PC-to-Mac Best Video Conferencing Technologies

Videoconferencing and real-time interaction between Macs and PCs has been one of my top runners in my personal wish list for new collaboration tools.

Being the Mac so well entrenched in the world of design, publishing and visual communication and media, I see a great opportunity for tools that can effectively bridge the great need for communication and co-viewing of documents, sketches and images that these two user groups create.

Unfortunately until very recently (before Mac OS X), little or nothing was available for someone wanting to even do voice over IP between the two platforms. The geekiest Mac users that had software like VirtualPC, which allows the Mac to run a full Windows session, were the only ones that had been able to experience some effective audio and videoconferencing with their PC cousins on their Macs.

But times and technology moves fast indeed.

Apple has recently released its wonderful iChat conferencing tool, that together with the iSight webcam makes for an impressive conferencing setup. Unfortunately this is a Mac only proposition. Apple may soon launch a PC version of its iChat and take advantage of this tremendously rich market niche.

In the meanwhile with Mac OS X and some great software development teams at work, at least three new tools have appeared on the market, that at different prices, with varied features and ease of use promise to bring together Macs and PCs with webcams.

While it maybe very likely that Apple will be extending its IChat to Windows in the near future, you can certainly download right now one of these three tools which satisfy your request, albeit with very different results and much differing costs.

a) Session
http://www.wave3software.com/
Download a free 30-day trial there.
Desktop solution
Win XP, 2000, MacOS X

b) iVisit
http://www.ivisit.info/
Register and download a free version.
Desktop solution
Win 95,98,ME,NT/2000,XP,MacOS X

c) Pixion
http://www.pixion.com/
Free seven day try out
ASP version or server-based
Win 95,98,ME,NT/2000,XP, MacOS 8.x MacOS X
Unix is supported too

also compatible with the Mac is:

d) WebEx
http://www.webex.com
On WebEx Mac and Solaris are both supported

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PC-to-Mac Videoconferencing, Application Sharing, Remote Control
Shared Whiteboarding And Live Presentation Tool
Session ver. 2.0
http://www.wave3software.com/
= breakthrough tool
Desktop Software Tool - Server Software
Free to try

Session from WaveThree is an impressive application, the first one that I can see effectively bridging the long-standing barrier between Mac and PC users. While there are still some rough edges to be smoothed out Session provides effective audio and videoconferencing with excellent quality, application/desktop sharing, one-click remote control and an effective presentation multi-slide whiteboard that can accommodate images, photos and live annotation form all live participants.
I have not been able to find a text chat facility.

Interface is very simple and easy to understand upon first use. More complex options are well hidden inside Preferences and Options controls.

Session works only on high bandwidth connections, starting at 128 Kbps and above.

I must admit that I was not able to get some functions to work when these were started from the PC side, and that I did get a few crashes and error messages. Nonetheless I am very impressed by this tool and by its overall design.

Performance of audio and video is absolutely outstanding and on a par with the best other software-based desktop videoconferencing tools I have tested so far (Reality Fusion TeamView, VoiceCafe Videomaster series, ). Audio is full duplex, meaning that everyone can talk at the same time. Your microphone is always open from the first moment you connect to someone else, and under optimal circumstances (good connection speeds and good quality microphone) the results are nothing short of outstanding.

The shared whiteboard, MediaSpace, provides some interesting facilities, including:
a) multiple slides
b) the ability to import/drag and drop images in most file formats
c) live annotation tools
d) playback functionality in full screen mode
This would effectively allow for the delivery of Powerpoint presentations across Mac and PC platforms. One would need only to save all slides in a graphic file format and then to place them on separate slides inside MediaSpace. MediaSpace includes a media library panel allowing you to store images that you may want to keep handy and available during a live conference or presentation.

Free try-out downoad
There is a 30-day try out available right now for you to download and I strongly suggest that you give a good look at this tool.

Highly recommended.

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From the original article PC-to-Mac Audio and Video Conferencing Comes Of Age which appeared on Robin Good's Sharewood Tidings Weblog.