GTBW - Multimedia Applications in a Gigabit-WAN

 Goals

The technological revolution of digital media is rapidly changing the world of broadcasters and the media industry. In the emerging field of media processing we see computer science, communication technology, and media technology coming together to explore new applications and define new products and new markets. These concerted technologies will enable media producers to remotely collaborate in digital video and multimedia production, post-production, archiving, indexing, and retrieval. In the GTBW - Multimedia project basic technology for transferring studio-quality digital video over gigabit networks (ATM) and video coding and compression is examined. Problems of transmission and processing delays, synchronization requirements, and quality of service are studied. Interactive distributed virtual studios require high quality low delay video transmission systems to be tested in this framework.

 Multimedia Applications in a Gigabit-WAN

Distributed multimedia applications requiring gigabit bandwidth are emerging from interactive digital TV production scenarios. In such an application scenario high quality video streams have to be transmitted in real time with low delay. As an example, in the distributed virtual studio the blueroom and the rendering engine are located at different places. Camera tracking signals from the blueroom are transferred to the rendering engine, where high quality TV signals are generated in real time. Production environments with gigabit connectivity can have access to virtual studio techniques as an external service ("studio on demand"). A new service industry is expected to develop around media production networks where information products like virtual sets are contributed in real time from an outside service provider to the program producer.

 Status

Products on the market for real time transmission with low delay mode conserving the high quality of the video signal are studied and evaluated. Today, only prototypes or early products are available. Direct contacts to the equipment manufacturers enabled the GTBW - Multimedia group to test some of this equipment. Faults, drawbacks, and missing implementations could be identified. Some codecs turned out to be insufficient for chroma keying in the virtual studio because of minor video quality.