Welcome to the IVS Home Page !
IVS (INRIA Videoconferencing System) is one of the first software videoconferencing tool for the Internet (first version was available on July 92). IVS is a software system to transmit audio and video data over the Internet using standard workstation. It includes PCM and ADPCM audio codecs, as well as a H.261 codec. Both audio and video codecs are software codecs. Hence, only minimal hardware upgrades are required to a machine commonly found on the desk of an engineer, namely a video camera and a frame grabber.
IVS allows to use standard Internet technology to transmit video/audio-data. This is achieved by implementing PCM and ADPCM audio codecs and a software version of a H.261 codec (video codec for audiovisual services at p x 64 kb/s).
Furthermore, where conventional H.261 hardware codecs require leased lines or switched circuits for data-transmission, the H.261 software codec of IVS uses standard UDP datagrams. Some changes are required to use this coding on packet switched networks such as the Internet. A packetization scheme of H.261 video stream using RTP has been designed and is described in an RFC published by the Audio Video Transport Working Group at the IETF. Both IVS and hardware codecs such as GPT and Bitfield use this packetization scheme, so interoperability is now possible.
IVS also includes an error control scheme to handle packet losses in the Internet. Since version 3.3, IVS includes a feedback rate control scheme which adapts the image coding process, and hence the output rate of the coder, depending on network conditions. The feedback information is periodic loss-rate measurements sent back from decoders to the coder.
Detailed descriptions (papers, reports etc.) can be found by clicking here.Click here to retrieve last changes of IVS.
Today, IVS is a bit out of date and two new audio and videoconferencing tools have been designed in our research group: Rendez-Vous (IVS the Next Generation) and FreePhone.
The following platforms can be used:
To retrieve sources or binaries, click here.
An installation guide is available here.
Manual pages and README files are included in the ivs package. An user guide is available by clicking here.
Last modified: September 6, 1996
Feel free to mail at turletti@sophia.inria.fr your comments and bug reports; standard disclaimer.