A new crop of video conferencing standards could help boost performance, but not every standard will be adopted by every vendor.
Video conferencing relies on a series of standards and protocols for video encapsulation and session management. Encapsulation standards, for example, define how video and audio are captured, converted to digital format, transmitted between endpoints and decoded.
Video conferencing standards for signaling control session establishment, teardown and management. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is widely supported for video session management, although some older systems may rely on the H.323 protocol that predates the development of SIP. In addition, some vendors use proprietary approaches to build additional functionality into their video conferencing applications.
Encapsulation protocols digitize audio and video for transmission across data networks. For audio, the open source, royalty-free Opus codec has emerged as the most widely used encapsulation approach. Other popular audio codecs include SILK — initially developed by Skype — as well VoIP encapsulation standards, such as the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) G.711/G.722/G.729 for voice, providing either uncompressed or compressed audio capture.
For video, popular codecs include ITU H.264, which has several variants, as well as the open source Advanced Video Coding codec. Additional video encapsulation options include Google’s royalty-free open source VP9 and previous versions. H.264 is widely supported by video conferencing vendors, while VP9 is widely used in web browsers, like Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.
Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) is another widely supported technology to enable voice and video conferencing from within web browsers without the need for plugins.
It’s worth noting that vendors often use open source codecs to form the lowest common denominator for interoperability. They may then add further functionality, such as better support for lossy networks or integrated features, like chat and whiteboards, in their own way.
What’s new in video conferencing standards?
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