Collaborative document technology in video conferencing software

Today's video conferencing software products not only involve audio and video transmission, but also include collaborative data functions. Collaborative data functions include: electronic whiteboard sharing, collaborative Document Browsing, and shared desktop. Now we mainly discuss the collaborative documentation technology in video conferencing software. Collaborative Document Browsing is mainly through collaborative browsing, the documents opened by the host site are transmitted to other clients, so that other clients can see the host's operations in real time. Collaborative Document Browsing technology can be achieved in several ways. Each implementation method has its advantages and disadvantages:

1. Direct Document Upload

Direct Document Upload is to upload the document to the MCU server, record the type and related information of the host's operation documents, and transmit the host's document operation actions in real time, for example, you can create a document, open a document, close the document, next page, or previous page, and then send relevant document operation actions to other terminals in real time, other terminals can also obtain the document type and related information of the operator, open the document, simulate the operations of the host, and transmit the data, the operation steps of the host and the audience are consistent. However, the disadvantage of this method is that you must upload all documents and distribute them to terminals before you can perform collaborative operations. Therefore, this collaboration method cannot cope with the data collaboration of large documents, in the field of video conferencing software, Flash video conferencing software uses this method for collaborative browsing of documents.

 

2. Document Conversion Method

 

For collaborative Document Browsing, You can first convert a document into an image format, that is, convert the document to a corresponding image through the paging processing technology, and then replace the document with the image for transmission, because the paging technology is used, you do not need to transmit all documents to the server. Instead, you only need to convert the pages of the documents currently viewed collaboratively into images, and then send the images to other clients, this allows the audience to see the host's operation documents in real time. However, this method also has many disadvantages. This means it is difficult to adapt to different documents. We must develop different image conversion formats for different types of documents, therefore, this method is only applicable to Video Conferencing Systems with few file formats.

 

3. Virtual Printing

 

The document conversion technology cannot convert all document formats, but the virtual printing method can solve this problem. Through the virtual printing technology, we can Virtualize a printer and convert documents through the Virtual printer, convert to the corresponding image, and then display the operator's operations through real-time images. The image transmission technology behind this technology is similar to the previous one, however, the function of converting images using virtual machines is added. Although this method solves the problem of converting documents in any format, it cannot display dynamic documents, such as PowerPoint files. Generally, PowerPoint files can contain videos and sounds, if you directly convert a document into an image, the multimedia data cannot be browsed collaboratively. Therefore, this virtual printing method is powerless for these dynamic documents.

 

4. Convert to flash

 

The Flash conversion method is to convert a file into a dynamic Flash format, which can solve the problem of dynamic documents that cannot be displayed in virtual printing, convert the current page of the PPT or other dynamic documents into Flash format by means of paging, and then display the dynamic documents through the flash file. This can solve the problem that the dynamic documents cannot be displayed. However, This method requires Flash Player to be installed for Document Browsing, which may cause compatibility issues.

 

To sum up, the document technology can be achieved through four methods: Direct Document Upload, document conversion, virtual printing, and Flash conversion, in addition to the first method, the four methods have major disadvantages. The other three methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, we can combine the three methods, use their respective advantages to achieve collaborative Document Browsing of video conferencing software.

 

Collaborative document technology in video conferencing software