Lync For Mac Disable Active Speaker Video Settings

Lync Disable Active Speaker Video Settings Update For Lync#

There is currently very little information available about this new functionality, and as with anything not well understood it seems to be creating more confusion than warranted. Video Based Screen Sharing (VBSS) is a new Skype for Business client capability that has for the most part flown in under the radar. Blur or replace your background Configure audio and video settings.audio problems, and you cant resolve them within the Lync for Mac client, you can specify the input and output devices in your system sound settings. Select the audio and video devices you want to use from the options available to you. Select Same as system to set your devices to be the same as your system settings.StarLeaf automatically adjusts your microphone levels, however you can override this by using the slider underneath Microphone.

On one side a Skype for Business call will use MicrosoftвЂ™s SIP platform to setup and negotiate a call or conference, leverage X-H264UC as the codec for the video streams, maybe opt for SILK as the audio codec, and then utilize RDP to share the desktop from one participant. In the Microsoft world content sharing has leveraged Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) since this ability was first provided in Office Communications Server 2005.The most significant difference between these two workflows are the lines of communications that are established, and how they are established, even though the resulting experiences are very similar. While a standard H.323 or SIP call can support sending a second stream of video displaying this content the actual standard that makes this possible are not H264 itself.A call established using the H.323 call control platform will actually use the H.239 standard for establishing content sharing, where as a call that instead leverages a standard video SIP platform will use Binary Floor Control Protocol (BFCP) for establishing content. The transmitted pixels could be arranged to display a smiling face captured by a camera, or instead show the familiar view of a userвЂ™s PowerPoint application captured by a video output device of some sort. The H.264 standard is simply a video codec which could include anything in the actual image.

Lync Disable Active Speaker Video Settings Update For Lync

Comparatively content sharing in Lync/SfB has been of much sharper quality and resolution but severely limited in frame rate and typically more costly on the network.In an initial step to improve the content streaming quality of RDP the July 2013 cumulative update for Lync Server 2013 introduced a new parameter ( EnableHighPerformanceP2PAppSharing) for peer to peer application sharing. A content sharing session can be established all by itself in the Lync/SfB world, but with traditional video conferencing a video call must first be placed and then content can be added to that existing call.These inherent differences in content encoding and transport are why traditional video content sharing has always been able to provide smoother motion, include audio in the stream, and use less overall bandwidth. Normally the content is encoded as an H.264 AVC video stream, but could in some cases fall back to a legacy H.263 stream.Yet on the Lync/SfB side an additional session is created for content outside of any established video or audio sessions (if they even exist) and will transmit RDP as media over TCP, consuming additional bandwidth on top of whatever the audio and video sessions are already using. The content essentially steals bandwidth away from the main video when needed. While the traditional video conferencing systems use H.239 or BFCP to control the transport of the content, the actual content itself is encoded using a video codec and is sent within the same allowed bandwidth defined for the specific call. In comparison the same scenario in the video conferencing world might utilize H.323 to establish the call signaling, H.264 AVC as the video codec, G.722 as the audio codec, and then leverage H.239 to send the desktop screen of a computer in a conference room connected to a VGA cable.The delivery mechanisms for sharing content in these two worlds are very different though.

VBSSThe primary change here is that Skype For Business clients can now utilize something other than RDP to share content between clients. The addition of Video Based Screen Sharing helps address some of these limitations while at the same time not negatively impacting the overall image quality that RDP has provided to date. While the frame rate was slightly improved it was still very short of the frame rate needed to display video or other moving animations sufficiently.Seeing that RDP has been stretched to its limits in terms of providing quality streaming another approach was taken with the Skype for Business client. A side-by-side comparison of the default and high performance RDP options can be seen in this blog article by Skype for Business MVP Michael LaMontagne.

The PowerPoint File sharing option leverages the Office Web Apps Server which does not actually stream the content and thus VBSS is not applicable here. Selecting any of the other sharing options like Present Program or Present PowerPoint Files will still behave the same as in previous clients. The rebranded Lync 2013/Skype for Business 2015 15.x client installations do not include this capability and will continue to share content using RDP.VBSS is also only available in peer-to-peer SfB sharing sessions and is only utilized on the Present Desktop sharing option.

Stopping and restarting the sharing session will allow VBSS to be used again. Releasing control will not upscale the content back to using VBSS, it will remain as RDP for the duration of the sharing session. This switch is invisible to the user except that the frame rate of the content will immediately drop as VBSS is replaced with RDP for delivery of the content. If remote control is requested by or given to the receiver then the content stream will seamlessly fall back to using RDP.

For example video conferencing systems which already include native support for RDP content sharing could in theory be updated to support VBSS to further improve quality. Clearly any improvements built on top of this workflow could be leveraged by additional development by third parties. These clients can choose to utilize the newer codec when negotiating peer calls between each other, but when involved in larger multiparty conferences are still limited to the codecs supported by the server.That is not to say is there are no inherent benefits here. Simply stated, VBSS is no different than the addition of SILK to some of the Lync and SfB clients. As stated previously this is not standards-based H.264 content sharing, just like video in Lync/SfB is not the same as H.264 AVC payloads.In the field most video interoperability solutions available today are focused on conferences, not individual peer to peer calls.

The second video shows the same YouTube video being streamed from the same SfB user but this time VBSS is used and the frame rate improvement is obvious.These embedded videos may be muted by default but if the playback audio is heard understand that the camera used to capture these clips has picked up the sound from the source (sharing) PCвЂ™s speakers located in the same room. In the first video the typical RDP experience is shown which is clearly evident by the very low frame rate.

Lync For Mac Disable Active Speaker Video Settings