Hi Community,
One of the customer has query that Microsoft recently announced this solution (Teams media optimization) for using Microsoft Teams on Windows Virtual desktop (WVD).
This solution is comprised of the below installation/configuration on the RD Session Host:
- Teams WebSocket Service
- Teams version 1.3.00.21759 or higher
- The “IsWVDEnvironment” registry key
Customer currently can validate if above works, by starting Teams, going to your icon -> About -> Version. It should show something like “WVD Media….. ” However, on the client-side the “Windows Desktop client” (WDC) is required. According to this documentation, this client is different from the Remote Desktop Connection client (mstsc). The WDC will ask you to connect to a Workspace URL; or login/subscribe through your e-mail address. It uses a URL like: https://rdweb.wvd.microsoft.com/api/arm/feeddiscovery
Personal experience of the customer/ understanding on how it works:
What customer has noticed is that – since Windows 10 1809 and Server 2016 – it’s possible to redirect the local video capture device to the Remote Desktop session (basically redirected the encoded video stream directly to the server, so it could forward the stream where needed). This solution – in contrast to the older USB RemoteFX – allows for the local video to be directly streamed to Teams (or “proxied” through the RD SH), with low latency.
Other participants will see this video stream without latency on their local device (assuming they run Teams locally); since the ‘Upstream Video’. The video stream will show up at other participants that also use RD Session Host with a delay, because the stream is basically displayed ‘at the RD Session Host’ and then captured and send to the RD client (the ‘downstream video’). So it’s not the original stream that is directly transported back to the RD Client.
Questions:
From this experience, customer has a query that,
- What new redirect ‘video capture devices’ feature in the RD Client does with the upstream video; is what the Teams Media Optimization would do with the downstream video? In their case they have a client with an On-Prem Remote Desktop environment (comprising of a few RD Session Host, an RD Broker Server, RD Web and RD Gateway server). All based on Window Server 2019 (but they could test this on Server 2016 as well). This is basically a very similar setup as the WVD solution.
- Is it also possible to use Teams Media Optimization in an On-Prem environment? Either using the RDC in combination with the webfeed from RD Web; or future MSTSC software? Is it on the roadmap?
- Will the functionally only be available for WVD (and never become available for on On-Prem environment)?
Any guidance would be of great help.
