Realize VoIP Newsletter, June 2009

If you wish to subscribe or see other issues of our newsletter, you are invited to visit our Realize VoIP Newsletter homepage.

In This Issue

• Editor's Note
• BEEHD: Your Path to Implementing HD Video
• Product News and Updates
• We've Got a New Look!
• From Our Developer Community
• Not All Codecs Were Born Equal (Better Bet On A Horse Born To Win)
• Blog Highlights
• In the Press
• Webinars / Events

Editor's Note

By Amir Zmora, VP Marketing

We are delighted to be sending you our latest edition of Realize VoIP. This release has a video focus, with announcements and articles related to HD video development, as well as an exciting announcement about our partnership with Samsung.

Amit Lavi, Product Manager of Client Framework Solutions at RADVISION, shares some insights about our new BEEHD product, a comprehensive High Definition (HD) Video Client Framework. Another video related announcement is of the latest eVident version, supporting cool new video quality features. An article about video codecs and the varying requirements imposed by the nature of the application and deployment environment is provided by our video guru, Sagee Ben-Zedeff, from CTO office. You can also find information about a Webinar planned for July 16^th on HD Video. Last but surly not least is an exciting announcement about the partnership we have with Samsung for the development of the VC240. The VC240 is a high definition desktop video conferencing device that integrates advanced high definition video conferencing into a high resolution, multimedia, LCD monitor. It functions as a standalone HD video conferencing device not requiring PC connection. More on this can be found on our blogs.

The Samsung RADVISION partnership takes the best of breed technology from both companies: Samsung is the world's leader in LCD technology holding #1 market share in computer monitors, while RADVISION is a leader in VoIP signaling and media technology.

This Newsletter also includes some insights from the RADVISION Developer Community. Tsahi Levent-Levi, the person behind the developer community and many other technical and marketing initiatives, gives a brief overview of recent improvements to the site. A first glance of our newly launched Website is provided by David Margolin who is currently recovering from many sleepless nights of working on this project.

BEEHD: Your Path to Implementing HD Video

By Amit Lavi, Product Manager

Today, everywhere you look you will see HD - it's in your neighborhood electronics store, on your cable set-top box and your YouTube videos. It's no wonder that HD is also making its way into the visual communications arena. The only problem is that today's video conferencing products are pricy , targeting large enterprises with deep pockets - Telepresence systems can cost as much as $300,000 a piece.

This is why we decided to develop and bring to market our brand new BEEHD: A high definition interactive video engine. The short story here is that by using RADVISION's BEEHD, you can jump-start the development of your video terminal - just hook it up to your hardware, add the user interface on top and you're done.

But, the real question still remains; how high is our high definition? Before we had high definition, the fact that you had terrible video on your product wasn't that much of an issue - resolution was small, networks were cloggy and this was acceptable. But today? With high definition, every missed pixel is really missed. This is why we've developed a technology that can offer you a comprehensive solution. BEEHD incorporates the signaling, codecs and media engine that fix network defects - making sure that the video quality will be the highest possible. To do that, we employ SVC based technologies, enabling us to protect the video where it really matters, with little overhead on the bandwidth.

If you're interested in more information about our BEEHD product, you can check out my blog post - it will give you some insights on the main benefits of BEEHD.

You can also learn more about our SVC technology on our website.

Product News and Updates

We had a busy first quarter here with a number of new product releases:

• We now have a complete set of tools for developing standard-based presence and instant messaging applications. It consist of:
  • Our existing SIP Stack with SIMPLE Add-on's for presence
  • Our brand new XDM Stack for contact list and group management
  • And our brand new MSRP Stack for instant messaging and file transference
• On the testing front, ProLab version 5.4 was just released. It comes with support for HD video, IPv6, and a lot of additional features
• eVident just came out in version 2.0. It adds powerful reporting capabilities along with better support for HD and improved UI

The new versions above are available to customers under maintenance agreements.

We've Got a New Look!

By David Margolin, Online Marketing Manager

To coincide with InfoComm, we have reinvented and are relaunching our new and modern website so that it represents the various aspects that make up RADVISION. Not only has the visual design of the website been modified, but the site map has been reorganized in order to represent our business growth engines and to clearly display our various business segments, all while incorporating it and aligning it to our business strategy. Our new website allows us to visually represent the solutions and business segments of RADVISION, with a clearly defined area for our video products and another for our developer products, making it easier to find the information you are looking for. Our two target audiences - the enterprise and the developers- individually coexist to make up the design and placement on RADVISION's restructured website.

RADVISION's redesigned website

Our new design is using iconic visual langue, relying on graphical pictograms and imagery. Most importantly, our homepage outline mirrors our next generation video layout; the placeholders of our video content and video layout for a video conference. Now, all our collaterals - print materials, promotional items, tradeshow presentations and our GUI (graphic user interface) - are aligned with the same color scheme and display, so that it reflects our new products and technology, making our image consistent and accessible to you.

RADVISION deals with video and audio communication, and as such, it is integral that the visual website is delivering the same visual experience in order to help the user find the information they are looking for. RADVISION, already a leader and pioneer in developer solutions, is entering a new phase, ready to be the forerunner in both its fields.

From Our Developer Community

By Tsahi Levent-Levi, Community Facilitator and Project Director

As our community is starting to gain traction, we are getting the hang of what it means for our company to run and manage the community forum. We have had some enlightening insights from our community members as how to improve our website. These are problems that seem to have come up.

