SGI: Video

I found this article about video conferencing systems in my old BYTE collection. The two pages below discuss SGI's InPerson video conferencing system. Has anyone used this? Any references or pointers on how to get it going on a LAN with Indy(s)?

Never used it, but it looks like TechPubs has some documentation on the subject:
InPerson User's Guide
InPerson Setup and Administration Guide

and the man page for InPerson 2.2.1 (for IRIX 6.5) lists minimum hardware requirements:

Thanks, Recondas! Once I am done with the current set of projects, getting InPerson running on a couple of my Indys would be a nice experiment to do...

I tried it with colleagues using Indys (and later, O2s) in the mid/late 90s. By today's standards, it's not that big of a deal at all, but in 1996, it was jaw-droppingly cool, even on unswitched 10Base-T ethernet.

hmmm wonder if can use in O2 using Video IN and Mic as inputs with some tweaks

Good to know, Jose. My primary motivation would be to relive the thrill... Hardly anything is a big deal nowadays and that, perhaps, has robbed us of a lot of fun and excitement.

Can it work with Skype or modern conferencing implementations?

johnsmith wrote: Can it work with Skype or modern conferencing implementations?

Totally different protocols, unfortunately.

You can use SGI's later SGImeeting with Microsoft NetMeeting and, IIRC, Lotus Notes/Sametime, but it needs a license.

Hi,
Not that I have the time to do this right now but I was lead to believe that SGIMeeting and the other apps mentioned above use H323 which is the precursor to SIP. Lots of older phone equipment uses H323. And many PBX systems like Asterisk have connectors for basic H323 endpoints and can interoperate the audio and session management with SIP endpoints.

I did look into this briefly. H323 had a video standard and a video signalling session. But I don't think a lot of the free PBXs have code to support this (I could be wrong here). With Microsoft netmeeting I seem to remember that the directory likely wouldn't work and extra desktop features wouldn't work but you could type in a Proxy and it would register and then you could type in handles and make calls. No whiteboard features or whatever were supported though.

There might be merit to wire sniffing older compliant programs and see what they actually say for the shared features, they might have all used the same signaling to be intercompatilbe at the time? If that's true an update to the openH323 project or something could be made to make up the difference. If you pulled it off right you could have a small asterisk server at home and register your H323 endpoints to it where you could then enter dial strings and make outbound PSTN or sip calls...and use carriers like Vonage or the like. This has a good chance of working if your proxy registration to the H323 emulation basically works for audio and session management.

Exists any software for PC Windows that is possible make videoconference with a Inperson running in a Indy?

PowerGraphics wrote: Exists any software for PC Windows that is possible make videoconference with a Inperson running in a Indy?

just read 2 posts above

Ekiga was/is a FOSS client for h.323 that should work with InPerson, and it has a win32 version...

Yup, I tried it once with a friend in Sweden. I think he used some other software that was compatible with it, though I do know he once had an indy. It was pretty rad.