About Video Conferencing; Who Becomes The Host; Request, Release, And Assign Floor; Split Screen & Voice Switching - TANDBERG MXP User Manual

What's in this guide?

About video conferencing

Understanding the video system basics
A
video call involving more than
two participants is called a video
conference or a MultiSite call.
A multitude of TANDBERGs video
endpoints are capable of initiating
video conferences. To be able to do
this the endpoints must have a built-in
MCU (Multipoint Control Unit). This
is an optional feature that may, or
may not, be installed in your video
endpoint.
Some video endpoints are without
this optional built-in feature. They can,
however, participate in video meeting
initiated by others.
Observe that the infrastructure of your
video network may contain external
MCUs. These are devices dedicated
to handle several simultaneous
video conferences, each with many
participants.
Consult your system administrator for
information on how to utilize external
MCUs, if applicable.

Who becomes the host?

The host of a video conference is the
endpoint to which all the others are
connected. In other words, the one
that initiated the conference.
If two systems both supporting
MultiSite have established their own
video conference independent of
the other and one of these two call
the other, cascading will take place.
This means that you may have more
D1403405 USER GUIDE VIDEO ENDPOINTS MXP ENGLISH—SEPTEMBER 2009
Getting started Making calls
participants in total than a single
system supports. In this case, the
host will be the one calling the other.
The host has the right to terminate the
connection to any of the participants.
The participants cannot control any
of the others, but may disconnect
themselves from the meeting at all
times.
Request, release, and assign
floor
When you request the floor, your
video will be broadcasted in full
screen to all other participants in the
conference. Request floor is useful
when you want to speak or display
something in front of all the other
participants.
Similarly, you may release the floor
when you are done and make the
floor available to other participants
in the conference. An indicator
appears when you have the floor and
disappears once you release it.
If your system is the one who initiated
the meeting, you will be the host of
the meeting and you will then be able
to assign the floor to others.
Split screen & voice switching
In order to be able to see all the
participants all the time, the screen
may be set in Split Screen mode,
dividing the screen into several
Using the phone book
images. When set up for voice
switching the system will give priority
to the participant speaking loudest.

Layout

When you are the host of a video
conference, you have control of the
main conference image layout. The
layout chosen by you is transmitted
to the other participants as a single
image and its layout cannot be
changed by them. However, they may
configure their own screen using the
Layout button on the remote control.
Their choices are the image you send
out in full screen, or in a side-by–side
layout—your image and their selfview.
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In-call features Video conferencing Video conferencing
In MultiSite calls (i.e. video conferences with more
than two participants) the term far end will loose its
meaning since it will not be unambiguous whom we
refer to.
This means that some features normally available
during point-to–point calls—like far end camera
control—won't be available during MultiSite calls.
If you are the one
who initiated the
video conference,
you are considered
as the host by the
system.