[AG-TECH] AG hardware improvements and HD content sharing

[Christoph Willing]

On 10/02/2007, at 10:14 PM, Natalia Costas wrote:

>
>
> Hi,
>
> We are collecting information regarding hardware improvements for  
> new rooms. I gathered some advices from our experience, like:
>
> - Include a small UPS
> - Include a better graphis cards

Natalia,

I'd suggest putting the graphics cards into a machine with 2 PCI- 
Express graphics slots. Then you can have 2 dual output graphics  
cards to provide the 4 outputs from the display machine - all running  
with the same (maximum) throughput and potential for hardware  
graphics acceleration (which will become more important as more DV/ 
HDV becomes used in the AG world).


> - Maybe reduce from 4 huge servers.. only 2 (audio+video+control  
> and display on a different computer)

its more convenient to control the audio from the display machine  
rather than the video capture machine i.e. display & audio on one  
machine, normal video capture on the other


> - Provide a touch screen device for lecturers.. (not sure how do  
> that for collaborating groups)... that might be a tabletPC or a  
> mimio device.
> - Maybe TFT/Plasma screens for smaller rooms
> - Maybe  mobile equipment for particular rooms
> - ...
>
> I would like to know things you missed in your initial (or default  
> AG) desings or you installed and think they provided improved  
> usability or features that are interesting, or maybe improved now  
> obsolete AG features. Or new technologies that might be of interest.
>
> On the other side, I am interested about how to share high  
> definition contents with other rooms, maybe some of you already  
> have that kind of set up and could guide us. We are involved on an  
> AG design for medical meetings and we are working with them on  
> their needs and how to provide solutions to them.

Compressed HDV directly from cameras has a latency of about half a  
second. That is acceptable for non-interactive sessions (and perhaps  
_some_ interactive sessions). We have recently developed a new  
version of vic with DV and HDV capture & display capability. The  
Linux version is working well and the Windows port is just about to  
begin.

Uncompressed HDV would be ideal, but the bandwidth required is around  
1 Gb/s - not a realistic proposition for most networks. Bandwidth of  
the compressed streams is around 30Mb/s, so you can have multiple HDV  
streams on a good network (if you can tolerate the latency). Also,  
the HD YUV capture cards cost thousands of dollars.


chris



Christoph Willing                       +61 7 3365 8350
QCIF Access Grid Manager
University of Queensland