Configuring H.239 settings

Controls whether the MCU as a whole is permitted to use H.239.

If this setting is enabled, you can still enable or disable the use of H.239 on a per-conference basis.

If this setting is disabled, no conference will be able to use H.239.

Certain video conferencing endpoints and infrastructure such as gatekeepers may not operate correctly when communicating with equipment (such as the Codian MCU) which declares H.239 capability. It may therefore be necessary to set this to Disabled in order to work with legacy devices (this will, of course, also prevent H.239 video streams being used with H.239-aware equipment).

If this setting is enabled, H.239 content channel video will be permitted in ad hoc conferences as well as scheduled conferences.

Ad hoc conferences are those created using either the "Create new conference" option within an auto attendant or via calls to an E.164 number associated with the configured MCU service prefix.

This field sets which video codec is used for conferences' H.239 video streams.

A single H.239 video stream is used for each conference, and this stream will be sent to all viewing endpoints. If an endpoint is unable to receive H.239 video using the codec configured here, no H.239 channel will be opened to that endpoint.

Sets whether the MCU will render content channel data in endpoints' main video channels.

If there is an active content channel for a conference, it may be that the MCU is unable to open a H.239 channel to a particular endpoint - and this is the case with SIP endpoints. For instance, that endpoint may have no H.239 capability, or might not support the video format specified by the Outgoing H.239 video codec setting (see above).

In these cases, if this option is set to Enabled, the MCU will display the content channel video within a pane of the currently selected conference layout.

If this option is Enabled, the MCU will ignore fast update requests for a conference's H.239 video channel received from endpoints whose connections are experiencing problems.

When this mode is active, it can prevent a large number of keyframes being sent in the shared H.239 video encoding in response to fast update requests from a single endpoint. A high number of keyframes may reduce the video quality of the content channel for all conference participants, including those with good connections to the MCU.

Sets the bandwidth of the content channel video stream sent to streaming viewers.

This option is only available if the MCU web conferencing (WCO) feature key is present.

Just as there is a single H.239 video stream sent to all H.239-capable videoconferencing endpoints in a conference, there is a single content channel video stream sent to all streaming viewers.

This option allows the bandwidth of the streamed content channel video to be set. While in general a higher value means a greater frame rate (and thus better video quality), it is important to not set this value too high (i.e. higher than the available TCP network bandwidth between the MCU and viewers' machines) to avoid degradation resulting from lost data.

If Enabled, people viewing the content channel stream via a web browser will be able to add markup to that video stream such as graphics and text. This markup will then be visible to all content channel viewers, both those viewing via streaming and those connected via H.323 videoconferencing endpoints.

This option is only available if the MCU web conferencing (WCO) feature key is present.

Changing this setting has an immediate effect:

• if changed to Disabled, it will not be possible for existing viewers to complete markup currently in progress
• if changed to Enabled, existing streaming viewers will gain the ability to add markup