TANDBERG in the organization

In the process, the task was to organize video conferencing between departments. It was necessary to connect the audience with a bunch of people, while ensuring two-way audio and video communication.
When organizing such installations, you need a competent approach, you need to solve the following questions:

1. What communication channel in our realities have units?
2. What is the audience reach?
3. What information will we transmit during the meeting (presentation, documents, video content, DUO video, face-face, face-face, etc.).
4. What functionality do we need?
5. Who will be the central hub with a thick channel and where are we going to record and store all this?
6. Providing the hall (projectors, presenters, acoustics, stands, fixtures, corny connection of electricity and the Internet)?
7. Who will supply all this to us?
8. Who will serve all this, train, make installation?
9. How to integrate all this into the overall network of the organization?
10. Are we ready to spend the N-th sum of money to implement the system?

About service and training is a separate topic, it must be solved immediately, people are painful about changes in their work, they have to go through 3 phases: denial, anger and acceptance of the situation.

If you are going to install such a system, immediately kill the thought “instead of whether to put us HD cameras and not to drive us all through Skype?”. Skype can and is useful for holding one-off meetings, between small audiences (3-5 people), with this all its possibilities will be exhausted. All such software solutions require high speed and quality of the channel. You will save on equipment, and get a bunch of cones and problems with installation, training, and give up the whole idea at the beginning.
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What kind of buns does videoconferencing give us?

• reduction of travel expenses and time savings;
• conduct training, give lectures, presentations;
• fast communication and large audience coverage;
• in real time, you can manage and control all units;
• quickly and effectively solve tasks;
• make brainstorming decisions;
• Regular reporting units on the current state of affairs;
• keep a record and a log of all meetings, latecomers can always click play and listen to everything;
• etc.

You can think of many useful things, I don’t know why technologies in Russia can’t normally take root, especially due to the large extent of the territory and the “thick”, recently, channels of unlimited Internet.

The market has a lot of integrated solutions beautiful and different. The first thing that caught my eye was Marconi Vipr (I was not looking for a supplier in Russia, I even called the office of Ericsson (which I bought Marconi)), Tandberg (it was decided to stop at Tandberg’s solutions, then in 2009 Cisco bought it and at the end of the year the dyed firmwares went), Polycom (maybe at a lower price, but Tandberg uses our president ^ _ ^), something pushed away from Polycom at that time, the choice was made in the direction of Tandberg.

The basic kit, which is needed for the "budget" configuration:

• Tandberg mcu
• TANDBERG Content Server + NAS rack 1U
• TANDBERG 1700 MXP NPP MultiSite
• TANDBERG 770 MXP NPP

Characteristics can be viewed by clicking on the links.

Scheme of "budget" configuration


If the number of audiences is no more than 3x, you can refuse from Tandberg MCU, TANDBERG Content Server and NAS. You can also use the TANDBERG Edge 95 MXP with a separate camera and the ability to connect to multiple projectors / panels.

Communication Channel Requirements
It is important to consider not only the connection speed, but also the quality of the connection, which includes such concepts as packet loss and jitter. Packet losses can be conveniently checked using the built-in utility in Windows PathPing , a Linux equivalent - mtr, also a very handy utility iperf or jperf with a graphical interface in Java , using it you can generate traffic by controlling deviations.

If you choose between fiber-optic communication channels, copper or ADSL, then it is better to choose the first one, if possible and take the channel “wider”, you will need an external ip-address for each terminal, or if you are connected to a network in a VPN, then select a separate ip range addresses in the internal network. We also launched on ADSL, at a speed of 128 kbps, of course, the conference resembled a slideshow, but “it works.” Tandberg has developed a special technology for updating images; the whole picture is divided into sectors and only active ones are updated, i.e. if you wave your hand, then only the zone with the hand will be updated, not the whole picture, which allows you to greatly reduce the requirements for connection speed, channel quality and traffic consumption.

