I wanted to share this in the event that it could be useful to others.

I was thinking about how to integrate standard A/V solutions with computer 
based conferencing solutions answering two questions: (i) how can we continue 
to use existing investments in A/V solutions around campus with computer based 
conferencing solutions, and (ii) what are the alternatives to expensive room 
based conferencing solutions.

The answer was fairly simple in the end : a driverless video-to-usb capture 
device. And to be honest, quite impressive. The hardest part was selecting the 
device to test with. I ended up selecting the Inogeni HDMI-to-USB3 device. 
Based this on price as well as I like to support local - Quebec being more 
local than any other source region. ;)

Some important points I had to consider:


*         It had to be driverless - otherwise it may not work with all software

*         Support had to be great and quick - the Inogeni engineers quickly 
identified and resolve a Spark problem

*         It had to be as close to line rate as possible - most of the 
expensive solutions had only 1-3 frames of delay

*         It had to off-load CPU - this was when downscaling/upscaling was 
happening

*         Knowledge of the web conferencing world - wide array of apps and 
tools, from Facebook to Jabber

While investigating, though, I found some very interesting devices out there 
that (could potentially) solve this problem in interesting ways. Some devices 
are more complex than others, but give more features. Some support multiple 
feeds. One, quite interesting, only outputs 720p low frame rate for web 
broadcasting to save bandwidth. Which was weird in my opinion considering 
bandwidth availability and that it maxes out at this rate and is not user 
selectable.

Some interesting links:

https://inogeni.com/

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/ca/products/blackmagicwebpresenter

https://www.epiphan.com/products/

My next step is to integrate audio mixing into things. I will have to choose 
between sending audio through cam-corder to ensure audio/video frame matching 
-or- through an RCA-to-USB audio device and select it separately.


---
Lelio Fulgenzi, B.A.
Senior Analyst, Network Infrastructure
Computing and Communications Services (CCS)
University of Guelph

519-824-4120 Ext 56354
[email protected]
www.uoguelph.ca/ccs
Room 037, Animal Science and Nutrition Building
Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1

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