With so many people moving away from family and friends, the evolution of video and audio communication has been on full speed ahead for the last couple of years. It is now possible and "quite rightly" very popular.

For those of you who do not quite understand what it is or whether it is available to you we have put together this information to help you get to grips with and enjoy the huge benefits of Web conferencing and Video conferencing

Conducting a web conference between two or more participants at different sites by using computer networks to transmit audio and video data . For example, a point-to-point (two-person) video conferencing system works much like a video telephone. Each participant has a video camera, microphone, and speakers mounted on his or her computer. As the two participants speak to one another, their voices are carried over the network and delivered to the other's speakers, and whatever images appear in front of the video camera appear in a window on the other participant's monitor.

Multipoint videoconferencing allows three or more participants to sit in a virtual conference room and communicate as if they were sitting right next to each other. Until the mid 90s, the hardware costs made videoconferencing prohibitively expensive for most organizations, but that situation is changing rapidly. Many analysts believe that videoconferencing will be one of the fastest-growing segments of the computer industry in the latter half of the decade.

 
You forever hear the term but do you really understand it? The definition of video conferencing can be stated as the integration of audio, video and peripherals for the simultaneous communication of two or more persons who are connected by a particular telecommunication line.

In video conferencing, synchronized images and verbal communication are transmitted between two or more locations. Now that we have videoconferencing defined, how does videoconferencing work?

Why Video Conferencing Works For Many

For video conferencing to work, you would need microphones, video cameras, the necessary computer software, hardware and peripherals, along with the transmission lines for sending video conferencing information amongst video conferencing participants.

When holding a video conferencing event, a codec translates the analog information received by the microphones and video cameras into digital information, which is then transmitted to another codec that translates the digital information back to the original sounds and images, which the video conferencing participants can understand.

Video conferencing used to be more expensive than it is today, because T1, ATM and ISDN lines were used for video conferencing, and all of these were very costly. However, the emergence of the Internet and Broadband has provided a cheaper solution for video conferencing, using web video conferencing. As a result, video conferencing has become more present in homes all over the world.

The problem with video conferencing is that the conversion of information from analog to digital format can result in the decreased video quality. The compression ratio is the most important factor in video conferencing. The higher the compression ratio, the faster the video conferencing information is transmitted, but the lower the video quality.

Video conferencing can be used for communication among groups of people. Video conferencing is also very useful when you live far away from family or friends. You can hold video conferences with them and keep in constant contact for very little cost.

All you need is

Internet connection (broadband is far better than dialup)
Web Cam
Microphone
Speakers
Video conference or Web conferencing software
There are a number of FREE software applications available on the Internet and even built into Microsoft Windows.

Video conferencing is the wave of the future. Make video conferencing work for you, know more about video conferencing, and make the most out of the latest free technology when chatting with family and friends.