Civilian-centric journalism is now on the rise via blogs and now video blogs. The need for a mixed IP video recording tool would certainly be handy for those interested in remotely interviewing 1 or more participants where the video could be uploaded to their blog.

Here is an IP videoconference clip of Bruce Gray in Xten’s Business Development department and myself. Recorded using a new build of eyeBeam soon to be available from Xten.

Click on the image to start the video.

The new mixed video recording feature uses Voice Activity Detection or VAD to switch the focus between participants. This method allows us to use less space [1 screen instead of many for multiple participant calls] The quality is pretty good but the voice and video in the original recording, before being converted to MP4, is much better. When the production version of this software hits the street it will certainly be much closer to production quality.

The interesting thing here is the combination of real-time communications and Video Blogging. Users could be on a VoIP call or conference call using eyeBeam & Vonage, Yak etc. 1 minute and the next be in a video interview. Both can blogged but I believe video is much more compelling. It’s much closer to what us humans have become accustomed to -> TV.

While we are polishing up this feature for a future release of eyeBeam I will be posting some video interviews with some key people in VoIP, Video Blogging, IM and some key individuals involved in IETF standards regarding the same.

These next 6 months are going be fun