H.239

[mazzarak]

We had a customer wanting to run a 9 way conference using H.239 on their endpoints. Sadly they only pointed this out after the call had failed miserably and the sites had racked up about a thousand line errors each.

I know that H.239 is expected to standardise the People and Content and DuoVideo features so that Sonys, VCONs and all the rest can interact with each other with datashare, but last time I checked, Polycom and Tandberg weren't supporting this.

Has anyone heard on the grapevine whether there are plans to support it on the Accord bridge? I presume that v6.0 has missed the boat on this, so v7.0? :huh:

[Gary Miyakawa]

I have heard rumor that the next major release for Polycom Endpoints and MCUs "should" contain H.239.... I was not given a date to expect these, but I would guess that it would be this year.

Gary Miyakawa

[tjulian]

This is a solution I've been waiting on for years...ok, maybe it just seems like that long....but I've had a problem with people wanting to use People+Content, DuoVideo, or whatever the PROPRIETARY Dual Stream is called, in calls with mixed endpoints, and it drives them crazy. Of course they, in turn, tend to drive me crazy about it.......:)

I hope it is implemented soon, I'd like to get that problem out of the way. I've gone to reccomending everyone buy a good scan converter with their systems....

[robertk]

I can't belive that neither Polycom nor Tandberg have implemented H.239 yet. They seam to have put all the focus on AES and H.264.

I could easily sacrify both those in favour for H.239.

H.239 MUST be implemented ASAP in the Accord and Tandberg MCU and all their clients.

//Robert

[Bond]

Originally posted by mazzarak@May 4 2004, 12:17 PM
the sites had racked up about a thousand line errors each.


ISDN:Mazzarak
how did your customer tried to do this ?
ISDN line errors do not point directly to inband protocols like H.239
Did you use BT ?

OK here it turns off-topic (see my bottom line)

MCU I did some large conferences running two independant codecs on each side
(and of course careful setting up two dial-out sessions to each location :)
The main challenge was to brief the presentators not to use small fonts
(see next)

Integration:Tjulian
Yes, scanconverters can do some, but remember
your PC content (!) should not exceed the video channel´s (CIF typically) resolution. Doesn´t matter how high physical outlet resolution is (this drives the complexity of converters und duostream implementations only). A PPT-presentation with 24pt fonts minimum and magnified mouse cursor can be read at the end. If this is your application, why doing it by H.239 ?
Uh, again running off-topic again.


Standards:RobertK,
wait until autumn. After the
SuperOP in Norway (http://www.imtc.org/events/)
H.239 should be retuned enough between the vendors.
This event is targeted at ISDN topics also.
A first H.239 step was made in spring event invited by Sony,
focused on IP issues, but Sony did upgrade to a much more interoperational H.239 after this, isn´t it ?

Reaching true interoperability needs justifying behind closed doors.
Here MCUs are the most tricky ones. Be patient. I can follow Polycom´s statement to publish a timing commitment after it becomes clear how much work is to do.


And finally for the board masters:
Feedback&Comments
I can see rare ISDN content in this thread
I fact I see many of those threads here and it´s not
due to newbie behavior but natural to the complex field we run around.

My 2cent: Too much categories on this board.
Who will read this post effectivly ?

Gary, any plans to write FAQs here?
Do we have capabilities to cross-link postings ?

Dr. Bond

[mazzarak]

Well I say it's line errors, but as this is a Polycom bridge, and the non compatibility usually manifests itself as a faulty connection with whopping great numbers of errors, which can also be attributed to ISDN. Technically they are Video Sync losses. Because the Accord is not capable of H239, this is presumably the only way it can deal with it.

[George]

I can see rare ISDN content in this thread

Not sure what you meant by this. Typo? Do you mean you rarely see ISDN content here? Or you can see ISDN content here that is rare and hard to find?

I fact I see many of those threads here and it´s not
due to newbie behavior but natural to the complex field we run around

Again not quite sure what you mean. Do you mean that you see threads here that shouldn't be here? But that's not due to the posters but because of the complexity of our field?

My 2cent: Too much categories on this board.
We try to keep the categories to a minimum, but as you mentioned yourself, our field can be extremely complex. We try to make it so that a user that comes here lost and in need of information can quickly find answers to their problems in neat organized targeted categories. We don't plan on adding any new categories any time soon and we do plan to begin pruning old non-performing categories within the next few days.

