Blacksburg Electronic Village: Research

Research

BeingThere 3.01 Pro

Price : $199 (The regular version of BeingThere 3.01 is available for $99)
Operating system : MacOS 7.5.3 recommended (7.5.1 or later required)
Network connection : Transmitting and receiving video requires an ISDN or faster connection to Internet or WAN. Audio requires 28.8 kbps Internet connection. An AV Mac and video camera are required to send video.
Platform : Macintosh computer only

"BeingThere and BeingThere PRO are conferencing and collaboration software for Internet, LAN, and WAN connections. BeingThere 3.0 PRO adds powerful collaboration features such as white boarding and live window sharing and also includes H.320 compatibility. BeingThere allows users on network connections such as LAN, WAN or Internet (ISDN or faster) to see, hear, and collaborate with each other. BeingThere supports point to point and multi point network calls, (up to 6 simultaneous connections, depending on processor speed)." (Source: BeingThere Web Site)

Features (Source: BeingThere Web Site)

Supports up to 6 simultaneous multipoint video connections
Supports point-to-point and multipoint video conferencing sessions
Supports video broadcasts over LANs and the Internet
Records conferencing sessions as QuickTime movies
Send files by dragging and dropping them onto the video picture
Allows editing of shared white-board objects
Simultaneously send documents, talk, and see each other
Session log, chat window is QuickTime Conferencing (QTC) compliant. Use it to call someone with Apple Media Conference software or other QTC applications.
BeingThere-to-BeingThere calls are optimized over the Internet and data sharing features will only be compatible with other BeingThere users.
Can upgrade basic BeingThere software to include collaboration features (whiteboard and application window sharing)

System requirements (Source: BeingThere Web Site)

Any Power Macintosh or Quadra (68040 or faster), except the Quadra 605 or 630.
Memory: 12 MB physical RAM, 3 MB of free hard disk space
Additional System Software : Open Transport 1.1 recommended (Open Transport 1.0.8 or later required)

Evaluation notes

Setup requirements

RAM doubler should be turned off.

(+) pluses

Easy file sharing - allows the easy sending and receiving of files or the clipboard to the other participant.
Allows multiple shared windows
Joint whiteboard - drawing package
Special application window - allows user to view applications running
Support H.320 standard
Support color mode
Can record video segments
Can take a still photo (of what the camera is looking at)
The toolbar is detachable and a chat window available.
Gives you the option of sharing your whiteboard. This feature allows privacy and lets the user share only what they decide to.
On-line help is available under the ? menu.

(-) minuses

Microphone is always on - No 'push to talk' button
Can't pixel by pixel edit
No eraser, must select a graphic and delete
No transparent selection for graphics
When you close a connection - no indication is given to other person
Can't save whiteboard as a different graphic file types (i.e., would be nice to save whiteboard as a .GIF file for internet use).
Can't see what the person types as they type it. Must wait until they click somewhere else on the screen until it is transmitted.

Menu design

The pull-down menu structure is shown below

File | Edit | Conference | Window

The top-level menu choices are consistent with those in both CU-SeeMe and Enhance CU-SeeMe. Under the File menu, the user creates, opens and saves a shared whitespace. The registration information for the software is found under the preferences menu (a pretty unconventional place). Usually the user is prompted for registration information the first time the program starts.

Also, a note on upgrading the software from a trial copy to a purchased copy. A first time user would not know that they can download the 30-day evaluation version and then convert it to the regular version by changing the registration under the preferences menu. (This information was only gained by emailing the software vendor). Hidden features like this are very frustrating for the novice user, especially when not documented at the web site from which the software is downloaded.

In general, it is difficult for novice users to differentiate between the information found under Edit/Preferences and Conference/'Settings ' (Media/Audio/Video) menus. (The Preferences selection is under the File menu and Media, Audio and Video settings are under Conference menu.) The user is required to remember what is stored under both the Preferences and Settings menus -- an unnecessary and undesired feature. By trial and error, one slowly discovers the differences between them. Once a desired setting is found, it is difficult to remember under which menu, it was located. I recommend eliminating the Preferences menu and integrate these functions into the 'Settings" menu to minimize confusion.

Also, the number of menu choices found under the Preferences and Settings menus should be presented in a way that uses the whole screen to allow the user to select. This provides the user will a larger number of options for each menu that is provided. So instead of five menus with four choices each, you might provide two menu items that have larger window areas and allow the user to make 10 choices from each menu. This minimizes the knowledge the user must carry in their head and thus allows them more direct visibility for available menu choices.

The first menu that comes up by default is the Compression menu for both Video and Audio
settings. (The other two selections are hidden on both menus).

Conference/Video Settings

Compression
Image
Source - set to 'Composite' or 'Source' depending on the video source

Conference/Audio Settings
Compression
Sample
Source - set Speaker to ON

Both audio and video settings should be changed to default to the Source menu first. As currently designed the Source menu is hidden from the user. Consequently, under Video Settings, users must select either 'Composite' or "S-Video' as the input before they can view the video. As it is designed, the user must hunt for the 'Source' to make this change. Also, if the user desires to change the speaker settings, he must also hunt for them. One approach is to redesign the menus so this important selection is at the top of the menu as shown below.

Conference/Video Settings
Source - set to 'Composite' or 'Source' depending on the video source
Compression
Image

Conference/Audio Settings
Source - set Speaker to ON
Compression
Sample

In addition, the software should be designed to default to the input of the current hardware configuration. In this case, if the cable is connected to the 'Composite' port, then the software would default to 'composite' and vice versa for the 'S-Video' port.

One of the nice features of BeingThere is that snapshots can be easily taken on the screen.
[Screens may be captured at several 'color depths' depending on the monitor and video cards provided with the system. Common color depths are 256 colors (8-bit), thousands of colors (16-bit) and millions of colors (32-bit). At color depth increases, the size of the file also increases. In general, the greater the number of colors, the better the picture usually looks on the screen. The 'visual' differences between 16-bit and 32-bit may not be that great, depending the detail in the image.]

This version has a a particularly annoying bug: When you first click on the first line of text in the whiteboard, the text lines or graphic below the insertion point temporarily 'disappear' from the screen. If text is selected in the middle of a text block, the text 'disappears'.