There’s a trend these days to employ Forward Error Correction (FEC) as a means to improve media quality in voice and video calls. It is also something that RADVISION has been actively pushing at the ITU-T – and will probably be added in one of the next ITU-T meetings as H.323 Annex I. When we started working on our SVC solution, and had to decide where to place the error correction data, we debated on a very basic question:
(read more...)
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | December 17th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
This post is part of our Designing Hardware for HD series. Be sure to check it out! [While I've done my best to cover the various options for HD video chips and the trends in the market, I also wanted to take a deeper dive and explain how we analyze such a chip. In this case, the TI DM6467, which we have selected as the basis for our BEEHD product. For that, I asked Amit Klir, our resident video architecture
(read more...)
By guest | November 16th, 2009 | Filed under HD VoIP
[This post is taking part in our Designing Hardware for HD series. Be sure to check it out!] Last week I too k the time to map the different options of video coding chip solutions. There is one thing I left out, although it can be deduced from that post, and that’s the trends that exist in the video coding chip market. As a quick recap, there are two main groups of solutions for video coding chips – those that
(read more...)
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | November 9th, 2009 | Filed under HD VoIP
[This post is taking part in our Designing Hardware for HD series. Be sure to check it out!] One of the most burning issues involved with designing a video telephony device is where the video codec is going to reside. The reason is that this is by far the most CPU intensive task of the whole system, especially when going up to high definition. I’d like to discuss the various options that exist today on the market, with their relative
(read more...)
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | November 2nd, 2009 | Filed under HD VoIP
[Matan Barth is a Project Manager in our Global Services group. Since he is working on several projects that deal with IP PBX technologies, I've asked him to provide his views on this subject. As a result he'll be posting a series of posts on media relay. This is the first installment in the series.] To relay or not to relay – to paraphrase Shakespeare - is a decision that may well be as important as “to be or not
(read more...)
By guest | September 17th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
[On his last post here, Amir Zmora promised to get back from InfoComm with insights from the show and share with us feedback from the launch of the SCOPIA VC240. Well, he is back.] InfoComm is over and as promised I’m getting back with some insights from the show and with an answer to the question I’ve asked on my previous post: Is SCOPIA VC240 going to be a game changer? Tsahi already provided his answer about this here. Striving
(read more...)
By guest | June 25th, 2009 | Filed under Clients
[We've just announced our Samsung-RADVISION VC240 HD videoconferencing LCD monitor and our BEEHD videophone engine. What we've noticed is that customers tend to ask a lot about our video codec in these products. Amit Klir, our "resident media specialist" for BEEHD explains what makes the video codec in our client product so great] As when giving a gift, customizing it makes the gift so much more effective: the same hold true with video codecs. When looking for one, you need
(read more...)
By guest | June 22nd, 2009 | Filed under Clients, Technology
Anatoli already did a great job of covering the HD Communication Summit – a very successful gathering of people from our industry, trying to (re-)push towards the use of wideband voice codecs for VoIP services, so that we will once and for all be able to hear each other properly. While most experts will explain that HD voice is more than just a codec (for all the good reasons), the main obstacle that I see here is actually THE codec. Or rather the lack of THE codec. Take a look at the following list of wideband codecs I’ve gathered here from the top of my head: G.722 G.722.1 G.722.1 Annex C G.722.2 Siren 14 Siren 22 AAC-LD AAC-LC Skype’s SILK And I’m sure there are more – I am no voice codec expert myself. These codecs vary in a lot of different ways, such as sampling rate, bit rate, computational needs, etc. And still – they are all wideband codecs, suitable for “HD Voice”. Take a look at HD Video – there is only one de-facto codec: H.264. You might use the AVC flavor of it, or the new SVC flavor; but H.264 is THE codec. Until we come to terms about THE codec for HD voice, we will continue to just talk about making it a commonplace.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | June 4th, 2009 | Filed under Standardization
[Anatoli just returned from the HD Communications Summit with some interesting insights about HD Voice. As I am pushing him to become a regular guest blogger here, he was kind enough to write about it for me here. He also has his own twitter account, so you can follow him @Anatoli1] To follow up on my previous post, “Can You Hear Me Now?“, I would like to continue talking about HD Voice. However, now I’m armed and dangerous – with
(read more...)
By guest | May 26th, 2009 | Filed under Standardization, Technology
[HD is what we do here, so no wonder we sent Anatoli Levine, the Director of Product Management Americas and the IMTC President to the HD Communications Summit. Here are some of his thoughts on his way to the summit] Who heard of High Definition Video? Oh yes, thank you, so silly of me, of course everybody did – walk into any electronics store, and admire – clear, bright, juicy picture, hundreds of HDTVs of all sizes smiling at you,
(read more...)
By guest | May 20th, 2009 | Filed under Standardization, Technology
