Selecting any of the other sharing options like Present Program or Present PowerPoint Files will still behave the same as in previous clients. The rebranded Lync 2013Skype for Business 2015 15.x client installations do not include this capability and will continue to share content using RDP. Understand that currently this capability is only provided in the Office 2016 version of the Skype for Business 2016 client, starting with the public release of the 16.x client version (e.g. The addition of Video Based Screen Sharing helps address some of these limitations while at the same time not negatively impacting the overall image quality that RDP has provided to date. While the frame rate was slightly improved it was still very short of the frame rate needed to display video or other moving animations sufficiently. This optional setting still utilized RDP for the data stream but boosted the frame rate a bit (as well as the bandwidth usage).Ī side-by-side comparison of the default and high performance RDP options can be seen in this blog article by Skype for Business MVP Michael LaMontagne. Normally the content is encoded as an H.264 AVC video stream, but could in some cases fall back to a legacy H.263 stream.Ī content sharing session can be established all by itself in the LyncSfB world, but with traditional video conferencing a video call must first be placed and then content can be added to that existing call.Ĭomparatively content sharing in LyncSfB has been of much sharper quality and resolution but severely limited in frame rate and typically more costly on the network.

The content essentially steals bandwidth away from the main video when needed. While the traditional video conferencing systems use H.239 or BFCP to control the transport of the content, the actual content itself is encoded using a video codec and is sent within the same allowed bandwidth defined for the specific call. In the Microsoft world content sharing has leveraged Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) since this ability was first provided in Office Communications Server 2005.Įach of each lines of communications are separately established connections between the same endpoints, with their own streams and bandwidth utilization. While a standard H.323 or SIP call can support sending a second stream of video displaying this content the actual standard that makes this possible are not H264 itself.

The transmitted pixels could be arranged to display a smiling face captured by a camera, or instead show the familiar view of a users PowerPoint application captured by a video output device of some sort.

The H.264 standard is simply a video codec which could include anything in the actual image. Obviously companies looking to address interoperability scenarios with SfB and their standards-based video conferencing systems would sit up and take notice to these claims.įor those with a foundational understanding in the traditional video conferencing world that statement can sound odd. Make sure to also read the new article to understand the latest functionality provided by VBSS.

With a more complete understanding of VBSS and its potential roadmap then the answers to various interoperability questions should be quite clear. Most of the questions have been centered around the topic of video interoperability, thanks in part to some generalized statements.

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