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jneves
Asked: 2010-05-20 14:56:41 +0800 CST

Hardware needed for receiving and recording videocalls in Asterisk

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I'm planning an Asterisk configuration that should record videocalls and then feed it to an application.

From what I've researched, it seems like app_h234m is the way to go. But it's not clear to me what are the hardware requirements for this.

Can someone enlighten me?

hardware linux video asterisk

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    That really depends on the lines you want to hook up to. If you want to do Video Calls over a normal phone line, then you'll need something like a TDM card, personally I recommend Digium Cards. (link) They kinda started the asterisk game and I've never had a problem with any of their cards.

    However there is no special hardware required to make or recieve a video call, Asterisk simply connects the calls. Most SIP providers allow video calls, so i'd suggest going with one of them, and just make sure your internet connection is capable of handling the load.

    Add (see below) in sip.conf to be able to support video calls.

    [general]
videosupport=yes ; enable Asterisk video support
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  2. I'd read "the book", Asterisk - The future of telephony. To be specific, chapter 2 "Preparing a system of asterisk".

    Quote from the book:

    "Server Hardware Selection
    The selection of a server is both simple and complicated: simple because, really, any x86-based platform will suffice, but complicated because the reliable performance of your system will depend on the care that is put into the platform design.    "

    Link: http://downloads.oreilly.com/books/9780596510480.pdf
    More docs: http://www.asterisk.org/docs

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  3. jneves: I may be able to answer you question as I have experience with voice and video in Asterisks. Could you give me more details however about your current setup and what you plan to do? IE: How many concurrent voice calls are you running on the setup? how many concurrent video calls? If you can also give me an estimate of where you see this system in the future, that will help.

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  4. Any old box will be fine, it all depends on how many calls you need it to handle. And with Asterisk it's probably best to scale up horizontally rather then vertically. Do your own testing and judge from that.

    Also, Freeswitch seems to support this functionality as well with its mod_fsv. This may be more reliable then using Asterisk.

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