Software to try: Video Resource Manager

[Robert Olson]

There is an archive, but it's current MCS-access only I think. I'll poke
the support folks here to see if we can get it opened up. Anyone have any
objections to having it world-access, or should we pw-protect it.

--bob

At 11:12 AM 7/15/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Everytime you guys send out email, I think, wouldn't it be nice if this were
>on a website? If this is, could you please point me in the right direction? If
>not, maybe it would serve us well to setup a email archive that was published
>on the website...
>
>Just a thought,
>Richard ;-)
>
>
>Robert Olson wrote:
>
>> 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
>