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Whitepaper provides unconventional perspective on “videoconferencing”
I have released a brief whitepaper summarizing my contrary position with respect to “videoconferencing”. The paper is titled: Practical Applications of Low-cost Network-Based Video: Beyond Videoconferencing as a Substitute for Face-To-Face and is available at the following link: http://www.toyz.org/whitepapers/video_social2009.html
This paper was originally written in 2003 but I was not able to publish until now, for various reasons. But I stand by the research and conclusions.
Some of the more controversial positions include:
The present work totally abandons video as a substitute for face-to-face communication, and in fact suggests uses that are not videoconferencing, in any existing sense, at all. Further, we conclude that another common application of videoconferencing, that implemented by most desktop software, specifically the person-to-person video call, is nearly void of utility, particularly for business communications.
Please look it over and flame away.
More unconventional video wisdom
Tsahi Levent-Levi at the TMC Talking Video blog refers to my recent post on video in which he says:
Andrew MacDonald tried to see what’s his perceived audio quality threshold. He shows that improving audio quality improves the medium and the cues it provides.
Ok, no problem. Many years of research bear this out. Audio quality has a direct impact on the effectiveness of interactions. But then Tsahi takes a leap:
Video adds visual cues which are not available in voice calls. And high definition video gives more visual cues than its SD counterpart.
This is where the research does not support Tsahi’s assertion. Video can add visual cues, but not the ones people expect and assume. Further, audio provides more non-verbal cues than is usually assumed.
Ten years ago, Steve Whittaker at ATT research looked at research going back many years prior to that, and found:
We first evaluate evidence for the utility of providing non-verbal communication information using video. We conclude that previous work has overestimated the importance of supplying non-verbal information at the expense of speech.
And nothing has changed today. There is still way too much assumed about the value of non-verbal communication potential in video. People put way too much focus on this and, therefore, neglect other, much more effective, uses of video, such as for presence, shared context, and its role in facilitating opportunistic interactions.
Furthermore, while we often overestimate the value of video providing non-verbal cues, we also tend to under-estimate the degree to which audio provides non-verbal cues. Other research cited in the above paper has shown this to be true as well:
The research (Chapanis) compared two media conditions: audio only communication, and high quality video/audio. If video does indeed provide useful cognitive cues, then there should be benefits for providing visual information in these types of collaborative problem solving tasks, where it is important to track the understanding and attention of remote participants. However, the studies showed that adding visual information did not increase the efficiency of problem solving, or produce higher quality problem solving.
We humans tend to assume that video must provided these non-verbal cues. It’s so intuitive and obvious. But when one looks at it objectively, again and again, the data proves otherwise.
It’s easy to say video does provide such cues, casually. No one would question it, unless they’ve looked at the years and years of research.
We should note that Mr. Levent-Levi works at RADVISION, a company that makes video-conferencing products. They need to go where the money is - and that’s in people beating the 20-year long dead horse of “talking heads” video as a substitute for face to face meetings - not in far more effective, but less sexy, uses of video.
Not so startling Cisco research on video
A tweet from Dina Mehta via Mark Petrovic pointed me to an article titled The psychology of videoconferencing that refers to some research Cisco recently released. Cisco says:
[research published in 1971] revealed that only seven per cent of our understanding comes from pure words, and that 40 per cent is gleaned from the tone of the voice and 53 per cent from visual cues.
What they fail to note is that all the research has shown that video is not very good at providing those “visual cues” especially more subtle ones.
For many years, videoconferencing technologies have been applied as a substitute for face-to-face meetings. Spending for videoconferencing technology is typically based on a presumed increased productivity or savings due to a presumed reduction in travel. Despite countless deployments and projects deployed over decades, on the whole, the technology has failed to provide these anticipated benefits.
When videoconferencing has failed to meet expectations, it has almost always been attributed to some “other” factors. There seems to be a powerful intuitive desire in people to find something else to blame. I was guilty of this myself, for a long time. We keep telling ourselves some detail of the implementation needs improvement. If we just used a better camera here, a little more bandwidth there, an improved user-interface, one more update of some kind, all will be well.
