#1 2009-08-26 00:36:29

**_jwshome_**

Talking Stick - great new technology for high quality video

We (The Conference Board) love Adobe Connect, but have always been frustrated with the quality of the video pod.  We've just successfully tested Talking Stick from Refined Data and plan to implement it in all of our live webcasts starting next month.  It gives us three things we have been looking for, and found nowhere else: (1) a very high quality video stream (or multiple streams); (2) the ability to completely control video streams from remote presenters, and (3) extremely simple installation at the host studio, and even simpler for remote presenters (they are live on video in two or three clicks).

In the spirit of full disclosure, Terry Shane from Refined Data asked us to post our perspectives here, and I recognize that these boards should not be used to flog products.  But we're genuinely excited about this new pod, and it's nice when a cutting edge technology just works perfectly out of the box.  Because I know others are looking for the same functionality, I would have posted this whether he had asked us to do so or not.

Warning - it's expensive, so you have to be serious about high-quality webcasts. 

Jon Spector
The Conference Board
New York, NY

**_Brice_**

Re: Talking Stick - great new technology for high quality video

Hi Jon,

Thanks for the information.

You're talking about high quality. What's the expected resolution ?
Can you display HD ready (720p) or full HD 1080 ?

Regards,
Brice.

**_Terry_at_RefinedData_com_**

Re: Talking Stick - great new technology for high quality video

Hi Brice,

We'd love to broadcast HD quality video in Connect Pro but the current infrastructure does not allow this. Adobe currently limits us (and all other developers) to use code that runs in the Flash 8 environment which means we can only build our apps using AS2.

The release of ACP 8 late next year will open the platform up to AS3 and Flash 9 as a platform which will then support the high quality images associated with H.264 and VP7.

Having said that, you may be pleasantly surprised at the amazing quality that Talking Stick can achieve using VP6 encoding. We are currently running 720x480 live streams from Home Camcorders at 30 fps using Live Media Encoder in to Talking Stick and achieving near TV Broadcast quality images.

Even webcam feeds from good units such as the Logitech 9000 can be broadcast at 1024x768 or higher with good framerates on units with good CPUs and a decent upstream connection.

Attendees see fabulous images with virtually zero lag compared to phone-based audio, even when thousands of miles from the servers. We've run Talking Stick with clients in Europe and Australia and seen minimal lag on full screen video.

In addition to broadcasting multiple live streams, Talking Stick can broadcast remotely hosted FLV, SWF, JPG and PNG files with no prior upload to the Adobe Meeting Room. FLV files can be synced or the Host can unsync the playback allowing each user to scrub the timeline individually.

The latest version due out next week also supports watermarking of the video streams and mask overlays for custom titling effects.

Combine this with host video previews of any stream and the ability to remotely control any user's webcam at will and you have one sweet app for anyone looking to use Connect Pro for video based delivery to live audiences.

You can download a free trial from our website and see for yourself.

Terry

**_Brice_**

Re: Talking Stick - great new technology for high quality video

Hi Terry,

That's what I heard from Adobe and unfortunately, the quality is still lower than Webex for example.

Your option seems very interesting. In fact, we lost a "medical" RFP because the video resolution broadcasted from Connect Meeting was too low. So if you are able to run 720x480 (by waiting 1080p), it could help me in the future.

I'll visit your website and download a trial.

I'll keep you posted.

Rgds,
Brice.

**_Shelley_**

Re: Talking Stick - great new technology for high quality video

I'm definitely checking it out!

**_Shelley_**

Re: Talking Stick - great new technology for high quality video

The demo looked good. Picture quality is fine, controls are easy to learn. For us, though, the dealbreaker may be that if you need to RECORD the meeting, it won't include the live video because it's being fed into the Acrobat Connect room from a Flash Media Server. ####.