Basic Video Conferencing Requirements – Your Final Checklist

Video Conferencing offers you a solution to save time & Cost. Do Face to face Business Meetings, without traveling.

More and more organizations are looking forward to integrating video conferencing into their workflow. Businesses are saving millions of dollars every year by doing video conference meetings instead of traveling all the way for doing face to face meetings with their clients, partners and even internally between teams.

Once you have decided to implement a video conference system into your organization, you need to first understand, the basic requirements for doing a Video Conference Meeting. The below given basic system, software, and hardware guidelines will allow you to set up a video conference system and reliably maintain high-quality audio and video so that you can use this information to get up and running with video conferencing.

Video Conferencing Requirements Checklist

1. Video Conferencing Codec: – This is the Heart & Brain of any Video Conferencing system, that does encoding and decoding of your video conference signal that you send and receive while doing a video conference meeting. Codec takes the audio and video from your microphone set up and the camera and then compresses it, it then takes it over the IP network or Internet and then decompresses this audio and video signal to show on your display unit and sends the audio goes onto your speaker unit at the receiving end. A Codec can be any one of the following :

a) Hardware endpoint, like PeopleLink Elite MCU Endpoint

b) Video Conference Software like PeopleLink UTP Plus,  where you can install a video conferencing software onto your system one time and thereafter simply click and join. With UTP Plus, you can even invite hardware-based video conference devices into the same meeting via H.323 interoperability.

c) WebRTC compliant browser– If you are opting to choose a web-based video conferencing codec, then you will need a webRTC compliant browser like google chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, etc. In this case, the browser itself can do the coding and decoding of the audio and video that you will send and receive. Video Conferencing from InstaVC provides, secure and easy to use video meetings over webRTC from the browser itself, with no downloads.

2. A Computer with good processing power– To enjoy good audio and video quality from your video meetings, you need a computer with a fast processor. Ideally, for a good quality video conference meeting, your computer with at least 2 GB of RAM and a quad-core processor will be able to perform well, which is usually a very basic thing in today’s computers and laptops.

3. Display – You need a display to show your video. Display can be a LED screen, Desktop, Mobile, etc. The larger and high quality your display is, the more life-like experience, you will get from your video conference meeting. If you are doing a video meeting, that involves several participants in a large room, then having your display on the wall, is a better choice, which will give you better eye to eye contact with your participants.

4. Video Camera – You also need a video camera that can be webcam like PeopleLink i7 or a pan tilt zoom PTZ camera if you have more people in the meeting room, like PeopleLink. Remember, HD cameras give better clarity.

5. Audio – Microphone & Speaker – Basic level video conference audio input and output can be taken even from a simple headset. For large business meetings set up, you can use HD conference speakerphones like PeopleLink UVC 15  which have inbuilt noise and echo cancellation and large audio pick up range, to give crystal clear HD quality audio. For large scale, audio and video meetings, Digital Signal Processor [DSP] can be used like the PeopleLink All in One DSP

6. Network Connectivity– And not to forget the network connectivity which can be over a Leased Line, Fiber or VSAT or public Internet. Large organizations, prefer to install video conferencing setups within their own premise itself, for enhanced security and privacy. A large number of users also prefer video conferencing over public internet and cloud platforms for enhanced flexibility.

In addition to the above basics, few simple points when kept in mind can improve the quality of your video conference meetings by many folds.

1. Lighting should be optimized with minimum glare. Keep your light source in front of the participants so that Lighting falls on the face of the participants, rather than coming from behind the participant.
2. Clean Background preferably in blue or grey solid colors. Avoid using abstract prints in the background to keep the camera focus on the participants.
3. Audio Acoustics or sound absorption in the room, with minimal reflecting surfaces. Adding carpets to this area will help in improving the audio quality by reducing noise and echo.
4.  And most importantly, the speed of your internet connection. A good internet speed, with good uplink and downlink at all participating locations, enhances the quality of your video conference meetings many folds.

With these factors set, you are ready to start your Video Conference meetings with a good solution provider, like PeopleLink [www.peoplelinkvc.com] which provides the most advanced video conferencing system for your business meetings.

Although no one size fits every requirement when it comes to video conference demands. While some businesses need large-scale video conferencing in an auditorium setting, with hundreds of users at the same time. Others like music videos have unique video conferencing requirements, such as high-quality audio for music and specialized video for conference meeting rooms. Every installation has unique video conferencing requirements and PeopleLink offers just that – solutions which are custom designed to suit all your video conferencing needs, be it from BYOD devices including desktop or mobile, huddle rooms few members or for large conference rooms and auditoriums for thousands of locations to join in.

Contact us Now or send us an email at vc@peoplelinkvc.com to book a free Demo.