[AG-TECH] HD vic on Linux

Christoph Willing c.willing at uq.edu.au
Wed Aug 11 18:35:52 CDT 2010


On 12/08/2010, at 7:07 AM, Richard Palmer wrote:

> Dear Chris,
>
>> I just made a quick build of the latest vic for amd64 lenny. Its at:
>>     http://www.vislab.uq.edu.au/debuntu/lenny/ag-vic2.8ucl_1.4.0r4876_amd64.deb
>> An i386 version should be there fairly soon too.
>>
>> I haven't been able to check it fully since its a holiday here today
>> and I don't have a lenny machine with the blackmagic driver  
>> installed.
>> It needs dkms which isn't available for lenny although I believe
>> there's a package in progress for squeeze. Anyway if you've resolved
>> all that already, then the package above may work. You'll have to use
>> dpkg to install it as I haven't properly added to our repo until I  
>> can
>> test it more thoroughly.
>
> Worked perfectly, many thanks Chris.


Richard,

Great, thats good to hear.


> I used a backported version of dkms.

I've also built a dkms package for lenny, available now in the  
UQVislab repo.


> Could only test it with PAL camera over s-video today, that was  
> fine, will
> try to test the HD camera later in the week and report back.
>
> I'm still trying to piece Access Grid together as a system so  
> forgive the
> possibly foolish next question, but if I launch the standalone HD  
> vic can
> that then be used as part of a AccessGrid session in some way ? (using
> the Venue client). If so, how ?.


Once the VenueClient is in a venue, the multicast addresses for the  
default video stream can be found via the the Venue->Properties...  
menu (a window should appear with the details). You could then start  
up your HD vic manually using the address you find there for the video  
stream.

Be aware that full HD video requires quite a bit more bandwidth than  
the steams we've become used to. This means you'll probably need to  
add a '-B' option when you start up vic manually (it sets the maximum  
bandwidth that vic's bandwidth slider can be set to). I've found -B  
8000 (max = 8Mb/s) to be good so far. Without setting that explicitly,  
a max of 3Mb/s is used on my vic, which vic deals with by limiting the  
frame rate of the stream.

When you have your Blackmagic card & HD camera set up, you'll be able  
to select it from the Device list in vic's Option window - it'll show  
up as something like "Blackmagic-Intensity Pro". You'll also have to  
select the input connection being used (HDMI, Component, ...) from the  
Port button; also the format e.g. HD-1080i-50 from the Signal button.

Don't forget to set the Encoder to h264 (mpeg4 also works). This will  
enable the "large" radio button on the right hand side, which you  
should select to enable transmission of the full HD signal.

Any other vic in the venue you've chosen should now receive your  
stream and display it if it was built with the necessary codec.


All that is a bit cumbersome at the moment (even if fun to play around  
with initially) and will be taken care of automatically when a  
dedicated AG Service is shipped - should be real soon now.



chris



Christoph Willing                       +61 7 3365 8316
QCIF Access Grid Manager
University of Queensland



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