Video Conferencing That Works

Russell Beattie had a post recently that made me laugh out loud, a virtual identical experience to the many I've had in trying to get my wife going with video conferencing, so I could talk with the kids while I'm on a trip. But on my last trip, life improved greatly for me on the video conferencing front.

London Calling was Russell's post, and he covers being thrilled with how Skype 2.0 will let him automatically connect with home, without having to go through this type of thing:

Man, how I chuckled at that. Been there, done that. I've even had times where my wife can get the video but can't hear me, and I literally point so that my camera image has my finger pointing at the chat window for her to look at, where I'm typing stuff like "Click on the mute button! Call me at the hotel!"

I was impressed at the size of the picture Russell had in the screenshot in his post, nice and big rather than a dinky little window. Of course, what you can't tell is how good the movement was. My experience until now has been that you get jerky, pixilated images if you go big.

Now let me back up a bit and explain my own long journey along the video conferencing front, until I've finally come close to getting what I wanted.

It was sometime in the middle of last year that I decided to try a video connection. I travel a lot, and while I can call back home to the UK by phone, seeing actual pictures is nice. So I tested out various things before I left on a long trip for SES San Jose 2005, two weeks with me being back in California.

I started with MSN Messenger, but I was displeased for reasons I can't recall now. Someday, I might try it again. But it just didn't seem to work right, or it might have been that I wanted more than a postage stamp sized video window.

Yahoo Messenger promised that. It has a large-size, high-quality Super Webcam mode. The problem is, I could never get Super Webcam going. Whether I was testing it at home or on the road, it was always unavailable for reasons entirely impossible to diagnose. Once again, postage stamp video. One the plus side, the PC-to-PC calling was slick and worked well. In addition, since my wife's an avid Yahoo Mail user, she already was set with a Yahoo account. I got things set-up for Yahoo Messenger as a backup.

Not satisfied with small, jerky video, I looked further. Somehow I came across SightSpeed. It promised what I was looking for, high quality large video. So I set things up to use it as our primary connection tool.

Everything at home tested out OK. The video was fast and the video window could be large. One the road, it was a different story. The video quality was still better than with Yahoo, but there was still what I call the "space shuttle effect." That's where the video is jerky, like you're trying to watch someone on the space shuttle.

I also had another problem. Often I'd try to connect and get a blank screen. So I'd then try Yahoo Messenger, which would work. Then I'd disconnect from that, try SightSpeed again and found it was connecting. Don't ask me why -- I just know that somehow, Yahoo Messenger seemed a good kickstart to get things going.

Despite the troubles, I was really happy with SightSpeed. You can even leave video messages, which is pretty slick. Coincidentally, someone from SightSpeed turned up at the SES San Jose conference, and I practically hugged her for being from a company that makes a pretty cool tool. She kindly set me up with a Pro account for free, probably because I did refrain from an actual hug her! I actually never use the Pro account's features, however. The free account anyone can get covers you for unlimited 1-to-1 video calls and plenty of what most people need. You can see the feature grid here.

Fast-forward to my recent trip out to SES NY. I'd actually installed Skype on my laptop, as the BBC wanted to try and do a webcam interview with me in early February. That ultimately never happened. But since I had the software installed, I also put it on my wife's computer to see if I could get the same good experience that Russell seemed to be having. Nope. Within my own house, on my own network, it took forever to connect and gave me other glitches.

Meanwhile, SightSpeed had just brought out a new upgrade, to version 4.5. This worked great. Once I was in New York, I could connect flawlessly with my wife. It really was a miracle -- good quality video, flowing pretty fast. Plus, since I'd set my wife's computer to automatically accept my calls, there was none of that "press here, yes, connect" stuff going on. Even she was impressed. Plus, I freaked our dog out when I called home once to connect but found no one was home. Woof, woof, Daisy!

I'll have another trip at the end of this month, and I'm looking forward to seeing how a new camera works. That leads me to a word about camera, of which I own probably six by now.