Who will read this post effectivly ?
Please reword your question.

Gary, any plans to write FAQs here?
We do indeed. In fact if you would like to submit an article or faq suggestions we highly encourage it. Submitting an article is easy. Just start a new thread in the closest compatible category. One of our moderators will make the final decision on where we will display your article and of course all copyright rights remain yours.

Do we have capabilities to cross-link postings ?
We sure do! You can actually do it yourself by linking to another more suitable thread within you post.

An even better method is to simply click on the report button http://www.vtctalk.com/style_images/Imagize_-400/p_report.gif at the top of every post. This will allow you to alert a moderator of a post that you think should be moved or merged. The moderators have the power to merge, move, edit, or delete topics all together.

Hope that helps!
George

[Gary Miyakawa]

Originally posted by Bond@Jun 4 2004, 03:52 AM
My 2cent: Too much categories on this board.
Who will read this post effectivly ?
I don't believe there are too many categories at all. With all the different techonologies that our world touches, I believe there could be significantly more categories. Many many areas haven't been touched yet. We will just have to see if there is any interest in those here.

If you would like to just read what has been added since the last time you were here, please click on "View New Posts" at the top of any of the forum pages. This will give you just the new entries across the whole forum. This is the way I keep up with topics without having to search for new information.

Gary Miyakawa

[mazzarak]

so it looks like Tandberg are on the H.239 bandwagon now, do we have an idea of when we can expect Polycom to show an interest?

[Skylark]

Tanberg is off the wagon

http://www.vtctalk.com/index.php?showtopic=209&hl=

[vtjoe]

Be patient. I can follow Polycom´s statement to publish a timing commitment after it becomes clear how much work is to do.

I agree with Bond, it is just a matter of time until everybody is on board. It is funny how Sony is now leading the way to making videoconferencing cross plaform compatible for all features - they are becoming a true market leader along with Tandberg and Polycom.

I can also understand why everybody is impatient. Customers have been asking for compatability with DuoVideo and People+Content (and the old Polycom Visual Concert stuff before they bought PictureTel) ever since the standards co-existed. In addition, H.239 working drafts have been around as long as H.264 (last summer) - somehow Polycom and Tandberg took longer to figure out customers would want H.239 - but Aethra and Sony figured it out ??? :blink:
I will give Tandberg credit for supporting People+Content in their MCU and gateway, and Polycom credit for letting them do it. I guess buying those Ezenia patents really paid off for Tandberg. :D

Bond, thanks for the input.

robertk
I can't belive that neither Polycom nor Tandberg have implemented H.239 yet. They seam to have put all the focus on AES and H.264.

I could easily sacrify both those in favour for H.239.

Where I work we have Tandberg and Polycom's, never needed AES, and keep using Dual Video streams at high bandwidth's - so no H.264 support.

I agree I'd rather see H.239 -- Polycom is not a market leader in this area. They are too busy working on Voyant.

[George]

Moving this topic to "Standards"

Thanks,

George

[mazzarak]

the word is that Polycom are working on this now, anyone heard anything?

[mazzarak]

so we see that the latest generation of VSX is going to cover the H239 black hole. What are the chances of legacy equipment being brought up to speed?

[trapehzoid]

so we see that the latest generation of VSX is going to cover the H239 black hole. What are the chances of legacy equipment being brought up to speed?

My bet is FX family get it.. along with iPower. Nothing else. I think polycom has to do it on those products simply because of the drum they beat over other people's products and their lifespans. I look for those to be the last major functionalities added to those platforms now. Remember.. VSX is equator based with entirely new GUI.. which means any work on the 'old' stuff will not be very portable compared to in the past.

However, I wouldn't look for any added functionality over what Visual Concert already does. The iPower implementation will probably be nice though.

Too bad iPower is the product with all the good quality and functionality while the FX is the one with all the issues, hacks, half-features, but is the appliance with more market share.

[KielLofstrand]

Hi all! This is my first posting to this forum, and I'm totally new to the world of VTC. I'm learning a lot of new technology, and it's really exciting when things "just don't work" between endpoints because I get to hunt around for a reason why. :)

I'm hoping to revive interest in this thread because my task for today is to learn everything I can about H.239. Googling on it turned up a few results, but most were quick summations of what H.239 aims to achieve. I quickly read over the ITU-T Recommendation, but it seems like there isn't a whole lot of information there. Are there any links anyone can point me to that present a general overview of this protocol? As far as I can tell, it looks like the signalling is done via H.245 for H.323 calls and the available bandwidth is partitioned for H.320 to allow an Additional Media Channel. How exactly are "roles" used in both call types? Does H.239 allow for file transfers like T.120?

