Stop ctrl x stops the current recording and closes the associated file Geometry Menu The Geometry menu consists of six menu items namely Szze local scaling Request new a size Mirror Rotate No frame and No menubar Not all menu items are available in all g 4x F1 Request new size b w Original F2 uo an e versions of Confero The 57ze menu item that controls the size of the video Rotate window has four submenu items Full screen Alt Enter No frame No menubar Ctrl n 1 Original F2 displays the received video in the size defined by the incoming video stream 2 Quarter F3 decreases the received video frame size four times halving the size both horizontally and vertically 3 4x F1 increases the received video frame size four times doubling the size both horizontally and vertically 4 Full screen alt enter the displayed video is scaled to cover the whole screen This option is not always present depending on the system you use The Request new size submenu contains three menu items Fu Medium and Small These can be used to send a request to the sender of the video stream being displayed to change the resolution of the video being transmitted Note that the video sender can choose to ignore such requests in which case this menu has no effect 25 Misc Menu
22. to use we recommend specifying it specifically If not use the default device There is an Audio Wizard that can help you configure your audio device Click the Run Audio Wizard button to start the Wizard and then follow the instructions to configure things like the microphone gain and playback volume Finally you should give a hint to Confero about the kind of network connection you intend to use This is needed for Confero to be able to select some suitable audio and video quality parameters for the network bandwidth available Note that GETTING STARTED it is the bandwidth of the outgoing connection that is of interest here since Confero needs to adapt the transmission rate to the available connection bandwidth Hence if you are using an asymmetric network connection like ADSL it is the upstream capacity that is of interest If you don t know select Fast When you are done click the OK button You are now all set to start a Confero communication session Acquiring and Installing a License When Confero is started without a valid license you will have a trial period of seven days and a maximum usage time of fifteen minutes each time you start Confero You need a license to be able to use Confero for an extended period of time To acquire a license you must contact Alkit Communications To install an acquired license you should have the license file on a media that can be opened on your local computer If you have
23. you apply a post processing filter to the video signal before displaying it For instance you can increase or decrease the contrast or apply a de interlacing filter The menu item Render lets you choose between a few different rendering options Lastly there is Gwe floor which works opposite to Take floor explained on page 20 In the Statistics window there are a multitude of different numbers presented Figure 19 shows the window in question The window is divided into two sections the upper section deals with the received video stream s statistics and the lower part deals with the RTP statistics We ll start with the upper section The first item of the statistics is Video codec which simply shows the video compression algorithm currently used for the video stream mathias 192 168 0 50 M al ES Video statistics Video codec MPEG 2 Frame rate naturally indicates the frame rate of the Framerate 248 displayed video stream in frames per second Drop rate 0 0 Recover rate 0 0 Drop rate indicates that your system cannot show all Redundaney 0 0 the video frames received and has to drop some Of Media decoding errors 0 them Reasons for this can be that your computer is kbits s 831 28 not able to decode and render the video at the frame rate received Another reason is when one or more Ra packets of a video frame are not received When frames are dropped the frame rate explai
24. ALKIT COMMUNICATIONS AB Alkit Confero User Manual Alkat Confero User Manual ALKIT COMMUNICATIONS AB Alkit Confero User Manual Alkit Communications AB http www alkit se TableciContents INTRODUCTION cosa aa 2 GETTING STARTED i 3 Installing Confero i iii 3 Starting Confero miii diia 3 Setting up COMET O sicscscccscscscssscccsssssssevssssesevssssssenses 3 Acquiring and Installing a License 5 Get Connected inside 6 Transmitting VideO scccccccscccscccsccsccccseccvccessvesccssecces 7 Transmitting Audio oooocccccccccccccccnccccnccccccncncncnos 8 Receiving Video and Audio ooocccccccccccccccccnnnnos 8 POINT TO POINT COMMUNICATION 9 Using the Address Book ses 9 Connecting to the other Party 11 MULTIPOINT COMMUNICATION 12 Multipoint Communication using Multicast 12 Multipoint Communication using a Reflector 12 COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO odos catan pie 15 Transmitting video ooocccccccccccccncccnccccccccccnnononos 15 The Video Transmitter Window Menu Bar 16 Transmitting Audio oocccccccccccncccnncccccnccccnnnncnos 21 The Audio Panel Menu Bar 23 Transmitting Screen as Video 23 Receiving Video and Audio ooooccccccccccccnccnooos 24 Receiving VideO sa 24 SUMIMAR aladino 27 MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES 28 Confero User Information and Preferences
25. CP 32 RTP padding 21 35 rtp statistics 25 28 RTP statistics 28 screen grabber 25 Servo 47 session name 14 15 32 share application 52 silence suppression 23 SIP 42 SIP address 43 SIP invitation 42 SOCKS proxy 40 spatialized audio playback 37 Speex 24 statistics 18 27 statistics audio 25 statistics rtp 25 28 statistics video 28 stereoscopic video 21 27 streaming media 48 STUN 40 take floor See floor control TCP 32 text messaging 50 transmitted size 17 UDP 32 user preferences See preferences video menu 17 help 22 input 18 INDE X tools 18 video quality 19 video receiver 26 video receiver menu confero menu 26 geometry menu 27 misc menu 27 55 video receiver window 26 video rendering 21 video statistics 28 Video Transmitter Window 6 video receive 26 video transmit 16 VISCA 27
26. NCES The Session tab The second tab Sesszon shown in Figure 23 lets you set a default destination address or hostname and default audio and video port numbers to be used the next time you start Confero If you check the box Use default destination address and ports at start up Confero will connect to the default destination address on start up and you will be taken directly to the session management window If the default address is a reflector you also need to check Use reflector by default and provide a default session name and optionally a default bandwidth limit Confero User Preferences User preferences for mathias User interface Session Video Audio Application sharing Miscellaneous Default video pork Default audio port C Use reflector by default Default session name confero Bandwidth limit kbps SIP Invitation Settings My SIP From address Default SIP proxy Authorization Username Authorization password SIP transport protocol e TCP O UCF SIF port 5060 SIP source port Require RTCP Session Descriptions C Start SIP User Agent finvito _ Auto answer incoming SIF calls _ Auto accept SIP re INVITE F Use symmetric media stream connections _ Exit Confero when last session member leaves Floor Control Mote that some of the settings require a restart of Confero to take effect Figure 23 The Session tab of the user preferences window The re
27. Net mutes mic and Silence suppression features can be configured Acoustic echo cancellation can be enabled by default which is useful if you are not using a headset and the other party complains about echoes Spatialized audio playback enables panning of audio signals from different participants between the speakers to achieve directional audio cues Automatic from window positions pans the audio playback of a participant in a way that depends on where the corresponding video window is placed on the screen Adaptive jitter buffer size ets the system dynamically adjust the size of the playout buffer depending on the observed variations in audio packet interarrival times The Audio Wizard can be started through the Run Audio Wizard button to help you configure your audio device The Applications Sharing tab The fifth tab shown in Figure 28 is concerned with application sharing The TCP port number used by the application sharing sub tool can be configured here 35 MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES You can select whether Confero should ask you for a password for the application sharing server when you are sharing applications If not Confero will supply an automatically generated password when the application sharing service is started Automatically start sharing applications starts sharing applications automatically whenever a session is initiated Automatic application sharing window activation automatically pops up the window showi