SightSpeed has an excellent reference list here. It's constantly updated, and cameras are rated. I always copy this page to my cell phone for that next trip to Fry's Electronics, to help with my quest for the perfect camera.

I use a Logitech QuickCam For Notebooks Pro. It's small, light, clips easily to my notebook and is pretty stable. It also comes with a built in mike, which is an added plus. Someone also told me that CCD sensors mean you get less of that space shuttle like jerkiness. Of course, I've never seen the pictures through this camera while I'm on the road, so I can't say for certain. But my wife says it looks OK.

Until now, my wife's computer has had a Logitech QuickCam Communicate. They don't seem to make it any more, and I'm not surprised. The picture quality is cruddy, all washed out terribly. It has a built-in mike, and that seems to have gone out recently, producing odd feedback.

Next trip, she and the boys will be using an Ezonics iContact Pro. I picked one up in New York after having debated it for the past few months. The downside is that it has a CMOS sensor. As I said, CCD is supposedly better (here's one article that says so). Another downside is that while it comes with a mike, that's not integrated, nor do I find it comfortable to try and wear it in my ear as you should.

On the upside, SightSpeed rates the camera highly. More important, it is the only camera that you can have positioned on your actual monitor.

Let me be clear. You can hang the camera from the top of your monitor, so that the actual camera part drops down into the monitor area itself. Why's that good? It means you can put the video window someone is watching near the camera they'll look into. Result? Instead of both parties seeing an image of each other looking up or down into some camera, it can make it feel more like you're looking at each other.

I tested it on my end in New York, and my wife said it worked pretty well. She did feel like I was looking more at her. Now I can't wait to try it with the kids, who never seem to know where to look at so Daddy can see them. Now they can look right at Daddy on the computer monitor, which is naturally exactly where they want to look and talk.

Eventually, I'll get one of them myself to use on my computer. I kind of wanted to hold off rather than buy two at once, in case they come out with an even better iContact Pro Pro!

First, the phone is your friend. Maybe next time, I'll try the entire SightSpeed experience and do sound and video. But I still feel more secure just calling home, having my wife put me on speakerphone and also putting on the speakerphone on my end. If the connection goes down, at least we're still in touch. Plus, some part of me assumes that if we mute the voice part, we might push the video photons along faster.

Second, my firewalls might screw things up. I run ZoneAlarm, she runs ZoneAlarm, my hotel might have a hardware firewall and I know my home certainly does, built into the router. Despite all this, SightSpeed gets through pretty well. It might be even faster without. Maybe someday I'll break down and see if there's further configuring I need to do.

Finally, I remain amazed that video conferencing doesn't really seem like it has advanced much since I first tried it like 10 years ago with a dial-up modem. Seriously, where's the absolutely smooth, flowing perfect video you'd think we'd have by now. Heck, this was a topic for me a dinner recently.

Allan Dick of Vintage Tub & Bath had another one of his growing-to-be-famous dinners at SES NY when I was there, and Matt Cutts got to enjoy the merriment of Allan's stories, along with me and others at our table. During intermission (Allan occasionally does have to breathe or eat!), I used the opportunity to lobby, nay demand that Matt get Google to solve the problem. C'mon Matt, I said, we don't need another web page building tool. We need slick video conferencing. Build that into Google Talk, and then you'll really sell me. Give me full screen, full motion video that's bulletproof.

Matt did diligently write the idea down in his notebook, so I can remain hopeful that it might emerge. Then again, he's got a lot of spam reports written in there, as well. Alternatively, maybe SightSpeed will move from strength-to-strength. For me so far, they've really been the best solution. I'm especially looking forward to seeing if things get better when my family's using that better camera.

That's really a smart and quick solution for video conferencing, without much efforts and time.
http://www.sony-conferencing.com/

Comment by Steve M | August 30, 2007 10:02 AM

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