Real-Time Applications

HD Multipoint Conference

URL:
sitola.fi.muni.cz/sitola/igrid

Contact:
Ludek Matyska, Masaryk University / CESNET, Czech Republic, ludek @ ics.muni.cz

Collaborators:
Masaryk University / CESNET, CZ: Ludek Matyska, Petr Holub, Milos Liska, Lukas Hejtmanek, Jiri Denemark, Tomas Rebok
CESNET, CZ:: Stanislav Sima, Jan Radil, Jan Gruntorad
Louisiana State University, USA: Ed Seidel, Andrei Hutanu, Ravu Paruchuri

High-definition (HD) interactive video requires minimal transmission latency to be truly effective, which is afforded by today’s optical networks. While point-to-point “raw” HD video streams (i.e., streams with no latency due to encoding) have been successfully demonstrated, multicast HD is more demanding. One raw stream takes 1.5Gb, so multi-site meetings can easily saturate 10Gb links. In addition, it is advantageous to do real-time translation of raw HD video into less demanding formats in order to allow sites without adequate bandwidth to participate. A shared “virtual” lecture hall is created among the iGrid site in San Diego, Masaryk University and Louisiana State University. Each site has at least one HD camera; HD streams are multicast to the other sites at the highest bandwidth. Additional USA and European collaborators can receive / send digital video (DV) streams that are translated in real-time from/to raw HD. Synchronously, the lecture is also sent to a distributed storage system for archiving purposes.

Special thanks to Eric Taborek and Chelsio Communications for providing equipment in support of this demonstration.