Here’s an overview describing how you can configure video formats in the KAZOO platform. Some examples for this may include:

• A user wants to enable a device so it supports video calling between two office desk phones
• A user wants to call into a KAZOO video conference using a video-enabled desk phone instead of a laptop.
• A user wants to allow video replay and/or online streaming on an office phone (to replay a saved video call for example) using the KAZOO platform.

<aside> 💡 NOTE: This documentation refers to the Monster UI implementation

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Overview

Video Calling

Video is an image capture process that takes a rapid amount of still pictures at a source, compresses the data, and transmits the packet across phone lines.  The recipient unpacks them and replays the sequence to show movement, or “video.”

Some notes about the transmission:

• “Frames” are single images, transmission is described in “frames per second”, or FPS.
• Typical compression is 20-30 frames per second. Lower rates and lower resolution means you will see a stuttered, jagged result.
• The resulting “video” is a stream of these captures.

As with any images, video takes up significant data bandwidth to transmit.  To help mitigate this video uses one of several compression algorithms which collectively are referred to as “CODECS”  (short for “COder-DECoder”).

CODECS Compression

CODECS refers to the format for compressed data transmitted across devices (including WebRTC, Softphones, mobile devices, comm.io).  Some formats compress audio only, others compress audio and video.

There are several different compression types available today.  To successfully transmit these files, both the originating device and the receiving device must be equipped with the same codec compression interpreter.  If a device transmits H264 video, then the receiver must be able to “read” that.  Your office desk phone and your laptop application for example, must be able to talk in the same language.  Common audio formats used by telco devices include .mp3 and Opus.  Popular compression formats for video are H263, H264, and the newer Google-developed VP8.