28. Note that the receiving computer must have an instance of Confero running in order to be able to receive the file The receiving computer must also be directly reachable from the transmitting computer Then press the Send file button to send the file or Close if you have changed your mind 52 Receiving a file point to point Multipoint file transfer TRANSFERRING FILES When a file is being sent to you you will be asked if you want to receive the file as shown in Figure 48 Confero file transfer Figure 48 The file reception dialog Press the Yes button to receive the file or the No button to decline the file transfer If you accept the file you will be prompted with a file selection dialog to select where to save the file Multipoint file transfer via reflector If you are using a reflector that supports multipoint file transfer you will see the window depicted in Figure 49 To upload a file press the Browse button and select the file Press Send file to actually send it When the file has been uploaded it will be listed in the Download file list Any partictpant in the session can now download it individually by selecting it from the list and pressing the Download file button When you don t want the file to be available for download anymore select it and press the Delete file button 5 Confero file sharing File share server is 88 131 107 12 Download Download File Figure 49 The file transfer dia
29. PPLICATIONS If you select Share Window in the menu in Figure 45 you will once again be confronted with the window selection dialog in Figure 41 You can now change which window you wish to share if you like Note that you can share the full desktop of your computer by right clicking the desktop backdrop Use this with care since this often means that you will share the video windows you have on your desktop Sharing video windows this way consumes a lot of bandwidth and generally does not work well in terms of the quality of the shared video Note that if you want to share a video clip stored on disk with your fellow 10 x Cancel Apply Incoming Connections W Accept Socket Connections Display Number fo M Auto Accept CORBA Connections Password TT Disable Local Keyboard amp Pointer Update Handling I Poll Full Screen Iw Pall Console Windows Only n Poll On Event M Poll Foreground Window Received Only T Poll Window Under Cursor Figure 46 Properties window for the Alkit VNC Server conference participants you should vor use the application sharing tool but rather use the Alkit Servo media streaming server discussed in chapter 8 or use the screen function gra bber Transmitting Screen as Video on page 23 explained in Screen grabber 51 Sending a file TRANSFERRING FILES Transferring Files In a distributed collaborative work session it 1s
30. To send a SIP invitation using the g Alkit Confero ress Boo itor x Address Book you first add an entry to AAA X the address book As previously described in chapter 3 Using the Address Book you do this by selecting Add entry Name New contact Session Name in the first window that appears when SIP Address starting Confero This time however SIP Server from SIP address SIP Port 5060 choose type Invitation SIP instead of sono type Host As before at the top you Video port 5566 Audio port 5568 enter the name of your preferred A Tee address book entry Following that is the Bandwidth limit kbps SIP session name where it is up to you to coo Olow O Urgent riority freely choose a name for the session Normal Emergency Next enter the SIP Address of the recipient of the invitation A SIP address consists of a user name and a hostname or IP address These two parts are Figure 31 Adding a SIP address to the address book separated by an sign It is convenient to use an email address here but it doesn t have to be You must also supply a SIP Server address to connect to A SIP server is simply a computer that knows how to handle SIP calls This can usually be found out automatically in which case from SIP address can be left in the SIP Server entry So far we have entered information about where the invitation should be sent now you need to supply an address w
31. Use Custom Otables In order to get the last slider Bandwidth limit to work you need to check the box Restrict video bandwidth Using this slider you can limit the Handvat AIRE bandwidth of the video stream you send To conform to the desired bandwidth Confero adapts the frame rate and thus you might see the corresponding slider value change as you limit the bandwidth One way to increase the frame rate while limiting the bandwidth is to lower the quality of each video frame by using the Quality slider described above Restrict video bandwidth Figure 12 The video quality and bandwidth Adaptive rate control is a way to adapt to the window available network capacity If you check this box Confero will dynamically adapt its frame rate to the current load on the network If the available network capacity decreases Confero will decrease the frame rate of the video stream and conversely an increase in available network capacity makes the frame rate increase However this should be used with caution as some networks cannot cope with such a strategy The four radio buttons at the bottom applies to the adaptive rate control in that you can decide on one of four adaptive rate control algorithms 18 Error Correction Window Annotations Preprocessing Chroma keying COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO The next menu item pops up the Forward Error EI Correction FEC window of Figure 13 All oe o streams you send audio a
32. affect all audio streams with this slider and this might not be desirable when you receive multiple streams i e more than one participant in the conference This will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4 The Audio Panel Menu Bar This menu bar includes the menus Confero Audio and Help Both the Confero menu and the He p menu are as described earlier and therefore only the Audio menu will described here The Audio Menu item presents you with the following choices opening an Audio statistics window change the sound Encoding Mute your audio transmission or Show advanced controls To mute your transmitted audio click the Mute menu item or press m on your keyboard When muted the other party does not receive any audio from you When the Show advanced controls option is enabled the full audio control panel as depicted in Figure 15 is shown When disabled some of the advanced features are hidden If you click on the Audio statistics menu item a new window will appear see Figure 16 This window displays various statistics paras D xi about the received audio stream Each audio stream received will get its own frame At the top you have the name of the other party sending the stream in this case Jonas Jalminger Below the name you have Codec indicating which audio encoding scheme the other party has chosen Below Codec you have Bandwidth displaying the bandwidth the current audio codec uses To the right you see Packers
33. andwidth limit If you use a more elaborate video grabber you can configure what kind of signal is input to the video grabber card Default input signal format sets which signal format is expected If you do not choose the correct one you might end up with no video Default video signal type identifies which kind of video signal or camera type is used These settings can be done momentarily from the menus in the video transmitter window For more information on this you should consult your video card guide or camera guide You can choose to disallow the receiver of your transmitted video to change your sending size by checking the box Refuse request to change sending video resolution 32 Motion detection MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES Enable automatic video bandwidth adaptation allows the bandwidth of the transmitted video stream to be changed based on available network bandwidth Use packet shaping for outgoing video streams enables a smoothing algorithm to pace out the RTP packets of video streams to reduce burstiness at the cost of slightly higher latency Under some circumstances the RTP video traffic generated by Confero might need RIP padding If you experience a large packet loss when using Confero you can try this to see if it helps The packet shaping mechanism can also be an option In order to use both the screen grabber and a camera at the same time you need to check Allow multiple transmitters If this is not done you will n
34. apture frame rate from the camera in frames per second the encoding time in millisecond 1 e the time it take for one frame of video to be captured and compressed the video codec selected and the bandwidth of the outgoing video stream in kilobits per second The bandwidth is also plotted as a graph Below the bandwidth graph statistics reported by receivers of the stream is presented This includes the packet loss rate and the round trip delay between sender and receiver Video transmitter statistics Sele Video transmitter statistics Capture Frame rate 23 94 fps Encoding time 6 ms Wideo codec H 264 Bandwidth 703 44 kbps RTCP Receiver Reports Number of receivers 1 Mean loss rate 0 00 Worst case loss rate 0 00 Mean RTT 150 ms Worst case RTT 160 ms o Figure 11 The Video Transmitter Statistics window The next menu item is Compression This lets you control the video compression algorithm that is being used for the video transmission The choice has a big impact on the network bandwidth consumed the subjective video quality achieved and the CPU load The available compression algorithms are JPEG MPEG 2 H 263 H 264 and DV the latter only in case a DV camera is being used There is also an Automatic option which selects the codec automatically A comprehensive description of these compression algorithms is beyond the scope of this manual but in short JPEG is the least efficient of
