[AG-TECH] AVCHD and AG

Tue Jan 20 23:35:21 CST 2009

Hi Gurcharan,

> what's the status of vic/mac/BlackMagic? is anyone working on that? i
> know doug found a little time to play with it. i'm ready to throw a
> student at it right now to try to get what i want--vic with
> uncompressed HD. let me know what you all think--is someone already
> working on it? is it feasible?
> (naturally, vic+codecs and smaller resolutions would be a by-product
of
> this work).

VIC comes with a raw codec (i.e. uncompressed video) which currently
crashes, but has worked in the past, I was thinking of trying to get
that going again and adding support for YUV422 ('raw' currently has an
RTP header with a pixelformat field, but it is hardcoded to YUV420).

With a quick hack I did last year to add SAGE's libsail support to VIC,
the max fps for 1080i uncompressed was 21fps and averaging 17 to 19fps
with maybe half a second of latency. This was on a 2 x dual core 2.6 GHz
Xeon MacPro. Using a simple non-GUI libsail application, I was able to
pump out 25fps 1080i with very low latency (using a 30 fps HDMI source
would have required bridging two Gbit NICs as the uncompressed video
exceeds the bandwidth of a single NIC).

I suspect the 1080i bottle neck with VIC is that it is single threaded
application, with encoding, decoding and rendering done on a single
thread. Perhaps with a bit of tweaking you might achieve more than 21
fps without have to go multithreaded. Turning off rendering on the
transmitting VIC might also help (like the VideoProducer VICs do in AG).
Building with the Intel compiler might also help, it has an auto
parallelization feature and generally generates faster code.

If you are going to throw a student at it, be my guest. I think 720p
would be achievable, 1080i would be much more work.

With a faculty merger going on here, I'm a bit behind with a number of
things I may have mentioned I was going to look at with VIC.

Cheers,
Doug

> Nathan Gardiner wrote:
> > Hi Doug,
> >
> > ChangHyeok Bae from Korea is here at the HIT Lab for the next 2-3
> months
> > working on getting the BlackMagic card working in Access Grid under
> > windows.
> >
> > It would be great to have you both get in contact to discuss the
> > BlackMagic card. His email address is:
> >
> > chbae at nm.gist.ac.kr
> >
> >
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> >
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---
> > -
> > Nathan Gardiner
> > Human Interface Technology Lab NZ (HIT Lab NZ)
> > Room 110, Old Maths Building, University of Canterbury
> > DDI: +64 3 364 3072, Cell: +64 21 163 2956
> > Calendar Information
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Douglas Kosovic [mailto:douglask at itee.uq.edu.au]
> > Sent: Friday, 16 January 2009 2:17 p.m.
> > To: Nathan Gardiner; Jimmy Miklavcic
> > Cc: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> > Subject: RE: [AG-TECH] AVCHD and AG
> >
> > Hi Nathan
> >
> > I was adding generic support for more pixelformats in VIC's
> DirectShow
> > grabber, with a preference for YUV420 if supported natively by the
> > capture hardware.
> >
> > Setting the DirectShow SampleGrabber to YUV420 and then using
> > DirectShow's "Intelligent Connect" mechanism causes the Blackmagic
> > filter to get set to YUV420 720x486 (and that's 486, not 480 which
is
> > strange).
> >
> > So looks like adding proper Blackmagic Intensity card support
> requires
> > explicit programmatic support of the Intensity DirectShow filter,
> maybe
> > interrogating it and listing inputs/formats in the input menu of VIC
> > (e.g. "HDMI 29.97 fps 1080i", "HDMI 25 fps 1080i", ..., "Analog
YCbCr
> > 480i", etc).
> >
> > If you guys are coding for the Blackmagic Intensity be my guest,
> it'll
> > be wasted effort if we both do it.
> >
> > One of the other changes I did was add support for remote DirectShow
> > filter graph connection with GraphEdit (found in Microsoft's
Platform
> > SDK). A screendump of GraphEdit remote filter graph connection to
> VIC,
> > involving the Intensity Pro:
> >  http://www.vislab.uq.edu.au/ag3/windows/graphedit.png
> > GraphEdit is very useful for seeing the properties (pixelforms,
> > resolution, etc) of the filters and pins.
> >
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Doug
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Nathan Gardiner [mailto:nathan.gardiner at canterbury.ac.nz]
> >> Sent: Thursday, 15 January 2009 6:05 AM
> >> To: Douglas Kosovic; Jimmy Miklavcic
> >> Cc: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> >> Subject: RE: [AG-TECH] AVCHD and AG
> >>
> >> Hi there,
> >>
> >> We are starting to code for the HDMI Intensity card into AccessGrid
> >>
> > for
> >
> >> a Windows version and should have something within the next couple
> of
> >> months.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Regards,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
---------------------------------------------------------------------
> --
> >
> >> -
> >> -
> >> Nathan Gardiner
> >> Human Interface Technology Lab NZ (HIT Lab NZ)
> >> Room 110, Old Maths Building, University of Canterbury
> >> DDI: +64 3 364 3072, Cell: +64 21 163 2956
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: ag-tech-bounces at lists.mcs.anl.gov
> >> [mailto:ag-tech-bounces at lists.mcs.anl.gov] On Behalf Of Douglas
> >>
> > Kosovic
> >
> >> Sent: Wednesday, 14 January 2009 10:46 a.m.
> >> To: Jimmy Miklavcic
> >> Cc: ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> >> Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] AVCHD and AG
> >>
> >> Hi Jimmy,
> >>
> >>
> >>> Is anyone using AVCHD, HDMI and the intensity pro cards with AG on
> a
> >>> windows XP box, or something close to this combination?
> >>>
> >> The Intensity Pro outputs Blackmagic HDYC (YUV 4:2:2) pixel format
> >>
> > that
> >
> >> isn't supported by VIC's DirectShow grabber at the moment. It
> doesn't
> >> matter if a AVCHD or a DV/HDV camcorder is used with the HDMI.
> >>
> >> I'm currently in the process of adding multiple YUV formats support
> to
> >> VIC's DirectShow grabber (which so far has fixed a white vertical
> line
> >> issue with 480i DV over firewire). Maybe in the next couple of
weeks
> >> it'll work with the Blagmagic Intensity Pro.
> >>
> >>
> >> Cheers,
> >> Doug
> >>
> 
> 
> --
> -------------------------
> Gurcharan S. Khanna, Ph.D.
> Director of Research Computing
> Office of the Vice President for Research
> http://rc.rit.edu
> 
> Assistant Research Professor, Ph.D. Program
> Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
> http://people.rit.edu/gskpop
> 
> Director, Interactive Collaboration Environments Laboratory,
> Center for the Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure
> http://icelab.rit.edu
> ---
> Rochester Institute of Technology
> 1 Lomb Memorial Drive
> Rochester, New York 14623-5603
> Phone: 585-475-7504  ~  Cell: 585-451-8370
> Email: gurcharan.khanna at rit.edu