Announcement

Viewplicity is pleased to announce the 1.2 service upgrade release. We have added extensive automation features to make it easier for web sites to handle users that are new to the Viewplicity features and that are new to the use of cameras.

All new features are controllable by the web site designer, enabling varying degrees of automation depending on the site requirements.

A “first time user” is someone that comes to your site and encounters a Viewplicity page, perhaps as a result of a login workflow on your site. These first time users may or may not have cameras attached to their system. Viewplicity automatically detects that the user has never configured a camera with our environment and selects a default camera for him, if the release 1.2 feature auto add camera is enabled. The camera is added to his camera list and a self view player is made visible that will allow him to make configuration changes if the default isn’t what he wants to use for this session. Changes that he makes will be remembered for the next browser session.

When the browser session with Viewplicity is started, our first time user is placed in a group. In our initial release, this group was always what we call the “default home group” – a user named “sam” would be placed in the group “sam_home”. The web site has always been able to dictate a different starting group. Once in a group, the user can add more groups and switch groups.

With release 1.2, the site may use a new guest only group feature to place the user into a specific group and to keep the users in that group from being able to add additional groups or from being able to switch to a different group (except for the owner of the group – the creator of the group). The site may use an owner must be present feature to also indicate that guests cannot stay in a group unless the owner of the group is online and active in the group.

The web site may dictate to Viewplicity in release 1.2 to use an auto receive feature. If enabled, this feature causes the user in a group to automatically start viewing anyone who becomes publically viewable in the group. There is also an auto public feature that causes the user to start publishing his camera(s) into the group, making him publically viewable, if there is anyone in the group to watch him. When coupled together and enabled for all users in a group, they will constantly attempt to stay public and connected to each other.

These features in combination allow the construction of a site that requires no clicks from the members of a group in order for them to see and hear each other. All of these features work as well for users that only have microphones (no cameras). The auto connect feature can even be used by members that have neither cameras nor microphones. Used in this manner, the members simply watch the video broadcasts in the group (and, they can still broadcast text messages).

Release 1.2 also gives the web site new controls for the camera video resolution options. Using HTML directives, the site can be set up to use any of the supported resolutions from 160×120 up through 1024×768. The web site can also enable the users to select a different resolution for each camera using their camera advanced options dialog. There is a new feature called user controlled resolution that can be enabled. When used in this manner, the Viewplicity camera persistence feauture remembers the resolution settings across browser sessions. Also, our adaptive bandwidth allocation function has been extended for the new supported resolutions.

Release 1.2 adds an auto resize feature that allows the remote player window in the player panel to automatically resize when the sending user changes the resolution associated with that player. A rollover has been added to the player that indicates what resolution is being received. If this feature is not enabled, the player will scale the input video according to the player’s current size and allow the user to control the player size with the player panel size slider. This feature is a great advantage for an application that uses a mixture of cameras (document cameras, talking heads, wide angle shots, etc.).

The use of larger resolutions brought about the desire to allow additional options for dynamically changing how the space of the screen is used in the web site’s browser window. Thus, release 1.2 adds a pop-out function for the Viewplicity player panel and a full screen capability for the individual players themselves. The player panel can now be placed in the page using a relatively small space, but be allowed to pop out of that confinement and use the entire page temporarily while the user is watching or participating in a conference. This mode will support any mixture of player window sizes. Viewplicity also supports the Flash full screen capability for any individual player as well.