35. case basil If you at any point would like to change any of the settings select Back This will move you one step back in the process described above 46 TEXT MESSAGING Exchanging text messages Text Messaging It can sometimes be convement to send text messages to each other in a communication session This is done in Confero using the Text Messaging Too hen you talk on the phone and you need to exchange data where it is essential that you get it correctly such as a phone number you get a piece of paper and a pen to write numbers down as you hear them Just to be sure you repeat the numbers and the person you are talking to confirms the numbers or you correct them With Confero you can use the Text Messaging Tool instead no pen and paper is needed Sending and Receiving Text Messages To send and receive messages simply select the Text Messaging button depicted to the left The window in Figure 40 opens and you can start to send and receive text messages In the top text frame oi J you get incoming messages and in the lower text frame you enter your messages to send Each incoming message is formatted lt Jonas Jalminger Incoming messages lt jonast basil alkit se gt al Here am Me too with a sender header followed by a colon The sender header tells you who sent the message You Uutgoing message decide whom to send to by He selecting the appropriate participant in the Recip
36. dium Fast GPRS 3G DSL WLAN LAN connection Figure 1 The setup dialog appearing when starting Confero for the first time The first choice is the language Select your preferred language from the list and press Apply The language of the user interface will be updated Next you select your preferred User Level The user level determines what the graphical user interface of Confero will look like If you consider yourself to be an experienced user of teleconferencing software in general and Confero in particular select user level Expert If you are a little bit unsure of how these things work select Beginner Otherwise select user level Standard If it is the first time you use Confero we recommend that you select Beginner as your user level and then change this to Standard when you get more familiar with the softwate You can now configure which kind of video device you will be using In most cases this will be Generic DirectShow For the audio device to be used you have the option of using the device that is set as the default audio device by the operating system Windows If you check the Use Windows s default audio device checkbox whichever device is selected in Windows will be used by confer both for audio recording and playback If you want to set the device specifically uncheck the checkbox and select the preferred audio device and input from the list If you know which device you want
37. e sure that the previous installation is removed prior to installing the new version and make sure that no software component related to Confero is running when installing Specifically check that the Invito SIP user agent program is not running in the background on your computer You can see a flower icon on the System Tray if it is running Starting Confero If you use a Windows operating system and chose to add a shortcut to the desktop when installing Confero double click that shortcut You can always use the Sar menu In that case select Start gt Programs gt Alkit Confero confero Setting up Confero The first time you start Confero you will be asked to provide some information to tailor the software for your needs The dialog window in Figure 1 appears GETTING STARTED Alkit Confero Welcome mathias as a new Confero user Please specify your preferred language user level audio video devices and your Internet connection speed Note that these settings can be changed anytime Language english Apply User level Beginner Standard Expert Preferred video device type Generic DirectShow USB camera DY camera O Matrox Video for windows Video device Logitech HD Webcam C270 Use Windows s default audio device Preferred audio device Default audio input If you would like Confero to help with the sound settings press Run Audio Wizard Network connection speed O Really slow O Slow O Me
38. e default audio input and output devices to be used or you can let Confero rely on the default device configured in the operating system e g Use Windows s default audio device The default playback volume and microphone gain can be set via the corresponding sliders The audio encoding to use by default can be selected from the range of supported audio codecs see Chapter 5 for details You can select whether the audio control panel should display advanced options or not by default Show advanced controls by default 34 Application sharing MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES Confero User Preferences User preferences for mathias User interface Session video Audio Application sharing Miscellaneous _ Use Windows s default audio device Audio input device 4Kk4571 Audio input Capture Audio output device AK4S7I T Default volume Default mic gain Default encoding GSM 16 bit PCM DVI Speex G 722 1 G 711 PEMO G 711 PEMA Show advanced controls by default _ Use Net mutes mic Threshold E Automatic _ Use silence suppression Threshold Automatic _ Use acoustic echo cancellation by default Spatialized audio playback Automatic From video window positions C Adaptive jitter buffer size Run Audio Wizard El Mote that some of the settings require a restart of Confero to take effect Figure 27 The Audio tab of the user preferences window Next the
39. e just described how to share an application and how to take part of a shared application on another computer The application sharing feature in Confero is based on the sub tool Akit VNC a customized version of the Virtual Network Computing VNC software originally developed by AT amp T Laboratories Cambridge When you start sharing an application on your own computer Confero arranges for the Alkit VNC server to be started You can see that the server has oan started by watching the system tray at the lower right hand of your desktop see Figure 44 A PA AC CET Figure 44 The Alkit VNC Server system tray icon A right click on the VNC icon in Figure 44 opens the menu shown in Figure 45 Selecting Properties opens a window shown in Figure 46 where you can configure some settings controlling the operation of the VNC server You can leave most settings as they are If you do not want others to Share Window type into your shared window and move your mouse around Add New Client select Disable Remote Keyboard amp Pointer You can also control how Kit All Clients VNC handles screen updates using the options available in the About winwc Update Handling frame To get the best performance when sharing Ext different applications you sometimes need to play around with Figure 45 The Alkit i VNC Server menu these settings until you find the best settings When you are finished press OK Properties 50 SHARING A
40. eed to be configured and in the latter case also the port number If encryption of media streams is required check the Use secure RIP encryption by default The Reflector admin button if present gives you access to an administration interface for the RTP Reflector Mixer A amp it Reflex This is only relevant if you are a reflector administrator 37 MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES If remotely controllable cameras are used you can set which serial port COM port your camera is connected to You can also set the TCP port to which the other party should connect if they would like to control your camera remotely If logging of system events is wanted you can choose which log level to use and which file to log to The screen grabber positions that you have defined are shown at the bottom of the Miscellaneous section along with a button for installing a new license file Summary This chapter covered how to configure and manage your user information and user preferences 38 USING SIP INVITATIONS CI Using SIP Invitations Lo initiate an unplanned communication session you need a signaling protocol which alerts the other party and sets up the parameters needed for the communication W hen using Confero the protocol used for this call set up signaling ts the Session Initiation Protocol SIP Thus chapter will cover what is needed to send a SIP imitation to set up a communication session and how to receive an incoming SIP in
41. eed to close one of the transmitter windows before opening a new one If you use multicast form multipoint communication you can choose to see your own sent traffic This is mainly used as a debug feature Check Receive own multicast video to turn the feature on Motion detection settings Motion detection settings Clicking the Motion detection button will show the window in Figure 26 In Activity zone you choose on what part of the video should be sensitive to motion detection Setting the Sensitivity threshold is done using a calibration phase where there Use motion detection by default Activity zone x 20 y 20 width 380 width 270 Sensitivity threshold 750 Hold down timer 5000 Recalculate interval 250 Actions local I Toggle video transmission on off must be no motion in order to set a threshold Press Ctrl n to start the calibration phase The calibration phase takes a few seconds to complete and the end is indicated with a new Sensitivity threshold value in the Motion detection settings window on the right The Recalculate interval tells how often motion should be detected Hold down timer controls the delay from the point when motion of no motion is detected and to when an action should be taken or turned off Setting this value too small can make actions trigger more often Toggle privacy filter on off I Notify remote user s Change frame rate between EN fps no motion and
