Abstract : (Seminar) Introduction to Videoconferencing:Videoconferencing is the use of interactive multimedia and live telecommunications for the purpose of engaging in the exchange of ideas, the delivery of information and management of organizations.Videoconferencing combines: Video Images (the people participating in the video-meeting),High-Quality Audio Communication (voice, sounds, music) ,Scanned Images (charts, graphs, photographs, 3D objects),Computer-to-Computer Exchanges (all types of files) .In other words, you can do anything in a videoconference that you could do if you and the other participants were across the table from each other, instead of on opposite sides of a city or state or country or the world.Videoconferencing just like meeting someone in person, but without the extra cost and inconvenience of travel to/from the meeting. What is Video Conferencing?Video conferencing in its most basic form is the transmission of image (video) and speech (audio) back and forth between two or more physically separate locations. This is accomplished through the use of cameras (to capture and send video from your local endpoint), video displays (to display video received from remote endpoints), microphones (to capture and send audio from your local endpoint), and speakers (to play audio received from remote endpoints). Although there are many factors that serve to modify or increase the complexity of this basic definition (several of which are discussed in this cookbook), it is useful to keep the concept simple in the beginning when deciding why or how you may be able to use video conferencing for yourself or your organization.In understanding the role that video conferencing could play, consider two general situations: a) those where you are already able to communicate with someone who is not physically nearby, but you wish that communication could be richer, and b) those where you wish to access or communicate to an area that may or may not be nearby but is limited by situational or physical restraints. Distance education often comes to mind first when considering the former situation, but several other existing types of communications can also be enhanced or extended. These include organizational and cross-organizational meetings, counseling, foreign language and cultural exchanges, and telecommuting. Communication is already occurring in each of these applications, but they could be made more compelling, more effective, or less expensive via video conferencing. (Imagine a telephone call where you can see the speaker, or a television through which you can talk.) For the latter situation, the introduction of video conferencing has enabled communication to restricted areas such as clean rooms, nuclear facilities, operating rooms, and the space shuttle. It has been used to observe wildlife in their natural habitat, to establish interactive surveillance and security, and, combined with micro-instrumentation, to observe inside the human body. This side of video conferencing may not come to mind as readily as the enhancement of existing applications but it can be quite powerful. Simply imagine situations where you might like to be a "fly on the wall", with the ability to interact if desired. To further your imagination with each of the situations listed above, consider that video conferencing can be point-to-point (between two endpoints), or multipoint (combining two or more endpoints into the same "conversation"). When you begin to combine diverse endpoints into one setting where audio and video from each can be shared in real-time, whole new levels of interaction are enabled and entirely new communication and ideas can result.