In Tandberg 770 MXP NPP - the threshold is set to the maximum connection speed for H.323 and SIP up to 768 kbit / s (you can increase the maximum threshold by purchasing an additional option), you also need the NPP option to transfer presentations. On average, with active discussion, for one hour of traffic work at ~ 300-350 mb, this is with a picture quality of 720p .

In the Tandberg 1700 MXP NPP - with the minimum configuration (without Tandberg MCU) the MultiSite (multipoint) option is needed, it allows you to connect to 3 codecs at the same time. It is a 22 ”touch screen with a camera that can be used as a regular monitor. The connection speed threshold with 3 simultaneous participants is 2048 kbit / s, according to traffic, with active learning, this is ~ 900 - 1000 mb per hour. You can replace the Tandberg 1700 MXP with a TANDBERG Edge 95 MXP and connect it to 2m large monitors, one will be presented at a presentation, the other is a survey of audiences or people participating in the discussion.

It is better to find a company that provides equipment for a test period or for rent, you can choose from existing solutions and adapt them to the current environment.

Installation
Well, we have dealt with the connection and roughly vaguely imagine what equipment Tandberg is needed, go to the installation.

ATTENTION!!! Update firmware. Firmware updated with a special request to the service center Tandberg, only for official suppliers.

Questions that we have to solve:

• With the help of what to look and what to look at?
• What to listen to?
• What to say?
• What additional equipment do we need?

With what to look and what to look at?
If the audience is not large, you can and should use LCD or plasma panels, the pictures are richer on them, immediately take 2 identical panels of the maximum diagonal and scatter the picture with the presentation and “faces”. If the audience is large, you need to use a good projector based on the parameters depending on the audience, the illumination: 2500 lumens for an audience of less than 100 people and daylight, 3000 lumens for an audience of 100 to 200 people and daylight, 5000 lumens for an audience of more than 100 people and bright daylight.
Not unimportant is the parameter of maximum resolution, the size and quality of the projected screen. The best surface for the screen, in my opinion, is silver-gray with a reflection coefficient of less than 1, it is more stable in extraneous light sources and its color reproduction is the highest, and of course it is necessary to select it depending on the projector resolution and aspect ratio.

What to listen to?
On the market a large selection of different acoustics. For an audience of 50 people, a full-time 100 watt of power is enough. It is better to use pendant subwoofers, you can even take it already with a built-in amplifier.

What to say?

Omnidirectional microphone copes with its functions, if you doubt that one will not be enough to buy another one (put at the beginning and at the end of the audience). But for an audience of 50 people, it is quite acceptable for one.

What additional equipment do we need?
It is important to provide equipment with good protection against static electricity, to purchase a good UPS, given the power of the projector.
For presentations, there is a nettop with a monitor in each audience. DropBox is installed on them, during the meeting, through which files are exchanged, everything is simple.

Training and control system management
It is better to immediately appoint a person responsible for this system, so that he feels the whole process of installation and setting up the equipment, he himself participated in the installation. He should deal only with training and installation, as well as monitor all systems in real time.

Management can be done using a convenient Web-based interface and telnet. Screenshots of the web-face, you can see here. To control the camera via telnet, you can use the special emulator of the MXP Soft TRC4 control panel .
Well, for clarity, what is happening in the audience, you can install cheap ip-cameras aimed at the screen.
It is better to immediately connect and configure SIP, this is a workaround that will save the situation if something gets mixed up on the highways.

As a conclusion
After six months of torment with denial, installation, equipment, communication channels and training, the technology settled down and became ordinary, like a cell phone. Meetings are held every day and few people in the organization can be surprised by this. The audience reach is huge, more than 300 people per session, it is very convenient to conduct training, while improving its quality, and indeed, every process has a very strong effect. The main thing is to ensure the “accessibility of technology”, and not to hide it in a fireproof iron cabinet. In general, Tandberg justifies its value and prestige in the market for video conferencing.