42. eo button 3 Text Messaging Invitations Whiteboard Screen grabber _ Session recorder File Transfer Language english Note that some of the settings require a restart of Confero to take effect Figure 22 The first tab of the user preferences window containing User Interface settings The User Preferences window is separated into six tabs grouping preferences of different types together You select the tab you want to see by clicking on them The User Interface tab The first group of preferences deals with the presentation of the graphical user interface GUI of Confero First you can select the desired user level which will control how many of Confero s advanced features are shown in the GUI Next you can configure what text string Confero will use in the session management window the default being Conference Participants You can set where the main window should appear on your screen by entering the x y coordinates on the screen Default is to use automatic positioning meaning that it is left to the operating system to decide You can also choose to start Confero with the main window minimized Another option is to use a full screen GUI Below this you can ask Confero to confirm your exit with dialog Then there are a number of checkboxes entitled Tools on the toolbar that control which buttons should be present in the toolbar in the session management window 29 Session parameters MANAGING YOUR PREFERE
43. eo stream corresponds to a left or right eye viewpoint Captioning is a technique to overlay an image on top of a video signal This can be used for instance to add a logo or some other graphics to the video To enable captioning select Add on the Captions submenu You will be prompted for a JPEG ot RGB image to add The captioning image must be created with the logo or whatever graphics is desired on a black background The black pixels will then be substituted with the video signal s pixels If you add more than one captioning image you can switch between them by using the Sect submenu Captions are disabled with the Delete al menu item You can replace the live video signal that is transmitted with a static image by selecting one of the items on the Custom video image submenu This is mainly used for testing purposes Return to sending the live video signal by selecting Nove on the Custom video image sabmenu From the Render submenu you can select one of the following local video rendering options Normal Slow Sporadic ot None The default is Normal which renders each video image before transmitting it Setting the rendering mode to S ow makes only every fifth video frame be rendered and setting it to Sporadic makes every 25 frame be rendered Setting the rendering mode to None means that local rendering of the transmitted video is turned off Using a different rendering mode than the normal is sometimes desirable for performance reaso
44. ers video szeto small window the screen soon gets filled with such windows To bring order to this one can let Confero bring order to the windows The first two check boxes set the size of the speaker and non speakers respectively The next two check boxes limit the bandwidth of speakers and or listeners This can be a way of making the speaker achieve a higher frame rate and non speakers have a lower frame rate in order to increase the bandwidth of who is talking at the moment With the next to last check box you can have Confero switch the speaker to a fixed position on the screen This way you have the speaker at the exact same position regardless of who is the speaker The last check box is useful if you would like to share your specific window layout with the other participants Of course only one of the participants should do this set bandwidth limit of listeners to fi 0000 kbps switch desktop positions between appointed speaker and previous speaker s video windows M M I set bandwidth limit of speaker to fioooo kbps m r r share desktop layout Figure 24 Floor control settines window The Video tab The third tab Video shown in Figure 25 contains various video related settings The first option sets which kind of video device Confero should use to grab video from On the Windows platform the Generic DirectShow option is usually the preferred alternative e g for USB cameras If you have a DV video camera
45. f the remote host with which you wish to establish contact If you would like to start a communication session with more than two participants you should supply a multicast address or connect to a reflector A multicast address is a special kind of IP address which works as a group address Instead of reaching only one computer as in the former case you reach all computers subscribed to this address A multicast address is in the range 224 0 0 1 to 239 255 255 254 However the participants must agree on an address beforehand The second way to accomplish a multipoint conference is by using a reflector Multipoint conferencing will be covered in more detail in chapter four In each of the above two cases you enter the name or address in the Quick Connect entry in the window shown 2 ALKIT COMMUNICATIONS in Figure 2 If the name or Us N address entered refers to a C O N F E RO reflector check the Reflector checkbox to the right of the Jonas 3 Home It entry Quick Connect entry Alkit Collaboration Studio Delete entry Magnus work gt alkit Confero o x Jessica Add entry Once you have entered the fi Connect I Reflector information needed press Settings About Confer Help Ext OK at the bottom left of the Figure 2 The window appearing when starting Confero window GETTING STARTED This will make the window shown in Figure 3 appear This will be referred to as
46. flector In many cases using multicast is not an option since it is often not supported by the network infrastructure Instead you can use the Reflex RTP reflector mixer which is multipoint communication server software developed by Alkit Communications The Reflex software is not covered here only how you connect 12 MULTIPOINT COMMUNICATION to one using Confero The reflector is something which must be set up beforehand If you do not know whether you have a reflector at your site contact your site s Confero power user or your system administrator A connection to a reflector can be set up either using Quick Connect or by using the address book When using Quick Connect simply type in the hostname or IP address of the reflector in the Quick Connect entry and check the Reflector checkbox You will be prompted for a session name as shown in Figure 8 The session name is used to identify a specific communication session on a reflector The Set session name Reflector sessions are identified by their name DI same reflector can hence support multiple simultaneous sessions Figure 8 Specifying the reflector session name To set up an address book entry for multipoint sessions simply select Add Entry in the Confero window whereupon the window shown in Figure 9 appears those who have read chapter 3 are familiar with this window As before add a name of your choice in the Name entry and select Type Host In the Desti
47. had the license file emailed to you save it somewhere on the computer your desktop is just fine Start Confero and you will be asked if you have a license When you select that you have a license you will be asked where Confero can find the license file Select the file in the dialog and press OK Now yout license is installed You must restart Confero and this time there will be no question regarding an evaluation license GETTING STARTED Get Connected First make sure that all equipment is connected properly to the system i e the camera is connected to the video grabbing device the microphone is connected the speakers are connected all equipment is powered up the USB devices are plugged in and so on There are basically two ways in which you can establish a connection in Confero The first is by using the address book and the second is by using Quick Connect In this session we will use the latter way to connect The former way is covered in chapter 3 The simplest way to initiate a conference session is by using Quick Connect to connect directly to a remote computer To do this enter the remote computer s name e g basil alkit se or its IP address e g 192 168 0 4 The IP address uniquely identifies a computer on a computer network while the name is a more readable identification that will be resolved to an IP address by your system Note that when using Quick Connect you must be aware of the hostname or IP address o
48. he SIP call has been sent the callee is notified by a ringing sound and a dialog to accept or decline the invitation see Figure 35 on page 43 You will be notified the moment the other party either accepts or declines your invitation Pitfalls There are a few pitfalls involved when using SIP invitations and particularly the address you use to invite to If you have established a point to point session with one party and would like to invite another participant it is not possible just to add a third participant using the SIP invitation button The reason for this is that when you start Confero you decide which address all packets should be sent to and this cannot be altered in an ongoing session To do this you need to restart Confero and use either a multicast address or a reflector To add participants to an ongoing conference session you must have connected to a multicast address or a reflector from the start Remember to put the multicast address in the Invite To address entry if you use a multicast address and not your computer s name or unicast IP address Using SIP behind a NAT Firewall If you are behind a NAT firewall and you invite someone who is outside the firewall it is usually necessary to put the externally visible name or IP address of the firewall in the Invite To address entry in Figure 31 If you forget to do this the other participant will not be able to connect as the address you supply is only valid on yout local
