[asterisk-users] Video conferencing?

[Matthew Jordan]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dmitry Melekhov" <dm at belkam.com>
> To: asterisk-users at lists.digium.com
> Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2012 10:40:57 PM
> Subject: Re: [asterisk-users] Video conferencing?
> 
> 25.07.2012 22:24, Ken D'Ambrosio пишет:
> > Hi, all.  I'm 99% sure that Asterisk technically *supports*
> > videoconferencing
> 
> well, confbridge supports sort of videoconferences , but our users
> refused to use them because asterisk switches video in the middle of
> stream and this leads to broken picture. developers refuse to fix
> this,
> i.e. add switching on i-frame ...

Hi Dmitry!

So, our original conversation is here:

http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-video/2012-April/003621.html

As I said in our previous conversation, we don't currently have plans
to implement a re-transmission of a new source's I-Frame, or delay
switching of the video source until an I-Frame from the new source arrives.
I wouldn't characterize that as a "refusal".  I was simply informing you of
the actual state of affairs: we do not have plans at this time to implement
this feature.

That being said, as I mentioned in our discussion, Asterisk should have
some built in mechanisms currently to help alleviate this situation.  It
should send a SIP INFO request when a video source changes notifying
the client that it is the new video source.  The client can then transmit a
new I-Frame, which alleviates the need for Asterisk to delay switching of
the video source (or otherwise manipulate the video stream in some fashion
itself).

As I asked in the e-mail:

"1. What clients are you using?  Do they support RFC 5168 (XML Schema
for Media Control)?
2. If you get a SIP trace or a packet capture, do you see Asterisk
sending the SIP INFO messages when a video update occurs?"

Since I never got a concrete answer to those questions, I'll ask again:

Do your clients support RFC 5168?  If not, do you have significant problems
with clients that do support RFC 5168?

Now, if this is a significant issue for a large number of video clients,
including those that support RFC 5168, we could consider implementing
something else (such as only switching the video source on the reception
of a new I-Frame).  As it is, there hasn't been widespread request for
this, and - while it would be a very useful and interesting improvement -
falls more into the category of "improvement" or "new feature" then bug.
As such, improvements and new features typically come from either planned
development improvements, or from open source contributions from the Asterisk
Developer community.

Note that we plan the vast majority of our features with the community
as AstriCon, which is coming up soon:

http://www.astricon.net/2012/astridevcon.aspx

Barring that, if this is a feature you would love to have, then you can
either write it and submit the contribution to Asterisk, or you could
work with developers in the Open Source community to write this feature.

I hope this clarifies the "refusal".

Thanks!

--
Matthew Jordan
Digium, Inc. | Software Developer
445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA
Check us out at: http://digium.com & http://asterisk.org