Asterisk is able to handle video calls in the core infrastructure. Under the hood, what we really have is one (1) video and one (1)  audio stream in the same call. There are channel drivers and applications that support video, but not all.

The following file formats and video codecs are supported by Asterisk . Keep in mind that no video transcoding  will happen and you must get sure that both ends are able to support the given video format.

Codec Format

• H.263 read/write
• H.264 read/write
• H.261 – Passthrough only

The Asterisk video format drivers produce a non-generic video format file. This files can be converted from various video files to Asterisk video+audio files by Gstreamer. Remember that H.264 is disabled by default. You need to add that in the channel configuration file.
Channel drivers

• The SIP (chan_sip.so) channel driver has support for video
• IAX2 Supports video calls (over trunks too)
• Local Forwards video calls as a proxy channel
• Agent Forwards video calls as a proxy channel

Applications

This list needs to be improved further. The following dialplan applications can handle video:

• voicemail
• record
• playback
• echo