49. hich the invited party should connect to and this is entered in the Invite To entry This can be the machine you are at a multicast address or a reflector In the case of a reflector the checkbox This is a reflector should be checked Optionally a bandwidth limit can also be specified If you are behind a firewall and want to connect to a computer outside the firewall things might get a bit more complicated A firewall allows only connections to certain ports Connections made to other ports than the allowed is not possible and will not get through the firewall If this is the case read the section Using SIP behind a NAT Firewall on page 41 Finally there is also a possibility to add a SIP Priority It is possible to filter out SIP invitations if they are not urgent enough and this controls whether your invitation will get through or not Now click Save and close and you re ready to send your SIP invitation 40 Sending a SIP invitation using the Invite button Cal USING SIP INVITATIONS The second way to send a SIP invitation Ja is to select the Send SIP invitation button PA in the session management window see Figure 30 This is typically done to Invite to session invite more participants to an ongoing session Selecting this button presents you with the window shown in Figure 32 In the SIP address entry you enter the NE SIP address of the participant to invite Figure 32 The SIP invitation window When t
50. ient entry sl One of the selections is 47 2 your message to every participant M lt Enter gt sends message Figure 40 The text messaging window in Confero If you would like to write longer messages without sending each typed part every time you hit enter uncheck the box lt Enter gt sends message To send the message you now need to press the Send button 47 TEXT MESSAGING You can save the all received messages by pressing the Save button To close the window press Close 48 SHARING APPLICATIONS Start sharing Stop sharing ransssessessensesseseuses Viewing and remotely controlling the shared application Sharing Applications Sharing applications during communication sessions ts a povertul feature Les 15 accomplished by using the application sharing tool of Alkit Confera o share applications is very useful Assume that you are two professionals discussing a model of something This model was created with a visualization tool where you can rotate zoom and do lots of other things When you discuss the model both of you would like to control the model in turns to zoom in on the parts you find interesting By using the Application Sharing tool of Confero you can do this This chapter will explain how to use the application sharing tool of Confero to share the view and control of virtually any desktop application between two or more Confero users Using the Application Sharing
51. ing the bin directory where Confero was installed and double click on zmvito exe If you do not know where Confero is installed use the search functions in the operating system you use to locate invito exe on Windows Right click Invito Invito has a few features of its own Right clicking the invito icon in the system tray icon for features reveals these accessible from the pop up menu shown in Figure is Launch Confero pa 34 We ll cover each feature from top bottom Register new user Login Hold call Launch Confero Simply starts Confero one i Standalone Mode Register new user This lets you add a new user to the SIP registrar jka Exit Figure 34 The system tray menu for Invito Login This logs you in to a SIP proxy server Hold Calls You won t be bothered with any calls while you hold the calls When you decide not to hold calls anymore select it again and your calls will not be on hold Silent Do not play any sound when someone makes a call Only the answering dialog window will be opened Standalone mode If you don t want to register your SIP address on a SIP server or no SIP server is available to you you can still use invite in standalone mode to accept directly incoming connections This is a togele function About Opens a window showing which version of Invito you ate using Fixit Exits Invito When you do this you will no longer be able to accept incoming calls Answering incoming calls
52. ings affect how frequently shared application windows are updated This is a trade off between performance and bandwidth consumption Confero User Preferences E a EI User preferences for mathias User interface Session Video Audio Application sharing Miscellaneous Firewall traversal support Use STUN STUN server stun alkit se Use checkip Checkip server checkip alkit C Use SOCKS proxy Proxy server Proxy port 1080 Use secure RTP fencryption by default Reflector admin Remote camera control serial port comi coma coms coma Disabled Remote camera control TCP pork 3399 Loglevel 0 6 6 Log File C Documents and Settings ma Settings For screen grabber positions Custom button name Keys Width Height X pos Y pos Ctr Fl 305 225 1353 547 Ctr F2 O O o O Ctrl F3 616 943 266 Ctrl F4 440 281 192 210 License mangement Install license Mote that some of the settings require a restart of Confero to take effect Figure 29 The Miscellaneous tab of the user preferences window The last tab of the User Preferences window is Miscellaneous shown in Figure 29 You can enable support for transparent firewall traversal by checking the checkbox labelled NAT keep alive and one of Use STUN or Use checkip depending on which mechanism to find the public IP address of the host is to be used It is also possible to use a SOCKSS proxy if one is available The servers for STUN checkip and SOCKS n
53. l a previously saved setting press Ctrl F1 through F4 Use this feature with care as sending a large area of the screen consumes a lot of processor power and could therefore harm both the sound and video experience Receiving Video and Audio The previous section dealt with how to initiate audio and a video streams from you to the other party In order for two participants to interact we also need to receive audio and a video streams from the other party This section will guide you through the process of receiving media streams For each patty participating in the session you have a presence awareness box in the session management window Depending on what media streams the other party sends you will be presented with one or Conference Participants mote of the checkboxes Jonas Jalminger shown in Figure 17 The EX e nfo wideo Audio T mm leftmost checkbox Info opens a window with the Figure 17 The presence awareness box other partys contact information The middle checkbox Video opens a video receiver window displaying the received video stream The rightmost checkbox Audio starts the playback of the received audio stream With the slider next to the Audio checkbox you can adjust the audio stream s playback volume Note that the Audio and Video checkboxes are usually automatically enabled upon reception of a new media stream Important To receive audio you need to click the audio transmit button in
54. lly checked when a new media stream appears POINT TO POINT COMMUNICATION CI Point to point communication Communication be yeen hyo endpoints ts called pommt to pomt communication After reading this chapter you will be famikar with how to initiate a point to point Confero session participants referred to as a point to point communication session Before you can start the session you need to know the other party s IP address or hostname An IP address is a way to uniquely identify a computer on the Internet A hostname is translated into an IP address by a service known as the Domain Name System DNS Te simplest form of teleconferencing takes place between only two Using the Address Book When you start Confero you are presented with the window shown in Figure 6 In the middle section see Figure 6 1 you have the Address Book listing your contacts You can add edit or delete entries with the corresponding buttons on the right Below the address book you have the Quick Connect entry Figure 6 2 If you do not wish to add an entry to the address book you can simply type the hostname or IP address to which you would like to connect into the Quick Connect entry see Chapter 2 Initially the address book will be empty To populate it you have to add entries Adding an Entry Add entry POINT TO POINT COMMUNIC 2 Alkit Confero ALKIT COMMUNICATIONS Jonas 2 Home Alkit Collaboration Studio
55. log multipoint 53 INDEX Index acoustic echo cancellation 37 adaptive rate control 19 address book 6 10 11 12 13 42 application sharing 52 audio control panel 23 audio encoding 23 audio feedback loop 24 audio lag 24 audio menu 24 audio mute 24 audio receive 26 audio statistics 25 audio transmit 23 auto answer 33 bandwidth limit 15 19 32 34 43 camera control 27 captioning 21 36 checkip 40 chroma keying 20 compression 18 28 33 34 contrast detection 22 36 drop rate 28 DV 18 DVI 23 echo cancellation 37 encryption 40 error correction 20 FEC 20 file transfer 55 firewall 40 43 floor control 33 frame rate 19 28 34 full screen 27 G 711 24 G 722 1 24 geometry menu 17 GSM 23 H 263 18 H 264 18 installation 3 Invito 32 45 IP address 6 jitter buffer 37 JPEG 18 license 5 local monitor 23 local scaling 17 logging 41 media decoding errors 28 mixer See reflector motion detection 22 35 MPEG 18 multicast address 6 54 multipoint communication 13 mute audio See audio mute net mutes mic 24 NTSC 18 packet 20 packet shaping 35 PAL 18 pause video 22 PCM 23 PCMA 24 PCMU 24 point to point 10 preferences 30 preprocessing 20 privacy filter 22 Quick Connect 6 10 QuickTime 48 receiveing audio See audio receive recover rate 28 redundancy 28 reflector 13 Reflex RTP reflector mixer 13 RT