Any links you might have handy are greatly appreciated! Sorry if I don't have any VTC lingo down yet, this is just my 4th week on the job. :)

[JNicotina]

Just an update to this thread...

The Polycom MGC now supports H.239 in version 7x software as does the Tandberg MPS (not sure of rev). Theres one very important catch....
There are severe interop issues using Tandberg endpoints on a Polycom MGC with 239, and the vice versa with using Polycom endpoints on a MPS with 239.

Both vendors claim to be aware of these interops and claim to be working on a resolution with upcoming patches...I have already went through 3 patches for this issue none of which correct the issue...they merely make them slightly less. My company has been struggling with this for about 5-6 months. If H.239 is a critical component for your company, be sure to have an MCU that matches your endpoint topology (If your endpoints are mainly Tandberg, go with an MPS for 239...if they are mostly Polycom, go with the MGC). Our network is comprised of about 50-75 Tandberg codecs but our MCU is a Polycom MGC...needless to say, the interop issues have been an absolute nightmare!

[tom9933]

That’s interesting, I asked how the Tandberg Polycom interaction was when our IPVCR didn’t work correctly with the MGC and I was told there were no issues. I do know that content doesn’t work as smoothly as it should in the MGC. A good example of this is when the content streams start or stop most of the endpoints will show a secondary connection while the video stream is reconfigured. Also cascading between bridges only seems to work if you’re running a voice switched conference, i.e. useless.

[JNicotina]

Here is a recent outline of some test results I found:

Conference Setup:

Speed 512MB

Video H.263

Audio Auto

Setting Continuous Presence

Participants 2 Tandberg MXP’s version F4, 1 Tandberg MXP F3.2, 1 Tandberg 2500 version E.5, 1 Polycom VS4000 version 6.03

Video Board Video +

Audio Board Audio +



Issues Experienced:

Conference One:
2 Version F4 MXP’s, and Polycom VS 4000 version 6.0.3 FX
One MXP and VS 4000 connected first, MXP sends the Content, Both Sites see people plus content correctly
Second MXP connected after the content is initiated and does not get the content
First MXP (the system sending the content) has to stop sending the content, and then re-send in order for second MXP to receive it
SUMMARY: Any site coming into the conference after the content is initiated will not receive the content unless the presenter stops and re-sends it. This was the case when the other two Tandberg’s were added to the conference as well.



Conference Two, Three, and Five: Results identical to conference one



Conference Four:
Same issue as conference one
Upon sending initial content, the video of the site sending the content degraded severely and the content was heavily pixilated
Video/Content quality issues did not correct themselves and required a disconnect/reconnect of the sites to correct.
SUMMARY: In addition to the issue experienced in conference one, unacceptable video quality degradation was experienced on both video and content.



Conference Six:
Same issue as conference one
Same issue as conference four
SUMMARY: In addition to the issue experienced in conference one, unacceptable video quality degradation was experienced on both video and content.



OVERALL SUMMARY: Out of six consecutive conference tests, slight improvements were noticed that included the correction of Issue A and Issue B (see bellow for details). The overall issue of having to stop and resend the content anytime a participant comes into the conference late still exists. Further, the intermittent quality degradation issue is still present. The transition of slides has been improved. Basically, we are still unable to use H.239 in a production environment due to interop issues. Slight improvements were made, however the key issues are still present.



Remaining Issue Not Tested Yet: Hand off – Where one presenter that is sending content hands over to a different location that is to now asked to overwrite the previous presenter by sending their own content. Tandberg documentation states that this is still an interop issue with Tandberg endpoints and the MGC.



Issue A: If a site location entered a conference after content was already initiated by the presenter, the entire conference had to be disconnected and reconnected to correct the issue.



Issue B: Site locations entering a conference after content was already initiated by the presenter would not negotiate content channels upon connection. A complete disconnect and reconnect of all sites has to occur.

[Vtech]

It worked for me here are the parameters.

