Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

This week is the "second" start week, and most of the industries delayed by the epidemic resumed work last week and this week, of which telecommuting is still mainstream. Especially for those who started telecommuting last week, I believe they are used to the fixed process of "shirt with pajamas" to welcome the video morning meeting.

In fact, for many industries, most of our work is done independently on computers and even mobile phones. In many cases, an important significance of the existence of the office is to facilitate us to communicate with our colleagues or partners. So in telecommuting, video conference and teleconference have become one of the most important parts.

The sudden and intensive demand allows us to re-examine the product of remote videoconferencing. What kind of development has it taken and what expectations it has received today?

Science Fiction falls into reality: videoconference, after 60's

The need for remote video conferencing is also a communication requirement in nature. We can recall what is the difference between regular meetings and daily communication.

The core difference lies in information.

Like the importance of information. Because the information involved in the meeting is important enough, it is necessary to determine the identity and environment of the communicator as much as possible to ensure the security of the information. At the same time, in order to prove the accuracy of information, the carrier of transmitting information should be as rich as possible. For example, it is necessary not only to have sound, but also to see the expression of the caller to determine the tone context, preferably with the transmission of words, documents, and so on.

There is also the need for information exchange. Compared with the usual chatting and chatting, the meeting scene is more important for the efficient exchange and iteration of information. That is, as we often say, meetings should produce results and make decisions. Therefore, teleconferencing should ensure the participation of many people as far as possible and improve the efficiency of information exchange.

In fact, these needs emerged much earlier than we thought, especially in the era before the emergence of the Internet, the flow of information is full of difficulties, but also makes the flow of information full of value. Therefore, the relevant needs have long been conquered.

We can already see some similar concepts in many early science fiction works. In Blade Runner, for example, a man talks to his boss through a "public phone booth" with a camera that can display text.

This design is not out of thin air. In fact, since the 1960s, Bell Labs in the United States has developed an analog technology videophone, and the British company BT has also developed a bandwidth black-and-white video conference system. At that time, the conference system used fixed-line telecommunications for video calls, and the equipment could only be used in two fixed locations. And different enterprise applications are coded differently, equivalent to today's iOS and Android have their own ecology, can not "cross-platform" calls. As a result, it further increases the cost of video calls.

Later, in the 1980s, although the development of microelectronic technology greatly reduced the cost of video call equipment, but also changed the situation that can only be used in fixed locations, but this platform restriction has not changed. This also leads to the video call function which does not limit itself, because the price problem is very difficult to be popular in the civilian market. But only in the government, business meeting scene is applied. It can even be said that video calling, which is closely related to our daily life today, has always been a subset of videoconferencing systems.

Until the multimedia communication system of the Internet replaced digital signals, cheap cameras and even mobile phone cameras replaced expensive acquisition equipment, and most importantly, affordable and free software replaced the previous monthly subscription model. In the end, video conferencing, which used to be extravagant, has now flown into the homes of ordinary people.

The abrupt rise of video conferencing based on accumulated strength

If videoconferencing has been overcoming the core problem of "affordability" in the past few decades, the problem that videoconferencing has faced in the past five years is "good use".

In fact, I believe that in the recent cloud office, many people have already had the relevant experience.

It is not difficult to turn a "call" into a multimedia, multi-person video call, which can be achieved by using Wechat video, QQ video and other common communication software for many small teams. However, in many videoconferencing application scenarios, the condition can not be satisfied only by "hearing and seeing".

In recent years, videoconferencing technology has focused on two points, one is the reproduction of the real working mode, and the other is the optimization of communication itself. The former, such as video conferencing system and file transfer, on-screen operation, cloud office and other functions, so that conference participants can share materials like daily work. For example, through the application of AI technology, optimize the sound and video, reduce the noise outside the human voice, optimize the text in the video picture, and so on. The latter is to improve the coding technology standard to make the audio and video of the video conference clearer, or to use the speech recognition and machine translation capabilities of AI to realize the real-time transcription of the meeting content and improve the efficiency of communication itself.

In fact, in this wave of cloud work, although the cloud office still more or less reflects some shortcomings and shortcomings, but the function of the video conference system can be said to meet the current needs of most teams. From the reaction of many products to the current situation, we can find that most products choose server expansion, and some products that have almost no news in the Chinese market have been "revived". In other words, the current demand for video conferencing has been basically met by the technological advances accumulated in the previous five years. Especially with the improvement of the capability of terminal equipment and the continuous optimization of communication conditions, it is no longer difficult to open up a channel for the flow of information.

That also raises a whole new question: is the function of videoconferencing just "flow of information"? Which gaps in video conferencing will be filled by the new technologies emerging at present?

Outside the technology industry, the silent majority is falling into the primitive.