56. n Figure 5 will appear Most things are set to a reasonable default value here You might want to adjust the volume by using the Voume slider When the adjustments are done you can minimize or close the window Now the other participants will also be able to hear when you speak 2 Audio Control Panel Ioj x Contero Audio Help Microphone Level E_ Recelver Level E____32a a Ol Sending E Volume Mic Gain 0 35 I a Input Line In Local Monitor On i Off Encoding G f22 1 Silence Sensor Threshold Silence Suppression On Of ST Automatic ol Net mutes me Threshold Net mutes mic On Of D Automatic 50 Audio lag me 2 hp CONFERO Figure 5 The audio control panel window Note Transmission of audio is usually enabled by default in Confero This is a configurable option Receiving Video and Audio When the other participants have also gone through the procedure above you will be able receive their video and audio streams For each participant that transmits any media a list entry in the Conference Participants list of the Session Management window of Figure 3 will appear By checking the checkboxes for video and audio for each participant Confero plays out the audio and draws one video window on the screen for each participant who has chosen to transmit audio and video Note that if not specifically disabled the checkboxes for audio and video reception are automatica
57. nation entry you add the name or unicast IP address of the reflector The Video Port and Audio Port entries should usually not be altered unless Ermete DAR your reflector configuration requires it The Name Multipoint example difference this time from the procedure Type O Invitation SIP Invitation H 323 Host described in chapter 3 is that you now check Destination reflex lkt se the box This is a reflector Then you choose a video port 5566 Audio port 5568 descriptive textual name for your session such ia ee as project meeting and enter this text string a into the Session name entry The session name is used to identify a particular conference session on the reflector Each participant connecting to the reflector with the same session name will be considered by the reflector to belong to the same meeting and hence media streams will be relayed between those hosts If you leave the session name entry blank you will be Figure 9 Adding a reflector as an entry in the address book prompted for a session name when connecting to the reflector as shown in Figure 8 It is also possible to specify a bandwidth limit that the reflector will keep the traffic to the host below The bandwidth in kilobits per second is specified in the Bandwidth limit entry Specifying unlimited or a zero bandwidth limit will disable bandwidth limiting for this host on the reflector Select Save and
58. nd video are divided into small chunks before they are sent Such a RENE 2 chunk is called a packet Forward error A correction can be useful when you have a network where sent video packets are occasionally lost resulting in the loss of video frames which means that the received frame rate is lower than the transmitted frame rate To cope with this Confero employs an error correction algorithm which enables the receiver to recreate lost packets You can use static FEC where the amount of redundancy is fixed at a certain percentage Remember though that the bandwidth requirement increases with increased redundancy The second choice is to use adaptive FEC by checking the appropriate box In this mode the receiver sends information back to the sender that tells Confero to either increase or decrease the amount of redundancy depending on the loss rate experienced Adaptive FEC f Worstcase Mean Figure 13 The video FEC window You can draw graphical annotations in the shape of a circle or an arrow symbol overlayed on top of the video to highlight something of interest in the video This feature is not available in all versions of Confero Before the input video signal is encoded and transmitted you can apply a number of preprocessing operations to the signal such as a sharpening filter or a de interlacing operation With chroma keying you can substitute a blue or green background in a video sional
59. ned above RIP statistics will also drop Received packets 16481 Dropped packets 23436 Recover rate reflects how many frames per second that are recreated using error correction Lossrate 00 4 Figure 19 The video statistics window 26 COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO Redundancy shows how much of the recetved video stream is made up of redundant packets This will only be the case if the sender has turned on error correction see Error Reference source not found on page Error Bookmark not defined Media decoding errors are rare but indicate that images are not successfully decoded The last field of video statistics shows a graph of how the bandwidth consumed by the video stream has changed over time Just above the graph to the left a number indicates the current bandwidth used in kilobits per second By clicking in the black graph area a new window appears with an enhanced view of the graph This window will be explained shortly below The RIP statistics section consists of three numbers The first Received packets indicates the number of packets that has been received since you started to receive the video stream Second Dropped packets indicates how many packets that did not arrive as they should And last Loss rate indicates the current rate at which packets are lost If you click somewhere in the black graph area the following window appears This is the same Er jonas puhO A lei x
60. ng applications shared by others without requiring the Applications sharing checkbox of the Session Management window to be checked You can enable application sharing from a remote host Just check the corresponding checkbox and type in the name or IP address of the computer from which you wish to share applications Also type in the password that the application sharing server on the remote computer will be configured with Confero User Preferences LE User preferences for mathias User interface Session Video Audio Application sharing Miscellaneous Application sharing port SE _ Ask for password when sharing local applications _ Automatically start sharing applications Automatic application sharing window activation _ Share applications from remote host Application sharing window scale Factors Allow remote users to interact with shared applications Update interval Normal Real time Slow low bandwidth Figure 28 The Application Sharing tab of the user preferences window The Application sharing scale factors can be modified to reduce or increase the size of application sharing windows The Allow remote users to interact with shared applications checkbox controls whether share applications can be controlled by mouse and keyboard by all participants or only by the user sharing them 36 Miscellaneous options MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES Finally the Update interval sett
61. ns but usually the Normal rendering mode is preferred Enabling RIP padding makes every video packet to be padded to the maximum video datagram length This can be useful in certain network settings but most of the time you should leaves this option disabled which is the default With many participants in a session the screen consists of a large number of video receiver windows which can be tricky to organise As well it might be hard to see who is actually talking at the moment At large meetings it is common to have a chair or at least ask for the floor The take floor functionality is a way of accomplishing a visual effect of who is speaking at the moment When you have the floor a red bar at the bottom of your video indicates that you have the floor and so have all the other participants in their receiver window This control can be configured in different ways further explained in Confero User Information and Preferences on page 28 20 Motion detection Contrast detection Privacy filter Pause Ctri p Help Menu Help Transmitting video About Confero Transmit Audio COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO This is functionality where you can let the motion in front of your camera affect certain behaviour in Confero When you select this item you turn that functionality on To define what should actually happen when there is motion in front of the camera is selected in the User Preferences window explained in
