Multistream meetings - Layout

Multistream is a new feature introduced in CE 8.0.  This is the Cisco implementation of H.264 SVC.  This post is targeted to share with you the difference in the layout and user experience for pre-CE and post-CE 8 endpoints.

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/td/docs/telepresence/endpoint/software/ce8/release-notes/ce-software-release-notes-ce8.pdf



This is the layout of a multi-party conference call on MX300G2 with CE 8 firmware.  The call is terminated on a mm820 telepresence server blade with multistream enabled.  It has a maximum 4 participants at the top when the remote end is sharing the presentation.  The number of additional participants are showed at the bottom right corner.





Comparing with this SX20 endpoint that is running TC 7.3.4 and you can spot the difference.  Presentation is occupying the majority of the screen, and the main video at the top is showing active speaker as the major portion, with tiny activepresence for non-active speaker at the bottom of the main video.  There is significant improvement of user experience with multistream enabled.

From the call statistics on the web interface, you will notice there are multiple incoming video instead of a single video from Telepresence Server.