However, the answer is right there in prior research. We will find that many others before us had fallen into the same trap. And it’s not because these projects were using old hardware. There have been some deployments using absurdly expensive hardware and software that would never be practical in a wide deployment. And even such sophisticated systems could not deliver on the presumed power of videoconferencing technologies to substitute for face-to-face communications. It wasn’t the hardware or network. The most expensive hardware in the world can’t address some of the fundamental limitations of real-time videoconferencing.
The elephant in the room is that even high quality audio and video cannot replicate the rich nature of face-to-face communication. Period.
Further, experience shows that this is very very difficult for people to accept. It is much easier to find something else to blame. We tend to point at problems in the details of the specific implementation rather than accept the reality that real-time videoconferencing is inherently limiting and then work within those limitations.
In Cisco’s paper, they say:
“We observed the value of visual cues in successful meetings, and video technologies that maximise this, such as telepresence, are ideal for maintaining excellent relationships.
“However, individuals who approach meetings with a positive attitude, leaders who understand and support the different personalities and cultures in their teams, and organisations that provide the resources and training to make video communications the norm, are also essential to effective video-enabled meetings.”
So what they’re saying is when the technology doesn’t work, or doesn’t give all the benefits people expect (because it never does), it’s your fault because you failed to “understand and support the different personalities and cultures in your teams.” Nice preemptive scapegoat, Cisco.
Roku Netflix Player
Well, I was going to get one of these, but now I see that it doesn’t have an interface for searching and selecting movies. You have to first log into your Netflix account and add the movie to your queue using your computer. The Roku Netflix Player only allows you to browse titles in your Netflix Instant Queue.
The other problem for me is the lack of buffer (the player only has 256MB of RAM) and reports of barely passable video quality (due to bandwidth limitations). Roku recommends a minimum 1.5Mbps connection; movies average a bit-rate of 2.2Mbps.
Macworld said:
I found the image quality underwhelming… the image looked flat, with muted colors. Some standard def content was downright blurry: the opening credits for some films and television shows were difficult to read
Now that I’ve got HDTV over satellite, the last thing I want to do is step backwards to something less than standard 480p DVD.
I’d rather wait a little while for a higher quality bitrate video to download than suffer poor video quality if my connection can’t keep up in real-time - especially for HD content (the Roku doesn’t support HD yet, but is supposed to in the future). So that means a box with a lot more RAM (or flash, or a small hard disk), which probably means it will cost more than $99.
Videoconferencing predictions past and present
This week we’ve seen many references to “recently released” research suggesting that videoconferencing may finally be ready to take off.
Videoconferencing – a much talked about, but seldom-used technology – may finally be earning its spurs within the enterprise.
85 per cent of respondents polled either use or plan to use video conferencing.
Forty one per cent of those questioned are also using, or investigating the use of so-called telepresence
But here’s the thing: We’ve seen this before. For example:
“Videoconferencing gains momentum”
Jul 18, 2007“Video Conferencing Gains Ground”
Sep 17, 2007“Videoconferencing is likely to gain momentum”
Apr 4, 2007“Videoconferencing Gains Momentum”
Sep 7, 2001
Despite years of false starts and unfulfilled promises, here we go again. Whether we are talking one year ago, seven years ago, or 25 years ago, the theme is always the same. It goes like this: “while we acknowledge that videoconferencing has never met adoption expectations in the past, we believe that is because of INSERT EXCUSE HERE and with our new INSERT WIZBANG TECHNOLOGY DIFFERENCE HERE we are sure adoption will explode this time.”
Hint - it’s not a technology problem.
Execs provide (more) excuses for why users aren’t interested in video-calling
Continuing in my recent theme regarding the dead end that is talking-heads video-calls, we find the VP of Nokia’s Nseries speaking in Barcelona attempting to explain why customer’s haven’t embraced the feature even though it has been available since 2005. According to techdigest.tv in Customers didn’t embrace video-calling as they’re vain Nokia’s exec said:
Users “aren’t interested” in video-calling, mainly because they find the angle a handset must be held at for the best quality video-call “isn’t very flattering”.
UPDATE: in short, he was saying people don’t use videoconferencing because it makes them look fat. How funny to read this today, since this is exactly what I said just a couple of weeks ago as my top two reasons why talking-heads video-calling will never take off:
- real people are not attractive - we are not movie stars or models. people on TV are not normal. we are not used to seeing normal people on “TV” (in the form of real-time video).
