iNsight on iSight

Today, along with a telecommuter colleague from work, I had my first chance to put Apple’s new iChatAV video-conferencing software and iSight webcam to the test. And boy, did it pass with flying colors!

My coworker recently moved to Iowa and has been telecommuting these past weeks, conferencing calling into scheduled meetings, using Yahoo Instant Messaging for spontaneous conversations, and of course, corresponding with email. Today was our first chance to try out his new iSight webcam and iChatAV software. The bottom line? People aren’t lying when they say Apple is the first to get desktop video-conferencing “right.”

The ease-of-use and quality of interaction was unbelievable. Now, I’ve used many webcams and desktop VC solutions (CuSeeMe, NetMeeting, FlashMX video enabled apps) over the years. I’ve also used dedicated ISDN-based units (we routinely use a Polycom unit in our boardroom). But iChatAV, married to the iSight webcam, represents an order-of-magnitude step up in just about every dimension. From the incredibly easy to use interface and gentle, almost comforting interaction design, to the flawless video and audio codecs employed, the combined effect is to make this the first time I’ve felt anything near “being with” the person with whom I’m video-conferencing. I suppose the highest praise lies in the fact that the audio/video technology interface between us was nearly invisible — rather than being constantly aware that we both “on camera,” we instead simply worked and got done what wanted to do.

As for the techie details:

I kept my colleague’s video on full-screen (20″ LCD monitor!) mode; there was only slight pixelation at this resolution (no pixelation at all when in default/reduced size), and I was seeing video refresh rates close to 20fps.
The audio quality was as good as — and perhaps even better than — that we experience with our PBX deskset conference call phones: audio was perfectly synched with the video, and there was no noticeable lag or delay between sending and receiving ends. The iSight camera (which contains a pair of microphones and software to enable full-duplex audio) generated no audio loopback; my coworker was able to easily stand up and move around the room without experiencing any degradation in sending or receiving audio.
The quality of the interaction was even more impressive considering some of the sub-optimized components in our setup, namely:
On the far end, my coworker was running through a DSL connection that supports sub-broadband throughput (around 200kbps versus DSL’s “advertised” 384kbps speed). (On my end, I was running through our company’s T1 line.)
While my coworker was running on a “beefy” Mac (dual 1GHz G4), I was running on a legacy machine: 450MHz G4.
My coworker was connected to our company intranet via a VPN connection. (Thanks to our corporate firewall, connecting over the public internet didn’t work {iChatAV text chat does, however}; once he established his VPN connection, the iChatAV handshake was seamless.)

So, label me a convert. For a public beta, this piece of software is indeed impressive. About the only features missing are the ability to carry on a multi-way conferencing (we have additional telecommuters that we’d love to bring in to the same meetings), and the ability to do live screen-sharing. For the latter, we’re going to use the open-source Tight VNC product (a proven solution we already use within our company).