[AG-TECH] [Fwd: VRVS]

[Jeff Shuckra]

FYI on VRVS

David Collados Polidura wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 16 Oct 2001, Jeff Shuckra wrote:
> 
> > David,
> > How do I point vic and rat to a VRVS virtual venue? AG nodes normally
> > use multicast or vtc. It sounds like I must set up for P2P and point my
> > vic and rat to an IP address and port. Guess I need some instructions.
> 
>   When you download the VRVS package from:
>   http://www.vrvs.org/ftp/ftp.html
>   basically, you are downloading VIC, RAT and startvrvs.
> 
>   Startvrvs is a program that I developed in order to launch automatically
> your VIC and RAT applications as soon as you click on the MBONE icons that
> are inside any VRVS Virtual Room or AG Virtual Venue. You can see these 2
> first icons here: http://www.vrvs.org/Doc/panel-guide.html
> 
>   Once you have this installed in your machine, you can click on JOIN, and
> go inside the AccessGrid Virtual Venues. You can go there clicking on the
> small icon called "Access Grid", at the bottom of the page, or directly
> calling: http://www.vrvs.org/accessgrid.html
> 
>   For more information about how to send/receive audio/video from any
> Virtual Venue you can read: http://www.vrvs.org/Doc/accessgrid-guide.html
> 
>   About multicast, you don't have to worry about. Yes, you are right, AG
> works with multicast, but we set a VRVS reflector for AG. This reflector
> receives the AG streams and "convert" them to unicast for the VRVS users.
> When you click on the MBONE icons or H.323 icons inside any Virtual Venue,
> the Startvrvs application will launch your VIC and RAT with the neccesary
> parameters to receive the audio/video streams coming from the other
> participants. As easy as that, so you don't have to worry about anything.
> You don't need multicast and you don't need to set anything. All is
> automatically done for you with VRVS.
> 
> > How does the Polycom display VRVS's multipoint conference onscreen?
> 
>   Polycom ViaVideo or Polycom ViewStation are H.323 clients. By definition
> of the H.323 standard, you can just receive 1 video/audio at a time. By
> default, the VRVS reflector will send you a unicast stream of audio and
> video corresponding to the current speaker.
> 
> > Is it like a PicTel bridge where whoever talks the loudest is seen?
> 
>   Yes, that's right. But with VRVS, once you are connected with your H.323
> client you can click on the "Video Mode" icon and select other videos (but
> just one at a time). You can decide to receive video/audio from the
> current speaker (the default) or from one specific participant. Also, you
> can select Multivideo, and your VIC application will be launched and you
> will be able to watch the video of all the other participants.
> 
> > If it is not multicast or vtc then what is the bandwidth required for 5
> > sites each connected to a bridge at 128Kbps?
> 
>   That depends on the client that you will be using. If you use VIC, you
> will receive 5 videos (so if each of them are sending 128, you will be
> using 128x5). If you have an H.323 client and you are not using
> "Multivideo" you will just spend 128 Kbps.
> 
>   Let me know if you need more explanations.
> 
>   Best regards,
> 
>           David
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>  DAVID COLLADOS POLIDURA                     Email: David.Collados at cern.ch
>  Address: CERN - IT/IS, CH-1211 Geneve 23, Switzerland.
>  Home page: http://www.vrvs.org              Phone: +41 22 767 8464
> 
> "Real programmers don't admit their mistakes; they turn them into features."