LifeSize puts CEO into the director's chair

LifeSize has launched an appliance that aims to put one-button recording, streaming and publishing of videos into the hands of executives. The LifeSize Video Centre was launched at LifeSize expert partner eVideo Communications’ head office in Sydney.

The appliance was designed to let users auto-publish high-definition videos without the need for a videographer, video-editing suite or YouTube-type distribution network. It has one button to start and stop recording, a ‘choose your view’ functionality and no-wait streaming, said the vendor.

Typical users would be a CEO using the service for a video blog to employees, a sales director recording a weekly sales meeting for staff who couldn’t attend or marketing managers creating training videos.

The goal of the $30,000 Video Centre was to create videos that were easily accessible, live and on demand, in 720p30 high definition. Videos were saved in the MPEG4 format and could be embedded and shared in a similar manner to videos on YouTube.

Country manager Tim Fulton said video conferencing was showing parallels with voice 10 years ago when phone systems were part of the cost of building infrastructure.

“Video has stayed out on its own,” Fulton said, and was budgeted as part of a room fit-out rather than included in the IT budget. “Now video is an IP-enabled point on the network and covered by the networking team.”

LifeSize claimed the appliance was capable of supporting more concurrent recordings, on demand streams and simultaneous live streams, than its competitors.

The Video Centre was designed to integrate closely with LifeSize 220 endpoints to simplify deployment and provide a seamless user experience.

The appliance could record 2500 hours of 720p HD video on two 1TB hard drives, set up in RAID 1. Dropping the quality to 380p stretched recording time to 5000 hours.

The Video Centre could also be backed up to an FTP site. The next release would be able to plug in a NAS storage unit and integrated chat, Fulton said.

EVideo Communications has integrated the LifeSize Video Centre into its eConnect managed service. Customers can view training, sales demonstration and education videos and company announcements online or view live recorded video presentations and meetings live or on demand.

The 24-hour eConnect service lets users share videos over the video centre by distributing via log-in and pin number. EVideo’s eCenter bureau was available for hire to customers wanting to record video conferences. The minimum requirement was a Lifesize 220 series video system.