[AG-TECH] Single Node AG

[John Hodrien]

On Tue, 9 Aug 2005, Christoph Willing wrote:

> It used to be the case that after multiple vic instances started up, they 
> would each show all the video streams available at the address they were 
> subscribed to. After some time, the remote video streams would drop off all 
> but one of the vic instances; this would still leave you with 3 vics - one 
> with all remote streams + its own capture stream, the other two with just 
> their own capture streams. While still not ideal, it was at least some 
> mitigation of the problem you describe.

The behaviour I'm seeing is that all vics see all remote streams.  That's the
behaviour we see with our multi-machine setup too.  But that means that in the
single machine case, you see all remote nodes, but only one local camera per
vic, rather than the more useful state of seeing all local video on all vics.

> Although I say "used to be the case", it may well still be the case. However, 
> it takes some time to settle into that mode; ultimately we found it 
> unsatisfactory and now use single machine nodes only for desktop/laptop 
> (single camera) nodes, never room (multi camera) nodes.

Yes, I can see that.

I had a slightly sick idea about running the machine with two IP addresses, so
that I could run three producers on one IP, and a consumer on the other.  Also
an even worse hack with iptables to clone the packets as they go out such that
I redirect them back into the input chain.

> Our recommended room style node consists of two linux machines i.e. a video
> capture machine with 3 or 4 video producers and a display machine with audio
> and a single video consumer. A nice addition is a third machine, running as
> a separate node for doing presentations etc. We use Linux on this machine,
> but Windows works too. Having a separate presentation machine means that the
> presenter and operater don't have to fight over who uses the keyboard &
> mouse.

We don't run with an operator for a typical meeting so that's not a problem.

jh

-- 
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without
  accepting it."                                      -- Aristotle