With SCOPIA Desktop 7.0, You Can Call Me Again!

Guest post by Vincent Chavy

Categories: Video Conferencing

June 2nd, 2009

[I have mentioned SCOPIA Desktop, our desktop video conferencing application a few times here. I love it because it offers today tomorrow's working environment, because it breaks physical boundaries and... yes, because it's a great product. There - I said it.

Well, in a couple of weeks, at InfoComm 09, RADVISION will announce a new version of SCOPIA Desktop, version 7.0, which is an exciting evolution of the previous versions. And as I was excited, I decided to ask Vince Chavy, the Product Manager for SCOPIA Desktop, to tell the tale about this new release]

As some of you might know, the technology behind SCOPIA Desktop comes from CU-SeeMe, one of the first video conferencing clients, developed by the Information Technology department at Cornell University, and later released for commercial use by First Virtual Communications (FVC).

Back then it was all about calling: Calling someone, calling a server, calling a room.  Since evil firewalls and NATs were not around yet, calling was very easy.  You just had to make sure that the other party had a listener running and waiting for the call, and… wham!   The magic of calling took place.

Then, a bit later, someone decided it was not about calling anymore.  It was all about meetings: People wanted to schedule meetings.  Enterprise users wanted to have ad-hoc meetings.  And so CU-SeeMe became Click to Meet.  Calling was no longer the priority, Meetings were.

After this, meetings got professional. RADVISION bought FVC, and Click to Meet morphed into SCOPIA Desktop.  PC processors were stronger now, and users could meet in High Definition from the comfort of their desktops.  With virtual rooms, it was even easier to meet.  Your room or my room?!

And here we are now… 10 years after CU-SeeMe Pro, calling is possible again with SCOPIA Desktop 7.0. And it’s not only possible, it’s comfortable, it’s natural. We have a contact list with presence information, and you can call other desktops point to point.  Calling, simply calling.

I know what you are thinking now.  You are wondering what really changed in 10 years?  Well let’s have a closer look using the table below:

One of the most important things in calling is establishing the connection.  Everything you need to traverse the jungle of network devices (NAT, Firewall, Proxies, Accelerator, Shapers, etc…) is now included.  We even embed a relay server that will host point-to-point calls that cannot be established.  When you buy a car, are the shocks included or is it an option?

Another important thing, second in its importance probably, is error resiliency.

A very important thing that really changed in version 7.0 is the way we abstract “the network” to the user.  Before Version 7.0, network issues were part of the every-day video conferencing experience.  In SCOPIA Desktop 7.0, we invested a lot of work and did a lot of improvements to make sure that network is not in your way.

Whether you are mobile, and packet loss is an unfortunate reality, or in a hotel sharing the same connection with everyone else – you still want to have a decent call experience. That is, without rainbow squares all over your face, or any of the other nasty artifacts network problems introduce. The new H.264/SVC based codec of SCOPIA Desktop 7.0 gives you this level of resilience.

Video calling has been around for a long time.  But with SCOPIA Desktop 7.0, you will rediscover video calls. Video calls that work, without ever having to worry about anything else. So it’s time to open your client. With SCOPIA Desktop 7.0, You Can Call Me Again!