Video Conferencing Experiences with UltraGrid: A High Definition Video Conferencing and Distribution...

Video Conferencing Experiences with UltraGrid: A High Definition Video Conferencing and Distribution System

Ladan Gharai ....……University of Southern California/ISIColin Perkins .........................…….. University of Glasgow

Outline

Overview System Design

Architectural Overview AccessGrid Integration

Nuts and bolts UltraGrid Nodes Cameras and Displays

Performance Testing Lab Experiments Network Experiments

Technology Transfer Summary

The UltraGrid System

UltraGrid is ultra-high quality video conferencing tool Supports uncompressed High Definition TV video formats

Operates in two modes:— Under 1Gbps, for environments limited to 1 Gbps transport— Over 1.2 Gbps, for full rate uncompressed HDTV

Standard definition video codecs: Digital Video (DV) Motion JPEG

Incurs minimum latency

Not solely a video conferencing tool: HDTV distribution system for editing purposes A general purpose SMPTE292M-over-IP system High-definition visualization and remote steering

applications

The UltraGrid System

UltraGrid node

UltraGrid node

UltraGrid node

LDK-6000SONY

HDC-X300IP Network

UltraGrid node

SMPTE 292MRTP/UDP/IP

1.485 Gbps

RTP/U

DP/

IP

HD video conferencing Remote Visualization SPMTE 292M over IP transport

Outline

Overview System Design

Architectural Overview AccessGrid Integration

Nuts and bolts UltraGrid Nodes Cameras and Displays

Performance Testing Lab Experiments Network Experiments

Technology Transfer Summary

UltraGrid: Architectural Overview

An open and flexible architecture with “plug-in” support for codecs and transport protocols:

Codec Support: DV, RFC 3189 M-JPEG, RFC 2435 H.261, RFC 2032

Transport protocols: RTP/RTCP RFC 3550

Congestion Control: TCP Friendly Rate Control

(TFRC), RFC 3448

decoder encoder

display grabber

Playout buffer

Packetization

Transport + Congestion Control

rat

UltraGrid Node

UltraGrid: Architectural Overview

Display

HDTV/DV camera

FrameGrabber

Grabber thread

Transmit thread

VideoCodec

RTPFraming

CongestionControl

RTPSender

Send buffer

Network

RTPReceiver

RTCP

Playout buffer

RTPFraming

VideoCodec

ColourConversion

Display

Receive thread

Display thread

AccessGrid Integration

UltraGrid’s video transmission mechanisms can be added to AccessGrid: Use the Node Manager to add the services:

UltraGrid Receiver UltraGrid Sender

Created as part of UltraGrid: uvReceiverService.zip uvSenderService.zip

AccessGrid Integration

Video Packetization and IP Transport

UltraGrid RTP packetization is based on: ``RTP Payload Format for Uncompressed Video’’, RFC 4175

Ladan Gharai and Colin Perkins

RFC 4175 covers packetization of various video formats: Supports range of formats including standard & high definition video Interlaced and progressive RGB, RGBA, BGR, BGRA, YUV Various color sub-sampling: 4:4:4, 4:2:2, 4:2:0, 4:1:1

Outline

Overview System Design

Architectural Overview AccessGrid Integration

Nuts and bolts UltraGrid Nodes Cameras and Displays

Performance Testing Lab Experiments Network Experiments

Technology Transfer Summary

UltraGrid Nodes UltraGrid nodes are built from commercially available

hardware. Key elements are:

Network interface card : For nodes sending at over 1 Gbps rate, a 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC:

— T110 10GbE from Chelsio: http://www.chelsio.com/— 133Mhz/PCI-X

Otherwise standard 1 Gbps NICs suffice

HDTV capture card: For nodes sending and receiving uncompressed HDTV:

Centaurus or HDstation HDTV capture card from www.dvs.de For nodes only receiving uncompressed HDTV, software display is

an option. This requires: xvideo extensions support by OS and video card; or The Simple DirectMedia Layer library, SDL

The Centaurus vs. HDstation Card

Centaurus HDTV capture Card: www.dvs.de Linux 2.4, 2.6 Kernels 100Mhz/PCI-X card DVI connector Supports common SD, HD and 2K format:

HSDL: 2048x1556@ 15psF,18psF 2K: 2048x1556@ 24p,24psF,48i

Price: $9000K

Hdstation HDTV capture card: www.dvs.de Linux 2.4 Kernel 64 bit PCI card Supports common SD and HD formats Price: $15000k

Total Cost

UltraGrid node sending full-rate uncompressed HDTV:

Dual Xeon EM64T Power Station SuperMicro mother board 5 programmable PCI-X slots 32bit Fedora Core3 - Linux 2.6 Kernel

PC system …………………………….……………… $5500Centaurus Card……………………………………………… $ 9,000 Single-link HD/SD PCI-X board

Centaurus-Audio08 …………………………………………. $ 1,000

10 GigE NIC ….………………………………………….$2500Total cost

$18000

Cameras and Displays A variety of HDTV cameras are now available:

Broadcast cameras: Generally expensive, at least over $20000. For SC2005:

— Panasonic AJ-HDC27F— Thomson LDK 6000

Have SMPTE 292M output and can be directly connected to an UltraGrid node.

