1. Description
From ultragrid.east.isi.edu:
The goals of the UltraGrid project are to enhance the state of the art in high quality, large scale, telepresence systems and to enable flexible and ad-hoc remote collaboration.
The UltraGrid video conferencing system enables high-definition (HD) interactive video conferencing with minimal latency. UltraGrid, supports full rate uncompressed HD video at over 1.2 Gbps. In combination with AccessGrid, UltraGrid provides a complete HD video conferencing experience, utilizing AccessGrid’s venue server infrastructure and audio services.
The UltraGrid system can also be utilized as a general purpose HD data distribution system. UltraGrid nodes convert SMTPE 292M high-definition video signals into RTP/UDP/IP packets which can then be distributed across a variety of network infrastructures. UltraGrid’s architecture seeks to minimize system induced latency. This enables UltraGrid to be utilized for a variety of real-time applications which are latency sensitive such as video conferencing and real-time interactive 3D visualization.
For uncompressed HD, UltraGrid operates in two different modes: one at just under 1 Gbps (for environments limited to 1 Gbps transport) and another at full rate HD mode of over 1.2 Gbps. UltraGrid also supports video compression schemes, including standard definition Digital Video (DV) and Motion JPEG. For hardware specifications and software download, see below.
2. Duties
Most of my work has had something to do with TFRC, a new congestion control protocol designed for multimedia traffic. I have studied the real value of this mechanism by implementing TFRC in UltraGrid. This has involved:
- The development of a modular and extensible TFRC library. This library should be a good reference for new implementations of the protocol, providing a clean but, at the same time, efficient code base.
- One of the key aspects has been the mix between UltraGrid, TFRC and the codecs. For this task, several codecs have been integrated in the system, with the possibility of new ones in a near future. DV and Motion-JPEG have been the first two codecs, with the second one as the VBR source for TFRC…
- UltraGrid has also been improved in several ways. I have ported the system to Mac OS X and added new display devices, including SDL, Carbon/Quartz, OpenGL or a simple “dump-to-file”. The number of capture devices has also been increased, with the inclusion of a DV capture system, the improvement of the HDTV capture or a dummy capture device that loads pre-recorded movies.
3. Software
The latest version of UltraGrid should always be obtained from the project homepage here.
The TFRC library used in this project can be obtained from here.
4. Documentation
My MSc thesis can be obtained from here [pdf, 9Mb].
More information (including presentations and papers) can be obtained from the ultragrid page.
