Polycom 3725-76302-001LI manual SVC Conferencing Support

DMA Operations Guide Introduction to the Polycom DMA System

SVC Conferencing Support

This version of the Polycom DMA system supports the Annex G extension of the H.264 standard, known as H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC), for both point-to-point and multipoint (VMR) calls.

SVC is sometimes referred to as layered media because the video streams consist of a base layer that encodes the lowest available quality representation plus one or more enhancement layers that each provide an additional quality improvement. SVC supports three dimensions of scalability: temporal (frames per second), spatial (resolution and aspect ratio), and quality (signal-to-noise ratio).

The video stream to a device can be tailored to fit the bandwidth available and device capabilities by adjusting the number of enhancement layers sent to the device.

For multipoint conferencing, the MCU doesn't have to do processing-intensive mixing and transcoding to optimize the experience for each device. Instead, it simply passes through to each device the enhancement layers that provide the best quality the device can support.

Polycom’s SVC solution focuses on the temporal and spatial dimensions. It offers a number of advantages over standard AVC conferencing, including:

•Improved video quality at lower bandwidths

•Improved audio and video error resiliency (good audio quality with more than 50% packet loss, good video quality with more than 25% packet loss)

•Lower end-to-end latency (typically less than half that of AVC)

•More efficient use of bandwidth

•Lower infrastructure cost and operational expenses

•Easier to provision, control, and monitor

•Better security (end-to-end encryption)

Polycom’s SVC solution is supported by the Polycom RealPresence Platform and Environments, including the latest generation of Polycom MCUs and RealPresence room, personal, desktop, and mobile endpoints. Existing RMX MCUs with MPMx cards can be made SVC-capable with a software upgrade, and doing so triples their HD multipoint conferencing capacity.

See also:

“Introduction to the Polycom DMA System” on page 1

4 Polycom, Inc.