February 1998

Xirlink, Inc.
2210 O’Toole Ave
San Jose, CA 95131
Ph: 408-324-2100
Web site: www.xirlink.com

Price: $149

Despite all the hype it has received, videoconferencing has yet to take off. Impediments to videoconferencing have included incompatibilities between camera systems, expensive or unavailable ISDN connectivity, speed/performance issues, difficult installations (video capture boards), and prohibitive costs. Well, all of these problems may yield to a remarkable new product: Xirlink’s XVP 500, a USB videocamera. The XVP 500 provides H.323 compatibility, analog connectivity, superior speed/performance, and a cakewalk USB installation — all at an affordable price.

The XVP’s key performance advantage over competing USB videocameras is that Xirlink incorporates its own ViCE (Video Compression Engine) technology to compress data and achieve 30 frames per second (full motion) in CIF resolution.

Xirlink also includes all the software you need to start videoconferencing. Xirlink Video Suite comes with a combination of some of the best videoconferencing, desktop video editing, and desktop photo editing software. The software includes Microsoft’s NetMeeting, Xirlink’s H.324 videoconferencing software, MGI VideoWave, MetaCreation’s Soap and Goo, ArcSoft’s PhotoFantasy, and Reality Fusion’s Live Screen Saver.

INSTALLATION
Our test PC, a Pentium 200MMX, already had the USB supplement loaded from a previous installation of a USB product. Thus, we proceeded directly with installing the Xirlink software onto the computer. We also installed some of the video applications that ship with Xirlink’s Video Suite. Then, we hooked up the Xirlink camera to one of the USB ports.

A message flashed up on the monitor, indicating that Windows found new hardware and was adding the drivers. The monitor then flashed the Xirlink product name. Everything seemed to be working according to plan. However, when we executed Xirlink’s videoconferencing program, all we received was a blue screen in the Xirlink video window — no video.

We supposed this snag could have been due to incorrect settings for the screen resolution or the number of colors. Or, it might have been that we needed an updated video driver. To sort things out, we went into the Display program, where we saw that the settings were at 1024 C 768 and 256 colors. Nothing unusual. We decided to boost the colors to 24-bit color. When we rebooted, the Xirlink videoconferencing program displayed the video properly. However, bumping the colors up to 32-bit (true) color caused the blue screen again.

At this point, we resorted to reading the documentation. A Xirlink README file stated that there were some issues with the S3 Trio video card, the very card we were using. We tried updating the video driver, by downloading the latest version off of the Web, but that didn’t help. We gave up and installed an ATI Graphics Pro Turbo we had lying around in the lab. It worked on the first try, at all screen resolutions and colors. We also tried a Matrox Millenium card. It, too, worked perfectly.

A quick call to Xirlink’s technical support confirmed that the S3 card can be quirky, and that the board’s strange behavior consumes a good portion of the bandwidth on the PCI bus. In any case, the incompatibility problem we stumbled across appears to be the fault of the video card manufacturer, and not Xirlink. We finished the installation by setting up various parameters, such as frame rate, compression, image format, and quality. All these settings could be adjusted from one centralized GUI screen.

DOCUMENTATION
We had the autorun capability of the CD-ROM turned off, so the setup routine did not autostart. Instead, we relied on the installation instructions, which told us to run “setup.exe” in the root directory. However, when we explored the CD-ROM, we couldn’t find the setup.exe file. We just ran the autorun file, and then we were able to install the applications.

This minor snag didn’t delay us, but we suppose it could throw novice computer users for a loop. Anyway, with the exception of this minor problem, the documentation was excellent —plenty of screenshots and explanations of the different features.

