Guide And Future Of Video Conferencing

By Author: benmole
Total Articles: 2
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Modern business operations all share the same rapidly depleting commodity: Time. When time is leveraged, productivity and output invariably increases within a business organization. Technology continues to provide workers and businesses with new tools to help leverage time. Video conferencing could prove to be one of the most important time leveraging business tools of the 21st century.
Once a luxury for only the largest companies, video conferencing is beginning to change the landscape of how businesses communicate with both employees and clients. In its simplest form, video conferencing allows two individuals to be thousands of miles apart yet still effectively communicate as if they were in the same room. Systems in use today can now connect multiple parties across multiple continents - in real time with excellent and high quality video and audio.

How Video Conferencing Works
The success of a video teleconference depends entirely on the equipment and network capabilities behind that equipment.
Since real-time video contains a tremendous amount of data, it is imperative that the system being used can ...
... handle a high amount of bandwidth at any given time. Fortunately, video conferencing systems are designed to "sample" and "compress" a certain portion of data (such as the unchanging "background' of the room) to help conserve bandwidth. This compression is accomplished through what is commonly known as a "codec". A video codec is the device or software that enables video compression and or decompression for digital video.
It is the job of the codec to "sample" data at specific time intervals (fractions of a second) and then compress this data so that it can be delivered across the network. The codec on the receiving end then reassembles audio and video for transmission onto a television or computer screen. To conserve bandwidth, the codec focuses on the most important data - i.e. moving objects such as people, props, etc. Moving objects take a considerable amount of processing power, so the better the codec, the higher quality your video conference will appear.

The Future of Video Conferencing
Increasing productivity while reducing costs will always be an important part of any business. The popularity of video conferencing will undoubtedly increase in the coming years. Virtually all industries will eventually utilize video conferencing in some form to help bring people together - at considerably less cost than physical travel for face-to-face meetings. As more corporations, health care providers and governments experience the value in video conferencing as a time and money-saving tool, the technology will become more necessity than luxury. The age of the video conference has just begun!