Polycom MGC 100 7.01
Tandberg 6000 MXP F4.0
2 Polycom PVX 8.0

I'm duing Dual content from the PVX and the MXP is getting it I also dropped a second PVX into the system after dual content was initiated and all sites receive the content. Just to make sure I disconnected the second PVX and reconnected it with the same results.

Just an update to this thread...

The Polycom MGC now supports H.239 in version 7x software as does the Tandberg MPS (not sure of rev). Theres one very important catch....
There are severe interop issues using Tandberg endpoints on a Polycom MGC with 239, and the vice versa with using Polycom endpoints on a MPS with 239.

Both vendors claim to be aware of these interops and claim to be working on a resolution with upcoming patches...I have already went through 3 patches for this issue none of which correct the issue...they merely make them slightly less. My company has been struggling with this for about 5-6 months. If H.239 is a critical component for your company, be sure to have an MCU that matches your endpoint topology (If your endpoints are mainly Tandberg, go with an MPS for 239...if they are mostly Polycom, go with the MGC). Our network is comprised of about 50-75 Tandberg codecs but our MCU is a Polycom MGC...needless to say, the interop issues have been an absolute nightmare!

[JNicotina]

Im running version 7.02 on the MCU myabe thats the difference...I'm not sure, I just know the results I found are consistent in my testing environment and confrimed by both vendors.

[tom9933]

The release notes for 7.5 mention a H.239 flag that needs to be enabled, you might check that. Also I know most of the problems we have found seem to correspond to running a CP conference with content.

[JNicotina]

I assume that H.239 flag is located within the sys.cfg. I just checked and did not see a 239 flag in version 7.02...unless I'm missing it. Do you know if that same flag applies to 7.02? 239 is supposed to be a viable option in all 7x software revs.

[tom9933]

It may only be a 7.5 feature since I don’t remember seeing it in the previous release notes. If all goes well I’m going to upgrade tomorrow morning so more to come. I’m really hoping this fixes the interopt problem with the Codian.

[Vtech]

I stand corrected we are running 7.02 here as well.

Here are the new parameters

1 MXP 6000 F.4
1 6000 B9.0
1 6000 E5.0
1 PVX 8.0
MGC 100 7.02

I used evvery combination of bringing endpoints in and out that I could think of and the only problem I had was the screen refresh on B9.0 this codec took forever to transition if I changed slides. ARe you locking your conference down to H.239/People + Content on the MGC. I know auto negotiation does not always work as expected with the MGC.


Im running version 7.02 on the MCU myabe thats the difference...I'm not sure, I just know the results I found are consistent in my testing environment and confrimed by both vendors.

[Vtech]

Under the settings tab when you build a conference in media setting there is a drop down box for Dual Stream Mode. There you can choose H.239/People + content.

I assume that H.239 flag is located within the sys.cfg. I just checked and did not see a 239 flag in version 7.02...unless I'm missing it. Do you know if that same flag applies to 7.02? 239 is supposed to be a viable option in all 7x software revs.

[JNicotina]

Yup...I've been selecting the H.239 setting in the setting tabs. The weird thing is, the issues I am experiencing have been validated by both PolyCom and Tandberg...consider yourself lucky and the odd exception! :-)

[tom9933]

Are you using CP or voice switched? I know using CP seems to add a lot of limits to things. If you can get away with it you might try running voice switched. I know with 7.5 our Codian compatibility issue still exists.

[bendamoi@filternet.nl]

We had a customer wanting to run a 9 way conference using H.239 on their endpoints. Sadly they only pointed this out after the call had failed miserably and the sites had racked up about a thousand line errors each.

I know that H.239 is expected to standardise the People and Content and DuoVideo features so that Sonys, VCONs and all the rest can interact with each other with datashare, but last time I checked, Polycom and Tandberg weren't supporting this.

Has anyone heard on the grapevine whether there are plans to support it on the Accord bridge? I presume that v6.0 has missed the boat on this, so v7.0? :huh:

We are currently testing H 239 and duo video on an Accord bridge.
and see the exchange quality when using content exchange.
By the way in version 8.05 H 239 works only in master-slave configuration.!!!!!

Greetz
Ben

[bendamoi@filternet.nl]

I have heard rumor that the next major release for Polycom Endpoints and MCUs "should" contain H.239.... I was not given a date to expect these, but I would guess that it would be this year.

Gary Miyakawa


Accord Polycom MGC 100/50 yes H 239
V :banana: SX series 8000 yes H 239

Greetz Ben