From HIT Lab NZ
As part of the
KAREN Capability Build Fund which HIT Lab NZ has been funded, we have now successfully started developing High Definition capabilities for Access Grid. Below is a beta release of vic which will enable users to send and receive video streams at various high quality resolutions eg. 1080p and 720p via the BlackMagic HDMI Intensity cards for Windows XP.
Our solution is a build based from the development work on Access Grid at the University of Queensland. Part of this development has been largely helped with the team from Vislab, UQ. Namely Doug Kosovic & Chris Willing.
This work is also been conducted in collaboration with Professor JongWon Kim from Networked Media Laboratory, GIST (Korea). A large merit of this work can go directly to his student ChangHyeok Bae during his internship at our lab.
News
- As this is an initial beta release we please ask that you treat it as beta :). We have not tested the software fully at this stage and are still working on the code. However do to the popularity and interest received recently we wanted to let users test and experiment.
- On 26th February 2009, we successfully had the HD plugin working bidirectionally between New Zealand and the USA. Test has been running between Jimmy Miklavcic (Utah University) and ChangHyeok Bae (HIT Lab NZ) with: a 720/30p stream, 15fps, 1.5 mbps from the USA side, and at 1050i, 20fps from the N Side. We gratefully thanks Jimmy Miklavcic for his first trial.
Screenshot of the HD test
Requirements
- Windowx XP SP2 or SP3
- Minimum Core 2 Duo PC (Recommended Quad Core)
- Minimum 2GB RAM (Recommended 4GB)
- BlackMagic Intensity HDMI Card
- Relatively new graphics card (tested on nVidia cards only at this stage)
Beta Download
Version 1.1 beta release - 25 Feb 09
- Created a new option for HD Selection to include 720p, 1080i (have not fully tested 720p yet)
Version 1.0 beta release - 13 Feb 09
To install version 1.1 beta release, please download and unzip the file to your hard drive.
http://www.hitlabnz.org/downloads/AccessGridHD/vic_hdmi_1.1_beta.zip (8MB)
To run,
- Ensure that your BlackMagic HDMI capture card and drivers are installed and that your camera is plugged in and turned on.
- Ensure your HD camera has "live output" on, and "720p" "1080i" activated (exact options different for each camera model).
- Test your BlackMagic HDMI capture card with AMCAP. Run amcap.exe and you should see a video image with DeckLink Video Capture as name of the device. If you don't activate Preview (Options Menu) and/or select the good camera on the Devices menu. If you can't see any images, then there is something wrong with your installation, and you won't be able to run HD vic"
- Open up the command prompt and navigate to the directory where you unzipped the files
- Type in the following (substituting the IP Address and Port)
vic 233.1.1.1/1234
You should then be able to select BlackMagic Card from the Device and Capture Menus. Currently it works successfully with mpeg4, h264, h261as, and jpg codec options.
NB: We have found so far that mpeg4 is easier on the CPU, but if you have a high spec PC (Quad Core or Eight Core) then h264 will work well.
If you want access to the source code you can contact 
(subject:AG SVN) for the details.
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