First of all, we can look at those scenarios that are outside the range of the current videoconferencing capability but belong to the conference requirements.

1. Reproduction of physical materials.

As mentioned in the previous article, we have basically achieved the reproduction of the meeting process, such as sharing documents on the same screen and so on. But in many industries, what needs to be shared by many people is not just a PPT or a drawing, but an entity that is difficult to be reproduced-in the field of industrial design, it may be a precision part that needs to be discussed, while in the field of decoration and decoration, it may even be a whole room.

2. the improvement of the sense of interaction.

Similarly, the lack of reproduction of physical materials, but also the lack of real-world interaction. Especially when it comes to some scenarios similar to operation training, there will be some restrictions on simple video, voice and text.

3. The integration of conference and exhibition.

Finally, when some large-scale exhibitions recently faced the risk of being cancelled due to the epidemic, it also aroused relevant thoughts-to some extent, the exhibition is a "giant meeting". Whether it is possible to combine the functions of product release and display, open communication, internal team communication and so on through technology to form a common remote and cloud. Instead of releasing the product with the old "live + on-screen comment" model, as it is now.

Today, we can already see the results of some of the above problems that have not been solved, such as the current application of cloud office is usually Internet companies, beauty salon training has now stalled? How can the fashion design team make a version of the real person? Can interior designers design well on the premise that they have never been to the field? And so on, a series of industrial questions have not been answered. And these industrial problems are not only applicable to the current special period, but also can help traditional industries to create a new and efficient mode of distributed office and remote collaborative work in the future.

This is also a very common problem at present. Internet enterprises and science and technology enterprises, as manufacturers of new technologies, are often the first batch of users of new technologies. However, the ability of these technologies to sink to traditional enterprises and adapt to their special situations is not so satisfactory. Eventually, the science and technology of science and technology enterprises become more advanced, and traditional enterprises are even reduced to "primitive".

After digging the canal, everything is in a boat.

However, we do not need to be pessimistic. In terms of 5G, AI, Internet of things and other technologies that have made breakthroughs in popularity in recent years, it has become an obvious trend for new technologies to come out of the cloud and network and combine with real scenes, as well as real scenes being highly simulated in the cloud. Related trends can also be seen in the field of video conferencing.

The most typical one is the application of AR and VR. VR and AR 3D model can solve the problem that the picture and video material is too flat to simulate the real object. In the VR model, one can actually see how a car engine works and how the heart beats as the blood flows. And can more three-dimensional feel the true size of the object, and according to their own needs to zoom in, zoom out, rotation and other free interaction.

At present, many manufacturers are trying to introduce AR, VR and even MR into video conference system. For example, Microsoft launched the teleconferencing application HoloMeeting for HoloLens, and ZTE also launched TrueMeet with AR-assisted training as a selling point. However, from the landing point of view, these systems will still be the first to enter those multinational groups with strong strength, or scientific research and education scenarios. After all, the application of MR video conference system means that users have to participate in making their own products into 3D models, which not only requires a certain cost, but also requires users to configure basic technical workers.

For example, the development of the virtual exhibition, although the exhibition economy contributes GDP to the whole world every year, the virtual exhibition also has its own development space. Originally, the virtual exhibition is an extension system grafted on the real exhibition, with the mode of high-definition interactive live broadcast, so that the exhibitors who can not get to the scene can watch the scene, participate in interaction and even leave sales leads.

But at present, many virtual exhibition manufacturers have begun to get rid of the dependence on "reality" through VR and other technical means, and combine the open virtual exhibition with the relatively closed cloud conference system to realize the two-way remote distribution of "team members" and "attendees".

Seeing here, we can actually find that, just as everything can be discussed in the "meeting", videoconferencing itself should be a platform to accommodate more functions. Especially at present, many functions have been very mature in technology, such as displaying objects and space by VR, or remote exhibitions, or even remote manipulating machines, and so on. Therefore, the future video conference system will have more opportunities. Such as the opportunity for ecological expansion, through docking with products used in various industries and scenarios, such as AR, VR teaching, virtual exhibitions, etc., to give users more rich functions and choices on the platform. As well as the opportunity for service extension, in addition to expanding the ecology, it will also be a new opportunity to provide customized services to users, such as providing 3D parts for automobile mainframe manufacturers, or as simple as simulating real-world space for users. it's what the video conference platform can do for users.

"Conference" itself is the flow of information, from a simple telephone conference to a more clear, high-speed and interactive video conference. Video conferencing is constantly getting rid of the grip of signals, platforms and terminals, so that more information can be transmitted. Now that the transmission channel has been opened, the next step in the development of video conference is to use a variety of new technologies to achieve the informationization of all things, so that more industries can adapt to this path.

The canal has been dug, and maybe soon we will see everything in a boat.

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