Visual Communication Solutions

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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Low Cost Client teleconferencing

If you're smart, you know to never release anything without client review and ultimate approval!
In the old days this involved burning a DVD (or god forbid a vhs tape), calling the client to arrange a meeting, sitting down with them and taking copious notes as they watched the DVD (you prayed you'd understand these notes later back in the edit room) and then, once the revisions were made, starting the process all over again. More recently we have been using Adobe Clip Notes which allows us to send a compressed video pdf file to the client and allows for them to make notations at specific time code locations within the video, and e-mail it back to us with their comments. All fine and dandy right? ...Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Not everybody is always on the same page at the same time.
So, take a look at this new skype plugin:   http://www.cable360.net/ct/news/thewire/Skype-Gets-Multi-User-Video-Plug-In_39603.html. 
Skype Gets Multi-User Video Plug-In
ViVu has released VuRoom, a video plug-in for Skype. VuRoom is built on the Skype platform to provide customers with instant multi-user video conferencing.

To enable the video conferencing, the meeting host downloads and installs the plug-in via a few clicks. The host then selects the contacts he wants to conference with from his Skype contact list.

Call participants, other than the host, need not have the ViVu plug-in installed to participate in the video conference. Participants can join by clicking the URL provided in their text chat window.

So, here's what we're thinking:
Given that we now have everyone in the same place at the same time, we can simply patch in the video from a laptop or server and everybody see's the same thing at once. Or, maybe we just shoot the screen with an inexpensive Flip Vimeo camera, that would allow us to pan back to a live talking head to personalize the whole experience! Gotta love technology!
We have not tried this yet since the plugin is so new but, we will post results as soon as we have the opportunity to try it. If some of you beat us to it, then please post your results and comments to share.

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