- we are not directors. we do not know how to properly produce video content, how to light it, frame it etc
Other excuses given by Nokia for why video-calling hasn’t been embraced included:
“[The technology] hit the market too early”
“There wasn’t enough support from carriers”
“The marketing push wasn’t big enough”
We have seen this all before. Video-calling has repeatedly failed to meet expectations. And each time we see the experts grasping at straws as to why. Comments like “maybe it will still be a success” from Nokia’s Sari Ståhlberg suggest that we’re sure to see it repeat again. Instead of learning, they believe their own spin and use the excuses like the above to throw more good money after bad on this fundamentally broken idea - video-calling is a classic case of a “solution in search of a problem”. It’s irresistibly cool - unfortunately, it’s a money sink without a market
Sluggish sales for Blu-Ray DVD
Even now that the Hi-def DVD format wars are over and Blue-Ray has won, sales of the new DVD players are still sluggish. Previously, the slow sales were blamed on the assumption that consumers were waiting to see which format would dominate (survive). Now, the “experts” are finding new excuses and believe the interest will surge in another year or two.
ABI Research analyst Steve Wilson said it is just as well for consumers if they don’t jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon yet. Wilson said he expects Blu-ray players to drop to $250 by this holiday season and $200 by the end of 2009. That’s when he expects mainstream adoption of the movie format to catch on.
I wonder. Or perhaps I just flat doubt it. I think people are sick of hard media and if some kind of IP-based on-demand service, such as Apple TV, can deliver Hi-def movies and other content with sufficient quality and reliability, DVD players will be a thing of the past entirely. Heck, it might even spell the end of expensive cable and satellite TV packages where, instead, people subscribe to just a basic TV package for news and other local channels/content and use on-demand (perhaps over IP) for everything else.
Video on the N95
I keep trying out more things on the N95, as my schedule permits.
I can guarantee I at one time have said something like “who would want to watch TV on a two inch screen” when all the hype around video on mobile phones started up a few years ago.
I pretty much felt that way even as I ventured into a project to try loading my own home-brew videos on the N95 and see if I could get them to play. I should note that there is a “user friendly” way to put videos on the N95. Specifically, there is the Nokia Video Manager (I could only find a link on the European Nokia site). But I figure that has already been talked about elsewhere. I wanted to see if I could create my own files that played on the N95 from video content I have.
In short, to tip the ending, I have successfully taken videos from Tivo and played them on the N95. I did it on the Mac and on the PC, just to show that it’s possible (Nokia’s official Video Manager only works on the PC). I have to say, I was (a) amazed it worked the first time (figuring I’d surely get something wrong) and (b) shocked at the quality.
So assuming you already know how to get video off your Tivo (an exercise for the reader), that gives you a pretty high quality MPEG2 file at roughly 700 x 500. After reading around, I found that the format the N95 seems to like is MP4 at 320×240 encoded with the H.264 codec. I was able to successfully convert my MPEG2 video to mp4 and load them into the N95 using the following tools:
- Mac OS X
ffmpegX
I believe both of these use the open-source ffmpeg tools underneath the covers (which explains why it worked on both the PC and the MAC), but it was nice to know it could be done on either platform.
I was surprised that the resulting 320×240 MP4 file was nearly the same size (in megabytes) as the original Tivo 700×500 MPEG2 file. A 30-minute video was about 320MB. The settings I used were:
file format: MP4
video encoding: H.264, 320×240, 30 fps
audio encoding: AAC, 44100 Hz, 96 kbps
I can tell no difference between the playback of the files made on the PC versus those made on the Mac. They both look and sound TERRIFIC on the N95 player (Realplayer).
When it comes to actually getting the large video files on the N95, I used both Bluetooth and a cardreader directly attached to the PC. The latter is much faster, but still slower than you might expect (about 10-20 minutes to load the MMC card with a 30-minute video). Bluetooth is much slower - I think it took almost an hour to transfer a 30-minute video.
With the 1Gig memory card I have, it looks like I could put about two hours of video at this quality on the N95, or certainly a 90-minute movie. I don’t know yet if the N95 battery would play a video for two hours straight.
Overall, it takes a rather painful couple of hours to perform all the video file conversions and write a 30-minute video to the phone. But I have to say, it is pretty cool to take a program off my TV and have it on the N95. Now that I have this capability, I’m torn regarding what shows or movies I want to load onto the phone.
