Design Considerations for Room Based Video Collaboration

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Design Considerations for Room Based Video
Collaboration

• Jason Bell (jason.bell_at_arcs.org.au)
• Lev Lafayette (lev.lafayette_at_arcs.org.au)
• Padric McGee (padric.mcgee_at_arcs.org.au)
• Ashley Wright (ashley.wright_at_arcs.org.au)

Supported by
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Design Issues

• Decide on how you think you will use the room
  before building it!!!
• Small group collaboration
• Research seminars
• Large lecture teachings
• Virtual Offices

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Room Design

• Microphones
• Speaker Placement
• Camera Options and Placement
• Lighting
• Computers
• Multiple Purpose Room Issues
• Other considerations

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Microphones

• Ceiling mounted
• Great for picking up audience participants and
  allows everyone to be heard.
• Ceiling microphones require more tuning.
• Gain levels need to be set at a higher level,
  which can also introduce complications such as
  additional ambient noise.
• Due to distance from microphone, voices may sound
  distant or hollow.
• Desktop mounted
• Provides greater depth to the quality of the
  speakers voice.
• Limited pickup range.
• Due to limited range, people may continually
  slide microphones from one speaker to the next.
• Desktop mics tend to hear all table related
  noise, such as paper shuffling, typing on
  laptops, laptop fan noise, etc.

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Microphones

• Wireless
• Lapel radio microphones are good for presenters
  who require greater mobility.
• Wireless microphones can be passed to
  participants at the back where desktop or ceiling
  microphones cannot hear the conversation.
• Good for adhoc room setup configuration.
• Requires passing a microphone from speaker to
  speaker.
• Requires battery charging or replacements.
• The use of multiple types of microphones can
  provide the greatest flexibility and results.

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Speaker Placement

• Front wall mounted
• Wall mounted speakers provide the feeling that
  the audio is coming from the direction of the
  Grid Wall/Display.
• A disadvantage is that you can sometimes have
  audio reflection off the walls.
• Ceiling mounted
• Good as the audio is directed down which, in a
  carpeted room, absorbs a lot of the audio.
• Provides audio evenly through out the room.
• Placing speakers too close to microphones also
  poses difficulties for the echo canceller

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Camera Options and Placement

• Presenter (front)
• Main camera should have the ability to capture a
  "head and shoulders" shot of the presenters
• Room
• Vision should include the entire audience
• Provides the ability to see people walking in and
  out of the room
• Rear
• Captures what the audience views on
  projection/display screen

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Lighting Considerations

• Ensure sufficient lighting to highlight speakers
• Special consideration for highlighting
  participants faces.
• Poor lighting can effect projection quality and
  viewing ability
• Room lighting should cover entire audience and
  presenters
• External lighting can effect both image quality
  and projection quality

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Computers

• Considerations for multi-computer capable
  software, such as Access Grid
• Single Node Display, Capture and Audio all in
  one
• Less machines to configure
• May struggle to run very large AG sessions
• May not have the power to use many capture
  devices
• May not have the power for DV and HDV encoding
  and decoding
• Multiple vics cause difficulties
• Multi-Node Display Machine, Audio Machine and
  Capture Machine
• Provides more computational power and computer
  resources to run very large sessions
• More computers to configure and manage

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Other Collaboration Devices

• Standalone presenter computer / laptop / Tablet
  PC
• Smart boards / electronic whiteboards
• Podium / presenting stage

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Room Design

• Other design
• considerations
• Data Points
• Power Points
• Video Patch Points
• Microphone Patch Points

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Example of an AG Room Node
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Example of an AG Room Node
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Example of an AG Room Node
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Example of an AG Room Node
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Collaboration Room Examples

• Though the above examples use Real Life
  pictures of different Access Grids, each design
  could be easily tailored to be an EVO style
  collaboration room, or any other possible type of
  room design.

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Rooms and Hardware Information

• Visit the Access Grid node listings, as there are
  many images of various Access Grids from all over
  the world http//www.accessgrid.org/nodes
• Visit the Access Grid Hardware section
  http//www.accessgrid.org/hardware
• Audio Devices for Videoconference Use
• http//www.arcs.org.au/VideoCollaborationTools/Au
  dioDevices

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Multi-Purpose Room Issues

• A lot of Room Based Nodes are more than Video
  Collaboration Rooms. They can also be a H323,
  Conference and/or a General Purpose Meeting Room
• Multi-purpose rooms may require different lights
  and lighting switches specifically for Video
  Collaboration

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Multi-Purpose Room Issues

• Facilities Sharing
• General Equipment Multi purpose rooms allow the
  sharing of equipment that already exists within a
  room (such as furniture and projectors) and may
  assist to reduce costs
• AV Equipment The sharing of AV equipment may be
  problematic, initial cost savings may be
  outweighed by long start-up times. For example
  audio gain levels and speaker outputs may have
  been changed since the last time there was a
  Video Collaboration session in the room
• Other software, such as SKYPE automatically
  adjust audio levels, which can be extremely
  problematic!

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Handy Tips and Tricks

• Wireless Mouse and Keyboard
• Enables presenters / participants, to control
  audio, presentations or simply rearrange video
  streams away from the node operators station
• Wireless Network
• Allows a laptop to control some of the various
  collaboration applications or other shared
  software. This can be good as it leaves the AGs
  mouse and keyboard available for the node
  operator to use for back channel text chat

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Acknowledgements

• Special thanks to Mike Miller (NCSA) for Access
  Grid Images

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• Questions???