research_help-ga:
Unfortunately, NetMeeting was never truly designed for the purposes
you have in mind. Here is an excerpt from the NetMeeting readme.txt
file for version 3 and newer, in the General Known Issues section:
"Sharing of Microsoft(R) DirectX(R), OpenGL, MS-DOS(R),
graphics-intensive games, and .avi files is not supported and might
not function properly."
What this means is that you can attempt to share your AVI player
program (Windows Media Player, for example), but Microsoft neither
supports it, nor guarantees that the frame rate will be sufficient to
give a reasonable user experience for the viewer at the other end.
Also, please note that if you have a hardware-accelerated graphics
adapter using DirectShow, the viewer at the other end won't see a
thing as the video overlay is not transmitted over a NetMeeting
connection. If you still want to try this, access the configuration
for your video card and disable all hardware acceleration first. Also,
reduce the frame size of your AVI file to minimize the workload for
NetMeeting. Remember that NetMeeting is trying to transmit a snapshot
of the AVI player's window every second or so; that is why the results
will be less than desirable. Your Internet connection speed will also
greatly impact the viewer's experience.
If your purpose is to share an AVI file by streaming it live, the
cheapest way to do it is to set up a free account with Sony
ImageStation ( http://www.imagestation.com ). With this free account,
you can upload up to 15 minutes of digital video, which can then be
accessed by your viewers in your ImageStation album (you have the
option of password-protecting the album, too). Note that your file
will be resized by ImageStation to reduce bandwidth consumption. |
Clarification of Answer by
aht-ga
on
14 Aug 2003 08:15 PDT
research_help-ga:
NetMeeting is only capable of using Windows-recognized video sources
(cameras, TV-in cards, etc.) for the video stream. NetMeeting relies
on the operating system (and DirectX) to provide it with a video
stream, meaning that it does not have native/built-in support for
decoding an AVI file, then re-encoding it for transmission as part of
a H.323 multimedia stream.
If you are willing to consider alternatives, here are some ways of
getting an AVI file transmitted as the video portion of a NetMeeting
multimedia stream:
1. Hardware-based
- using a separate computer equipped with a graphics adapter with
video-out, and a video capture card in your NetMeeting computer, you
can play the AVI file in full-screen mode on the second computer,
feeding it in as the video source for the video capture card in your
NetMeeting computer, then configure NetMeeting to use the video
capture card's feed as the video source. This is basically the same
way you would use a traditional home-video camera as a webcam.
2. "Softcam"-based
- you can purchase Luminositi Inc's "SoftCam" program, which allows
you to select an area of your screen to serve as the video source; the
program will then take whatever is displayed in that screen area
(including DirectShow-generated graphics), and make it available
through a Windows-recognized video source (which you can then
configure NetMeeting to use). You can read more about SoftCam 1.5 at:
http://www.softcam.com as well as download a trial version there.
I hope that this clarification meets your needs.
aht-ga
|
Clarification of Answer by
aht-ga
on
14 Aug 2003 10:00 PDT
research_help-ga:
I am sorry that this answer has not been useful to you. You are
welcome to request a refund if you feel that your question has not
been answered.
I will reiterate that MS NetMeeting can only use a Windows-recognized
video device as the source of its video feed. There is no native
support within NetMeeting for transmitting an AVI file other than by
sharing the AVI file player as a shared application; the disclaimer in
the readme.txt file states that MS does not support such a use.
The SoftCam application from Luminositi Inc. is the only application
available that provides a software-based method of taking a portion of
your screen, and making it available to the operating system as video
device. I did not include instructions on setting up SoftCam because
the setup wizard walks you through the entire process.
Again, if you are not satisfied with this answer, please take
advantage of the refund process so that you are not charged. As you
are certain that you have seen it done, please contact the other party
and ask them how they did it, as to the best of my knowledge, and to
the extent of the capabilities enabled by MS in their software
development kit, you must use a third-party application to accomplish
this task.
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