62. rred to as Confero is for synchronous collaborative work i e when the information exchange and interpersonal communication happens directly in real time as opposed to asynchronous communication such as email which relies on a store and forward approach Although the main focus is on synchronous communication some support for asynchronous collaborative work is also provided Both point to point and multipoint communication sessions are supported When used for multipoint communication Confero is most often used in conjunction with the Alkit Reflex RTP reflector software which is a multipoint communication server GETTING STARTED CI Getting started Les chapter takes you on a tour to quickly get aquatinted with Confero and to start up a conferencing session in no tiie be able to enjoy the rich multtmodal communication and collaboration and setting up Confero is easy Once you have gotten started you will services offered by Confero Installing Confero To install Confero just run the installation program If you don t have it already it can be downloaded from http confero alkit se When the installation program is executed you will first be prompted with a question of whether you want to install Confero Answer yes and follow the on screen instructions If you encounter any problems please contact technical support at Alkit Communications Important note If you are upgrading from an earlier version of Confero mak
63. server window se Streaming Media Server Setup you enter the streaming server of your choice It can be the computer you are at if you run Alkit Servo locally or it can be another computer running Alkit Servo You can change the port to connect to by changing the preset port number in the Server Port entry but usually it is not necessary to change the port When everything is set to your satisfaction select Next This takes you to setting up the target which means where to send the video Figure 37 shows this step Decide where to send the stream by entering an address in the Streaming Address Streaming Address 224 2 2 2 entty You can stream o E EN the media to several addresses at the same time by adding addresses in the entry separating each address with a space It 1s allowed to mix both Figure 37 Deciding where to send the video audio stream Streaming Media Server Setup 0 x Please choose where to send the video PF Stream via reflector Cancel lt Back multicast addresses and individual computers If the streaming address is a reflector you also need to check the box Stream via reflector When you are finished select Next The last window before you can start to stream anything is where you choose what file to stream Supported media files encodings are QuickTime MJPEG movies Use QuickTime Still JPEG movies when streaming to Alkit Confero Wave audio files Use 16 kHz 16
64. sion you will be able to have a group meeting on the Internet In practice you have two different ways to set up a multipoint session One is to use a multicast address When participating in a multicast conference session you will receive all the streams that are sent to the multicast address selected for the session and everyone will recetve the streams you send The other way to set up a multipoint session is to use a reflector A reflector is used when the network does not support the multicast communication The reflector is used as a central conference server to which every participant connects Note IP Multicast is not supported everywhere on the Internet The preferred way to realize multipoint communication sessions is hence using a reflector Multipoint Communication using Multicast The simplest way to accomplish a multipoint session is to use a multicast address The participants must beforehand agree on which multicast address to use for the session To connect to the other parties you add the agreed on multicast address to your address book or using Quick Connect Both methods are described in Chapter 3 Using the Address Book on page 9 The only difference between setting up a point to point session and a multipoint session is that multicast address should be supplied as the destination address in the latter case A multicast address is an IP address in the range 224 0 0 1 to 239 255 255 254 Multipoint Communication using a Re
65. ssages need to be explained in detail so it would be nice pause the video sometimes to go into detail and then resume playback You may also want to fast forward or go back depending on questions from your teammates This would be a perfect situation to use Confero with the streaming media server Servo where you as team leader control the video and can stop at certain points and comment This chapter takes you on a tour of how you accomplish this in just a few simple steps N ssume you have recorded an instructional video which is going to be used Prerequisites Before you can start to stream media you need to set up the A kit Servo on a computer which is the streaming media server that controls the stream The instructions on setting up such a server are not covered here You should instead turn to the manual coming with Alkit Servo or talk to your local power user of Confero 44 Streaming media STREAMING MEDIA IN SESSIONS Streaming Media You establish a connection to a streaming server by selecting the Connect to video server button in the toolbar in the session management window The window that opens is shown in Figure 36 To the left you have an overview Please select video server frame where you see l where in the connection A ba x process you ate In Server Por 4444 Figure 36 all steps have a question matk meaning that all steps are left to do E Next gt De cay Figure 36 The streaming media video
66. st of the session parameters have to do with the SIP and RTCP protocols for session initiation and control First of all you can select the transport protocol to be used for SIP signalling TCP or UDP The Reguire RICP Session Descriptions option lets you control whether Confero should defer presenting RTP media streams until a source has identified itself through an RTCP Source Description message To enable invitations to sessions using the SIP protocol a SIP User Agent needs to be running on your computer Confero s SIP User Agent is called Ito and can be launched automatically by Confero if the Start SIP User Agent checkbox 1s checked The Auto answer incoming SIP calls toggles automatic answering of calls arriving to the SIP user agent vito You can also select to automatically accept a SIP re INVITE 30 Floor control Video options MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES during an ongoing session with the Auto accept incoming SIP re INVITE With the next checkbox you can let Confero automatically exit when only you are left in the session This way you won t have to press exit when there are no more participants in the session The last setting is a button called Floor Control Pressing the button opens up the window shown in Figure 24 Floor control deals with the Er situation where there are many n Floor Control Settings P articip ants in a session As each Ci video sizeto medium participant has its own receiver setal other memb
67. tcut to Exit __ close the video transmitter window in this case Ctrl c Every menu item that has a keyboard shortcut is listed to the right of the menu item Remember that closing the video transmitter window will also stop sending the video stream Geometry Menu In the Geometry menu you have five choices not all options are available in all MA cum rs versions of Confero though The Transmitted size menu item which consists of sai rg F four submenu items a black arrow to the right of a menu item indicates that there Crop are more submenu items Smal F4 Medium F3 Large F and Full ET controls the size of the video window and the resolution of the transmitted video sional Select the desired size and the size of the video transmitter window changes accordingly This also means that the resolution of the video that is transmitted is changed If you want to change the size of the video window locally on your screen without affecting the resolution of the transmitted signal first select the desired transmitted size and then select a scaling level from the Local scaling submenu Available scaling levels are Szxteenth Quarter Original no scaling 4 x and Full screen If you would like to mirror the video you are sending select the Mzrror menu item F p flips the video upside down and Crop lets you cut off portions of the video signal at the top left bottom and right 16 Input Menu Source Format
68. the algorithms in terms of compression performance but also the one that requires the least processing power H 264 on the other extreme gives very high compression efficiency at the cost of very high computational complexity MPEG 2 and H 263 are somewhere in between DV is a vety bandwidth demanding encoding that is often implemented in digital video cameras making it possible for Confero to transmit the digital video signal directly from the camera without further processing 17 Quality Bandwidth Window ctri q COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO The choice of compression algorithm depends on the network bandwidth available the video quality that is needed and the computational power of your computer The Quality Bandwidth menu item presents you with a window as shown in Figure 12 There are three different sliders to help shape the quality and bandwidth of the video stream you send The first slider Quality affects how much each video frame is compressed A lower quality value means that the image loses in quality and thus consumes less bandwidth The opposite is true when increasing the quality Video Quality and Band E MR The next slider is Frame Rate which lets you ey adjust the frame rate of the video stream you send Higher frame rates result in smoother video and the bandwidth increases accordingly as you send more video frames every second Frame Fiate The unit for this slider is frames per second