1. It is not always clear what they can do and gain from our community
2. There's more that our members would like from our community

This is why you'll see some changes coming soon to this site, with a few notable one that have recently taken place:

1. Learning center - We are going to be opening up our learning center, were it will be a place allowing you to find out more on exactly what you can do with our community. As more features will be added, the learning center will expand.
2. Suggestion box - we've opened up a general forum where you can place your suggestions for the community site. You are welcomed to recommend new ideas on how we can improve.
3. Fewer product forums - we've consolidated some of our product forums, making it easier for you to navigate and decide which ones to use.
4. Newsletter homepage - our newsletter can be accessed through the developer community, so you can now view archived issues whenever you want.

On another note, if we're discussing video coding here at length in this issue, you just might appreciate this xkcd webcomic:

Not All Codecs Were Born Equal (Better Bet On A Horse Born To Win)

By Sagee Ben-Zedeff, Technology Researcher, CTO's Office

Not all horses were born equal. A few were born to win. ~ Mark Twain

If you don't know what a codec is, all codecs may appear the same. This makes sense.

If you know what a codec is and even use one, you still may think all codecs are the same, but don't feel bad, cause most people do. But, if you really want to know your way around codecs, the first thing you should know is that not all codecs were born equal.

I am not talking about comparing different video standards, and saying (once again) that H.264 is the best codec out there and the de-facto standard. I am talking about H.264 codecs from different vendors, hardware and software, and how they differ.

Even codecs that were born equal don't stay that way. Just like horses, they have to be trained, nurtured, and set to meet certain goals. Only a few are true winners.

But enough with the metaphors ---

A generic video codec can be built. But like most things generic, it will be outperformed in a certain domain by a domain-specific codec. So if you're looking for a codec specifically for live sports events, surveillance, broadcasting, archiving, or video conferencing, each domain requires slightly different characteristics, and as such, each domain should use its specified codec in order to have optimal viewing.

Sporting events have lots of movement, but pay less attention to specific details (even in HD). Surveillance is all about the fine details, but movement is restricted and is quite slow. Video conferencing is all about quality, and while movement varies, it is subtle. And if you're trying to encode The Matrix (like I did many many times...), well - good luck!

Optimizing an encoder for quality means knowing your domain. And if you know your domain, you should look for a codec, or preferably, a codec house that knows your domain. Or even better - a codec house that lives in that domain.

If you're going to encode a sporting event, you want the motion estimation to have a high range and frame rate to remain high at all cost; if you want to encode a surveillance stream, you would want high quality (less quantization) and you can "sacrifice" the frame rate if necessary; if you are working on a video conference, motion range is limited, but frame rate and quality must remain high. In other words, you have to choose the right tools and set them accordingly, in order to get the best results.

Now if you're looking for a "horse" to bet on for video conferencing, you should really turn to the experts. I like BEEHD because it's not just a great codec from a great family (TI and RADVISION), it's also a codec that was specifically designed, implemented and optimized for video conferencing.

It was born to win. Take a ride and you will see the difference; it isn't equal, it's superior.

PS - Don't take it from me. Read Amit Klir's explanation on why our BEEHD video codec is built for video conferencing.

Blog Highlights

Enjoy this quick glance at some recent interesting blog posts on our blog network:

• Multi-core optimization: Another guest post from Ofer Goren, this time about the Intel Seminar he spoke at.
• Video Conferencing: Moshe Machline talks about the boundaries that affect video conferencing today.
• HD Voice: While we're talking about HD Video here in full force, Tsahi Levent-Levi took the time to contemplate about one of the problems in HD Voice, which is codec selection.

In the Press

• We have announced our partnership with Samsung for a new affordable high quality HD Video Conferencing Device
• We have strengthened our partnership with WindRiver
• Intel has announced its plans to acquire Wind River. Both are long term strong partners of RADVISION

Webinars / Events

Upcoming Webinar: HD Video Conferencing to the Masses

As you might have understood by now, this issue of our newsletter is all about HD video. It shouldn't surprise you then that we also have a webinar on how our BEEHD can get you closer to developing a video conferencing endpoint. So register, mark your calendar and make sure you are free on the 16^th of July.

TI Technology Days 2009, Asia

We're out on an Asia tour with Texas Instruments on their Embedded Processing Tech Day. There we will discuss our BEEHD solution which is optimized for the TI DM6467. It's going to be 5 cities in the next two weeks: Shanghai - June 22; Shenzhen - June 24; Beijing - June 26; Taipei - June 30; Seoul - July 2. You can register on TI's website. We hope to see you there.

Customer Satisfaction Survey

Your opinion matters to us. If you are (or were) a RADVISION customer of any of our developer tools, we would appreciate if you would take our Customer Satisfaction Survey. It will take only a few minutes of your time and will assist us a great deal. We will be leaving this survey open for you to fill in at your own leisure, but why wait? Take the survey now.

Past Webinar: Improving Video Quality in Your Network

While video deployment is experiencing a significant boom both in enterprise and carrier networks overall, the user experience does not always live up to expectations. In this Webinar, RADVISION experts discuss how to avoid pitfall through pre- and post-deployment network assessment of video quality. If you didn't participate in this webinar, you can now view it directly from the web. Registration is free.