CU-SeeMe
This column is the first of several installments that will deal with video on the Net. This week I focus on CU-SeeMe.
The most popular method of transmitting live video over the Internet is CU-SeeMe, with over 500,000 users. The software is available for free from Cornell University. An enhanced commercial version is now available from White Pine Software. White Pine also offers reflector software for 11 different platforms that lets you broadcast programming to any number of viewers.
CU-SeeMe permits any two people with IP addresses, videocameras and videocards in their PCs to videoconference over lines with extremely low bandwidth. The images are small, black and white and jerky, and the sound is squawky, but it works. People worldwide use it to have personal videoconferences, teach classes and show all kinds of video programs. NASA is using it to broadcast shuttle missions and other activities on its own channel, NASA SelectTV. The enhanced version from White Pine adds color, Web browser support, an address directory, incoming message alerts and improved audio. It sells for $99.
President Clinton used CU-SeeMe to have the White House Leadership Conference on Youth Drug Use and Violence "cybercast" around the world on March 7. People anywhere on the planet were able to view and hear the proceedings live over Enhanced CU-SeeMe in the first ever Internet broadcast of a White House conference.
Keynote speeches by Bill Gates from Microsoft and others at the Networld+Interop conference in Las Vegas were broadcast live over the Net using this technology, and many government and educational institutions have been using it since it was developed in 1993-94.
KVR Internet TV, an alternative rock and culture Internet TV station based in Austin, Texas, uses CU-SeeMe to show student productions and a variety of program formats, including rock videos.
Cyberia, a famous cybercafe in London, also airs a television series on the Internet, featuring computer animations and techno music video. Its goal is to highlight the creative talents that are emerging from today's computer culture.
Educational institutions have leapt to take advantage of CU-SeeMe for watching programming like NASA SelecTV, videoconferencing with other schools, special events like the Global Lecture Halls sponsored by the Global University in the United States and even regular instruction.
White Pine recently announced a special relationship with the state of New Hampshire. The state will install enhanced CU-SeeMe in each of their schools, providing a tremendous advantage in the development of Distance Education Programs.
Improvements in Quality
John Reaves of the Gertrude Stein Repertory Theater Company frequently uses
videoconferencing products in performances and collaborative works and has
not used CU-SeeMe for those purposes yet. The problem has been that no
matter how much bandwidth you get, you can't increase the window size or
significantly improve the quality. He was very interested to learn that
White Pine, the maker of the commercial version of CU-SeeMe called Enhanced
CU-SeeMe, has announced that it will support the new H.320 codec. (A
codec is the coder-decoder for the video signal and functions rather like
the modem, the modulator-demodulator, of data.) This will make it
interoperable with high-quality video conferencing systems.
H.320 is an ITU or International Telecommunications Union standard that was developed for use in point-to-point videoconferencing using ISDN lines. An extension of it to networks, H.323, will enable it to be used over the Internet, via TCP/IP. There is also an extension to TCP/IP called RTP, Real-Time Protocol, that will be friendlier to audio and video information.
In the next year or two TCP/IP will be extended, enabling H.323 to be used on the Net and giving CU-SeeMe the higher quality needed for such things as virtual performances and what Reaves calls "continuous presence events"--video connection between two or more remote locations, like New York and Moscow, that are left on for extended periods of time creating an electronic "wormhole" between the two places. This would break down the telephone call model of communication and make possible different, less precious, kinds of interactions to take place.
Paul Lowry, a New York video producer, has experimented with CU-SeeMe and likens it to ham radio because many people connect to reflectors every night to see who's out there, striking up conversations with people from all over the planet. He observes that since it's possible to play recorded video over the Net using CU-SeeMe and a video card, the software may create a version of "show and tell" in which people can show home video clips to their friends and relatives over the Net. The Net could become everyone's personal movie channel--not just a medium for real-time, face-to-face conferencing.
Important Web sites for CU-SeeMe include:
- CU-Seeme FTP site--desktop video conferencing software from Cornell University for the Macintosh and PC
- CU-SeeMe Live Over The Internet--Official, commercial and noncommerical licensing agent for CU-SeeMe