FEATURES
Hardware

• Compliant with USB telephony.
• No video capture card or power cord needed.
• Built-in microphone for audio input (8KHz, 16-bit audio).
• Built-in video compression engine. Video Attributes
• Supports standard 352 C 288 (CIF), 352 C 240 (SIF), 320 C 240, 176 C 144 (QCIF), 160 C 120, and 128 C 96 (sub-QCIF) video formats.
• Software-enhanced 704 C 576 (4CIF) and 640 C 480 formats for still images.
• 24-bit true color.
• Supports YVU 4:2:2, YVU12, and YVU9 formats. Mechanical Specifications
• Adjustable lens (close-up to infinity).
• Mechanical dimensions: 2.1” H C 2.6” W C 4.5” D.
• Up-down tilt: �20 degrees.
• Swivel movement: 100 percent. Standards/Codecs
• Stores in BMP or AVI formats with optional H.263 and G.723 compression.
• Fully complies with USB WDM and video for Windows.
• Fully complies with H.324 POTS videoconferencing.
• Uses MMX technology for enhanced performance.
• V.80 modems supported.
• H.323 Internet videoconferencing interface with Microsoft NetMeeting.

Other

• Conversation recording and playback options.
• True full motion at 30 frames per second.
• Built-in video e-mail feature that allows you to send a still image or a digital audio video clip.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
We tested Xirlink’s videoconferencing software, which uses NetMeeting APIs to perform application sharing, whiteboarding, and (of course) videoconferencing (Figure 12). Xirlink also works with NetMeeting at the hardware level, since the camera is H.323-compliant. The product’s support for H.323 also makes it suitable for use with other videoconferencing products, such as CUSeeMe.

We also looked at the included application that lets you record motion videos or still pictures. These videos and pictures can be saved into a photo album, the contents of which can be emailed.

When we sent still pictures and videos to a test e-mail account, we noticed that the e-mail capability worked extremely well. However, we should note one problem. The Xirlink software saves still pictures only in bitmap (BMP) format, which is uncompressed. An equivalent TIF file would provide equal quality and resolution, but require 40–70 percent fewer disk bytes, since TIF files are compressed. Xirlink also includes it’s own compressed video player for a smaller disk footprint when recording videos. The video playback application is executed simply by double-clicking on a video in the photo album or from Windows Explorer on any file with a Xirlink Video Recorder (XVR) extension. Several cool applications were included with the Xirlink camera. One very cool application, RealityFusion, detects body movement, and lets you “pop” bubbles, punch a clown, or swat a basketball into a hoop.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
As we’ve already mentioned, we’d like to store pictures in TIF format, not just in BMP format. A TIF-capable version of the XVP 500 would deliver extra compression, with equivalent quality, and improve performance. With a TIF-capable product, you could e-mail a photo/video over the Internet without imposing a lengthy download on the recipient, plus you could conserve hard disk space. (Note: Graphic utilities such as Adobe Photoshop can perform BMP-to-TIF conversions, but using such a utility adds an extra step.) We should note that the current version of Xirlink’s software didn’t support the integrated microphone inside the camera, at least when the software is running within Windows 95. The problem here is that Windows 95 OSR2 (USB support) lacks a standard software audio stack. As a result, all the companies that manufacture USB audio devices have to create their own proprietary stacks.

Xirlink does have a proprietary audio stack to get around this Windows 95 limitation. However, the same stack that lets you use the microphone could cause conflicts with other USB devices using their own proprietary audio stacks. Such conflicts should be eliminated by Windows 98. Windows 98 has an intermediate level of drivers, and these drivers dispatch signals only between different subsystems. Vendors will provide specific drivers only for each class (such as video and audio decoders). Thus, in Windows 98, the integrated microphone in Xirlink’s camera will function more smoothly.

CONCLUSION
Even with the current version of Windows, Xirlink’s camera is a remarkable product with fantastic performance. When Windows 98 is finally released, Xirlink’s USB camera will be even better.

The DVP 500 camera is a great product for both the consumer and business markets. It’s ease of installation, superior frame-rate performance, excellent color quality, and sleek design will make it a sure winner. If we were to install a videoconferencing system in our office or in TMC Labs, we would be sure to include Xirlink’s camera.