High Definition Video Applications: HD-CVAN

The goals of the High Definition Collaboration and Visual Area Networking (HD-CVAN) application are to utilize the DRAGON network to enable advanced capabilities in the areas of high definition format conferencing and the remote display and steering of visualization outputs.

The key features of the DRAGON network which will be exploited are the ability to form application specific topologies of guaranteed resources and the abilty to transmit data in a protocol agnostic format. The ability to transmit in a protocol agnostic manner is a result of the all optical nature of the DRAGON network. This will allow minimum latency networking which is critical to enable these interactive applications.

UltraGrid: A High Definition Collaboratory

• From: http://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.

Uncompressed HDTV over IP, GigE environment

• Not truly HDTV — color is subsampled to 8bits
• Performance is at the mercy of best-effort IP network
• UltraGrid processing introduces some latency

All-optical, Low Latency High Definition Collaboration

• End-to-end native SMPTE 292M transport
• Media devices are directly integrated into the DRAGON environment via proxy hosts
  • Register the media device (camera, display, ...)
  • Sink and source signaling protocols
  • Provide Authentication, authorization and accounting.