Consumer grade cameras: Price is in the $3000 to $5000 range, examples:

— Sony HVR-Z1E, HDR-FX1 — JVC GY-HD-100U HDV Pro

Do not have a SMPTE 292M output, an AD converter is needed to generate an HD-SDI signal. (Ex: AJA HD10A)

Displays need to be able to accommodate: HDTV 16:9 aspect ratio In the case of progressive HDTV, support progressive scanning

Outline

Overview System Design

Architectural Overview AccessGrid Integration

Nuts and bolts UltraGrid Nodes Cameras and Displays

Performance Testing Lab Experiments Network Experiments

Technology Transfer Summary

Performance Testing

1. Back to back lab test2. Local area tests

DRAGON ring in the DC metropolitan area

3. Wide area tests Conducted during SuperComputing 2005 over Internet2:

— Best effort IP path— Hybrid/Optical Packet Infrastructure (HOPI)

Measured: Throughput Packet loss and reordering Frame inter-display times Packet interarrival times at sender and receiver

Lab Tests

Centaurus

10 GigE

Centaurus

10 GigE

UltraGrid Sender

UltraGrid Receiver

LDK-6000PDP-

502MX

1.485 Gbps

RTP/UDP/IP

SMPTE 292M SMPTE 292M

Back-2-back tests: Video: 720p Duration: 10 min RTT: 70 µs MTU: 8800 bytes

Results: No loss or reordering 1198.03 Mbps

throughput Total 10,178,098 packets

sent and received

Local Area Tests

Our local area tests were conducted over a metropolitan network in the Washington D.C. area, known as the DRAGON network.

DRAGON is a GMPLS based multiservice WDM network and provides transport at multiple network layers including layer3, layer2 and below.

DRAGON allows the dynamic creation of “Application Specific Topologies” in direct response to application requirements.

Our Ultragrid testing was conducted over the DRAGON metropolitan ethernet service connecting:

University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute (USC/ISI) East (Arlington, Virginia); and

University of Maryland (UMD) Mid-Atlantic Crossroads (MAX) in College Park, Maryland.

UltraGrid over DRAGON Network

HOPI / NLR

CLPK

ARLG

MCLN

MIT Haystack Observatory (HAYS)

UMDMAX

Goddard Space Flight Center GSFC)

National Computational Science Alliance

(NCSA) ACCESS USC/ISI East

DCNE

DCNE

ATDNet

Optical switching element

Optical edge device

DRAGON

Network tests: 720p video Duration: 10 min RTT: 570 µs MTU: 8800 bytes

Results: No loss or reordering 1198.03 Mbps throughput Total 10,178,119 packets

sent and received

Wide Area Tests Our wide area tests were conducted over Internet2

during Super Computing 2005

Set up a video conferencing session between ISI-east and the Super Computing exhibit floor

Tests were conducted over Internet2’s: Best effort IP paths; and Hybrid Optical Packet Infrastructure (HOPI)

Each UltraGrid node was connected: via a 1 Gbps interface to best effort IP path; and via a 10 Gbps interface to HOPI

Wide Area Tests

UG sender

UG receiver

UG sender

UG receiver

Los Angeles

10 Gbs EthernetSC 2005

Seattle, WA

Chicago

Houston

ISI-EastArlington,

VAOC192 SONET/SDH

LDK 6000

AJ-HDC27F

Wide Area Tests: Performance Results

HOPI: As expected we did not record any packet loss for test runs

over the HOPI provisioned paths.

Best effort IP: We recorded between 0 to 0.04% packet loss Clearly, 0 to 0.04% only indicates the level of congestion for

each particular test run

At 0.04% loss the video quality did suffer: However this is with no error correction or concealment at

work

Inter-packet Intervals: HOPI

Sender IPI - 10 Gbps NIC Receiver IPI - Internet2 HOPI path

Packets traversing HOPI paths maintain similar distribution and inter-arrival times as at the sender

Inter-packet Intervals: Best effort IP

Packets traversing the best effort IP path experience a long tail and more dispersion

Sender IPI - 1 Gbps NIC Receiver IPI - Internet2 best effort path

Outline

Overview System Design

Architectural Overview AccessGrid Integration

Nuts and bolts UltraGrid Nodes Cameras and Displays

Performance Testing Lab Experiments Network Experiments

Technology Transfer Summary

Groups using UltraGrid HDTV group at KAIST:

Added features to UltraGrid: Playback from disk Bonded NIC support

http://cosmos.kaist.ac.kr/hdtv/

Networked Media Lab at GIST, in collaboration with KISTI: Added features to UltraGrid:

Support for AJA XENA capture card Embedded audio support

Masaryk University in Brno with CESNET (Czech NREN operator):

Conducted multipoint HD demos with UltraGird at : iGrid 2005 SuperComputing in 2005

https://sitola.fi.muni.cz:443/igrid/

Summary Full rate uncompressed HDTV video conferencing is

available today, with current network and end-system technologies.

Approximate cost UltraGrid nodes are: Hardware: ~$18000 Software: open source code Camera’s and display are extra

It is paramount to be able to adapt to differing network technologies and conditions:

Full rate 1.2Gbps flows on dedicated networks Network friendly flows on IP best effort networks

Further Information…

UltraGrid project web-site: http://ultragrid.east.isi.edu/

Latest UltraGrid release available for download UltraGrid-users mailing list subscription

information

DRAGON project web-site : http://dragon.east.isi.edu/

DRAGON