[Videoconferencing] FYI - support for Vidyo in TRIUMF video rooms

[Andrew Daviel]

FYI

CERN (or at least some groups at CERN) is dropping support for EVO in 
favour of the commercial product Vidyo. This is free to use as long as 
you have a CERN account.

It uses a daemon listening for a request from a Flash application in a 
web page, which pops up the video client (a native application running on 
the client).

The client seems to work OK on the Linux-based room systems at TRIUMF. 
However, it is lacking camera control - it is unable to select the camera 
input port, the video standard (PAL/NTSC) or adjust brightness/contrast.
On the other hand, it does not reset those values, either. They remain 
set to whatever value they had before, as left by the previous 
application. (If the system was rebooted, they may default to PAL - 
unwatchable).

Since the Vidyo client does not lock the camera controls, one can run 
xawtv in parallel to control the camera. Typically, that's not necessary, 
unless you wish to select e.g. a document camera. The cameras in 
the auditorium and ISAC2 video use the S-Video input on separate cards, 
and it is possible within Vidyo at least to select separate cards.

(However, if xawtv is started first, it locks the video device and Vidyo 
will not run)


-- 
Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376  (Pacific Time)
Network Security Manager