69. tion for other participants to view by pressing the User Preferences E button in the toolbar of the Confero user information session management window see Figure 3 The window Confero user information shown in Figure 21 will appear eine Here you can enter your user emai information which can be sm address viewed by other participants Pons when they check the Info MISS checkbox in the presence awareness box see Figure 17 To configure Confero the way you want it press the Preferences button The window shown in Figure 22 appears Figure 21 The user information window 28 The user preferences window GUI settings MANAGING YOUR PREFERENCES Note When the currently configured user level is Beginner a simplified version of the User Preferences window will be displayed Note also that not all options are available in all versions of Alkit Confero 2 Confero User Preferences User preferences for mathias User interface Session Video Audio Application sharing Miscellaneous User level Beginner Standard Expert Main window heading Conference Participants Main window position Automatic Main window starting minimized L Use full screen user interface DSSS L Confirm exit Tools on the toolbar Video Audio _ Media streaming Application sharing _ User defined video button 1 _ User defined video button 2 _ User defined vid
70. tomatic receive Default transmitted video size Small Medium Full medium Default Frame rate J 25 Default quality Q factor J 50 Default compression JPEG MPEG 2 H 264 H 263 C Autoselect video compression algorithm _ Restrict video bandwidth to i 10000 kbps Default input signal format if applicable Composite Svideo Y C O RGB PrPb HD SDI Default video signal type PAL NTSC 1080 720p USB generic Refuse requests to change sending video resolution Enable automatic video bandwidth adaptation C Use RTP padding _ Use packet shaping for outgoing video streams C Allow multiple video transmitters Receive own multicast video Privacy filter image l Automatic video caption image o Stereoscopic rendering mode Shutterglasses Autostereo Video window positions 2 Random Fix Template All video in one window Two screens C Crop video transmitter by default Full screen video rendering by default _ No window frame on receiver windows by default _ No menubar in receiver windows by default Disable OpenGL texture rendering E Automatic screen grabber transmission on start up Note that some of the settings require a restart of Confero to take effect Figure 25 The Video tab of the user preferences window To limit the bandwidth of transmitted video streams the Restrict video bandwidth slider can be used to set a default b
71. tool You start sharing an application by pressing the button shown to the left in the toolbar of the session management window The window shown in Figure 41 will appear instructing you how to select which window on the desktop to share You select a window to share by right clicking anywhere in the window Share Window Select a window to share by right clicking anywhere in the window you would like to share ce To select the whole screen right click the desktop Figure 41 The application sharing window selection dialog When an application has been shared the application sharing button in the session management window will display a red outline Pressing the button again terminates the application sharing When a window has been selected for sharing all participants of the conference session will receive an Application sharing checkbox in the presence awareness box corresponding to the user who is sharing the application This is shown in Figure 42 When checking the application sharing checkbox the window selected for sharing will appear on the desktop When this window is given the mouse and keyboard focus the application running in the window can be controlled remotely 49 The Alkit VNC server SHARING APPLICATIONS Alkit Confero MISE Conference Participants mathias johanzon Info Application sharing Figure 42 The application sharing checkbox Working with the Alkit VNC server We hav
72. udio control panel window appears as lol x shown in Figure 15 If your 172 tn Help audio control panel doesn t Microphone Level look like this it is probably O SY because you have the simplified audio control panel enabled Receiver Level See below We will go through A Z gt the panel from the top and Sending El down Volume Mic Gain 70 35 In the topmost frame we have two vu meters one for the Input Linein LocalMonio C On off reg 6721 microphone and one for the Silence Sensor Threshold received audio These simply Silence Suppression On Off Automatic 50 a indicate the volume level Below the two vu meters there Netmutesmie C On Off M Automatic is a little sending indicator which is in use if silence Net mutes mic Threshold EE zo 4 CONFERO Figure 15 The audio control panel window Audio lag ms 40 21 Local Monitor and Encoding Silence Suppression Net mutes mic COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO suppression or net mutes mic is turned on an explanation of these two alternatives is given below If the sound is sent the indicator turns red and if not blue The next frame deals with the volume in the speakers and the local microphone volume The Volume slider affects the output volume to the speakers or whatever other device you use to hear the audio The Mz Gain slider controls the amplification of your microphone The next two frames are Local Monitor
73. vitation your phone Indeed in IP telephony which is increasingly replacing traditional telephony throughout the world it is the same protocol SIP being used in both cases The party receiving your SIP invitation will be alerted with a ringing sound and a window on the screen where he or she can accept or decline the incoming call SIP is an abbreviation for Session Initiation Protocol and is a standardized protocol for session initiation and control over IP networks ending SIP invitation in Confero is the equivalence of placing call with This chapter will start by describing how you send a SIP invitation in Confero how to answer an incoming SIP invitation and some configuration issues Sending a SIP Invitation There are in practise two different ways you can place a SIP invitation The first is by using the Address Book or entering a SIP address using the Quick Connect entry The second is when you have already chosen an address to connect to and select Send SIP invitation in the session management window see Figure 30 However to be able to do this you must already be connected to a reflector If not the button will Alkit Confero Enterprise Edition a x EG Conference Participants Jonas Jalminger Info M sudo Pi Figure 30 Send SIP Invitation button 39 Adding a SIP invitation address to the address book USING SIP INVITATIONS be disabled Sending a SIP Invitation using the Address Book
74. with any still image or with an incoming video signal This effect can be used to make a person sitting in front of a blue screen in a studio appear as if he or she is in fact somewhere else See Figure 14 for an example Video Transmitter Ci Video Transmitter Figure 14 A chroma keying operartion is performed on the video signal to the left substituting the blue background with a still image showing a beach To enable chroma keying first select Key gt Chroma on the Chroma keying submenu item Then you have to calibrate the blue screen by selecting Calibrate 19 Stereo Captions Custom video image Render RTP padding Take floor Ctri f COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO The last step is to select the background image to be keyed in This is done by selecting Background gt Image and then selecting a JPEG image of your choice in the file selection dialog that appears It is also possible to key in a video signal in which case you should select Background gt Video and then select an incoming video signal from the dialog that appears This can be a live video signal transmitted by Confero from another computer or it can be a video clip streamed from Alkit Servo see Chapter 6 for information on how to stream a video clip to Confero The Stereo menu item is not always present since you need special equipment for stereoscopic video When available the Stereo submenu lets you select whether the transmitted vid
75. y a white line in the Mzcrophone Level indicator graphically tells you where the threshold is In some cases you can have trouble with the sound feedback loop occurring because the sound you send can be transmitted back to you through the receiver s microphone This can result in an echo which can be very annoying To avoid this you can use net mutes mic What it does is that when the received audio level is above a certain threshold the transmission of your audio is stopped and thus the audio feedback loop is broken and the problem disappears The threshold deciding when to stop the transmission of your sound can be set either manually by using the Nez mutes muc Threshold slider or Confero can automatically adjust the threshold if you check the Automatic box The automatic choice is only available when net mutes 22 Audio Lag Audio Menu Audio Audio Statistics Ctrl w Mute m Y Show advanced controls Audio Statistics Window Ctri p Screen grabber Pre configured positions and sizes COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIO AND VIDEO mic is turned on Just as in the case for silence suppression you can graphically see where the threshold is with the white line in the Recezver Level indicator If you experience that the audio is ahead of the video you receive you can delay the audio playback slightly in order for the two to be synchronized Pull the Audio lag slider until you have synchronized audio and video Note that you

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