Re: Planning for TPAC

Léonie Watson wrote:
> We'd need to think about how it was setup at TPAC itself. Lots of people 
> all video conferencing would be a bandwidth killer - but perhaps one 
> machine in the meeting room, with the camera pointed into the room would 
>  suffice?
  
We’ve been experimenting with various setups in our meeting rooms as our clients all use different systems (Google hangouts, Skype, Webex, gotomeeting etc). 

The on-screen content is fairly easy with each of those, the key thing seems to be having one source of audio input & output.

I.e. one computer that the microphone goes into, and the speakers come out of. Partly to prevent feedback loops, but also because all the software systems try to nullify your own input to prevent echo, which means you want the speakers & mic very close (like on a laptop with no external mic/speaker). Otherwise the audio cuts out from the external person’s point of view.

Our most successful setup so far is to have a TV which does audio out, a webcam hooked on the top of the TV that does the audio in, and a laptop taking the HDMI and USB inputs. That’s good for a small room, but because it is at one end of the room the audio input suffers when people are sat more than 4m away.

Another option is a speaker/mic combo which you can put in the middle of the room. There are various devices aimed at conferencing, they tend to be expensive. When travelling I use a Fugoo speaker, good input/output, 40 hour battery life, USB charging. It does use Bluetooth though, so for anything like that, don’t pair the laptop with any other audio devices (like headphones) or it might switch when they come into range.

HTH,

-Alastair

Received on Wednesday, 5 April 2017 08:10:42 UTC