Software to try: Video Resource Manager

[Robert Olson]

I've packaged up a first cut at some chunks of framework for configuring &
running the video capture for an AG node.

It's a pair of Java apps. The first is setup-config. You run it on the
video capture machine (with no vic's running) like this:

	/usr/local/ag/apps/vrm/setup-config config-file

 and it probes the machine to see how many video capture cards the machine
has and what device names they are. It then brings up a GUI with a panel
for each card, on which you can select the input port you wish to use and
the purpose of the video (presenter/audience/main). 

The test buttons fire up a vic set to transmit with the parameters you've
chosen. This is so that you can figure out which video is which for
multiple cameras, without tracing cables and figuring out the slot to
capture card device mapping.

There is also a field for the AG node name. 

When the configuration is as you like it, press the Write Output button.
This will write the configuration to the file you specified on the command
line. The configuration file contains XML text describing your capture
machine. This is one input to be fed to the resource manager itself.

The second app is the video resource manager. It reads the XML file
generated above, and generates a GUI with which you can start and stop the
vic sessions for capture.

Invocation is:

	/usr/local/ag/apps/vrm/vrm -c config-file -t ttl address

For instance,

	/usr/local/ag/apps/vrm/vrm -c video-config.geode.mcs.anl.gov -t 127
224.1.2.3/12000

You should see a GUI with a pane per card and the address info. You can
start individual captures via the start buttons in the pane, or all at once
with the start all button.

Installation:

These apps require jdk1.2 and a couple XML packages. I've repackaged the
vendor tars as Linux RPMs to ease the installation process. All it should
take to install the tools is the following script (that can be found at
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~olson/AG/Software/Linux/install-ag-0 )

#!/bin/sh

rpm_base=http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~olson/AG/Software/Linux/RPMS

rpm -i $rpm_base/jdk-1.2-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i $rpm_base/gmd-xql-1.0.1-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i $rpm_base/xml4j-2.0.11-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i $rpm_base/java-getopt-1.0.6-1.i386.rpm
rpm -i $rpm_base/ag-vrm-1.00-1.i386.rpm

Let me know how this works for you. Keep in mind again that this is
completely untested outside the ANL AG environment, and is very roughly
release engineered (hardcoded paths, etc). It will work on an SGI, but not
in the RPM form. Source RPMS are available at 
http://www-unix.mcs.anl.gov/~olson/AG/Software/Linux/SRPMS/.

--bob