Video and NT

As network bandwidth continues to increase--now reaching 100 megabits per second (Mbps) Ethernet and gigabit (Gb) Ethernet--a growing number of businesses are implementing video solutions to stay ahead of the technology curve. Few businesses have tested the myriad of realtime, full-motion distributed video applications, but their numbers will increase. Communications companies are laying the infrastructure now, wrapping the globe with fiber-optic cable and dotting the heavens with satellites. Systems administrators and chief information officers need to examine what video technology offers their firms and how they can integrate video software into their corporate communications.

The Windows NT Magazine Lab expects to see a bevy of video solutions for the NT platform within the next decade. These solutions will provide a variety of capabilities. To keep you abreast of this technology, the Lab Guys will begin testing video solutions for NT this month with Galacticomm's WebCast ProServer 2.0 and Vista Imaging's ViCAM. Lights, camera, action...and we're rolling.

WebCast ProServer 2.0

Companies exploring innovative ways to distribute information to their customers, employees, or executives will want to consider Galacticomm's WebCast ProServer 2.0 software. WebCast ProServer lets companies create video and audio presentations and disseminate the presentations to anyone with Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 or Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later.

WebCast ProServer comes with a free Video Broadcaster add-on that you distribute to everyone who will broadcast video or audio through your WebCast ProServer server. One server can have numerous simultaneous broadcasting connections; the number of connections your server can support depends on your network's bandwidth and the number of broadcast licenses you purchase. Your broadcasters can create video-on-demand (VOD) presentations that stream video and audio data across a network to users' browsers, or they can create live presentations and incorporate a chat session into the display for interactive communications between viewers and the broadcaster. Screen 1, page 82, shows a live video broadcast with the chat feature enabled. WebCast ProServer provides primarily one-way communications (viewers' only method for providing feedback is the chat feature), so the product is ideal for distance learning, tutorials, or entertainment.

The Windows NT Magazine Lab runs WebCast ProServer on a 166MHz Pentium system with 96MB of RAM. You can watch us work (or not work) all day, every day. Point your browser to http://www.winntmag.com, click NT Lab on the navigation bar, and open LabCam. The LabCam display is a stripped-down version of the out-of-the-box WebCast ProServer software without the chat module or audio functionality.

Galacticomm recommends running WebCast ProServer and the Video Broadcaster on separate machines. However, the LabCam's WebCast ProServer and Video Broadcaster run on one machine without a problem. You might run into trouble if you run the Video Broadcaster on a system with other software that uses port 80, the HTTP port. (Software that uses port 80 includes most Web server software and many remote access programs.)

Considering the software's complexity, it is simple to install. I installed WebCast ProServer on an HP Kayak in about 2 minutes. After you finish the installation, the software prompts you to configure it for your network. You specify whether you will use WebCast ProServer for profit. You tell the software whether to send a customizable, automated email response to new broadcast viewers. You choose whether it notifies you when a new user views a broadcast. Finally, you select between modem and serial connections and between TCP/IP Internet or intranet support.

When you configure WebCast ProServer, you need to be sure the software correctly identifies your system and your network. WebCast ProServer needs the system or host name of the machine on which the software resides, the system's IP address, the Domain Name System (DNS) server's IP address, and the domain associated with WebCast ProServer. In my test installation, the software correctly filled in these fields.

If your broadcasters will run the Video Broadcaster on 16-bit operating systems (OSs), you can use the Worldgroup Manager Packaging Utility, which comes with WebCast ProServer, to customize the Video Broadcaster to include features such as billing, accounting, and security. The Worldgroup Manager Packaging Utility lets you customize the Video Broadcaster icon. It asks you to select whether to make the broadcaster a distributable .exe file or create a set of disks for distribution. It prompts you to choose among TCP/IP, dial-up modem, direct serial cable, or Novell SPX connections and decide whether users must log on as new, use existing logon IDs and passwords, or use specific logon IDs and passwords that you define. After you build a Video Broadcaster package in the Worldgroup Manager Packaging Utility, click Select Apps. The utility lists a series of applications that you can make available to your broadcasters. The applications include Account Display Edit, C/S Main Menu, C/S New User Logon, File Libraries, Forum Manager, Menu Editor, Message Center, Polls and Questionnaires, Remote Sysop Menu, Video Broadcaster, Video Receiver, and Video Sysop Module.

If your broadcasters run NT, they need to install the 32-bit version of the Video Broadcaster from the WebCast ProServer distribution CD-ROM; the Worldgroup Manager Packaging Utility is useless for configuring the Video Broadcaster to broadcast from NT systems. Galacticomm plans to incorporate the 32-bit Video Broadcaster into the Worldgroup Manager Packaging Utility in a future release of WebCast ProServer.

When you first open the Video Broadcaster, you see whatever your camera points toward if you have a functional camera connected to your system. I tested the Video Broadcaster with three brands of PC-specific video cameras (which use parallel port connections and specialized video card connections), and the software worked flawlessly with every camera.