Internet2 Fall 2002 Member MeetingAt the Fall 2002 Internet2 Consortium Member Meeting hosted by USC, IMSC demonstrated theCenter's Remote Media Immersion (RMI) technologies to present a performance by the NewWorld Symphony.

This is the view the audience was experiencing at the event on a 30 by 17 foot screen inUSC's Bing Theater. An immersive sound system provided multi-channel sound while thevideo was projected in high-definition 720p format (at 40 Mb/s).

The sound-transparent screen wasinstalled so that it was verticallyretractable. The large sub-woofer is onthe right-hand side.

Three projectors were used for a totalof seven different performance events.The New World Symphony video wasprojected from the left-most projector,which was equipped with a serial digitalinput (SDI).

The client equipment to drive the projector and speakers. Left rack: equalizers forall the speakers. Right rack: A ProTools 24MixPlus system with a G4 Macintosh, 2888|24 I/O boxes, a 24 bit ADAT bridge, and a USD synchronizer. Right on the floor: aLinux PC running the Yima HD video and multi-channel audio client software. The redcable on the floor is the fiber Gigabit Ethernet connection to the USC campusnetwork and Internet2, over which the media streams are received. For immersivesound 16 (or 24) channels of uncompressed 24-bit PCM audio are forwarded from thePC's RME 9652 "Hammerfall" multi-channel sound card via ADAT to Protools. Thedevice next to the PC (1U rack-mountable, standing on its side) is a Vela ResearchCineCast HD board interfaced through our own Linux drivers. It is connected to thePC via a SCSI channel, decodes high definition MPEG-2 video and produces the SDIoutput (either 720p or 1080i) for the projector. Additionally, the client softwaresynchronizes the audio and video streams to provide frame accurate rendering.

System setup by Ph.D.students Beomjoo Seoand Shihua Liu. Theaudio stream consistedof 16 channels of 24-bitaudio (encapsulated in32-bit words) at 48,000samples per second fora total bandwidth of 24Mb/s. The video streamw a s M P E G - 2compressed in 720pformat (1280x720 pixelsat 59.94 frames persecond) at a data rateof 40 to 45 Mb/s. Audioand v ideo weret r a n s m i t t e d v i aseparate RTP/RTSPsessions.

Beomjoo Seo, oneof the Ph.D.students working onthe Yima software ist e s t i n g t h estreaming system.We have performedexperiments acrossboth LAN and WANenvironments. TheInternet2 event wasconducted via atranscontinentalInternet2 Abilenel ink from theInformation ScienceInstitute (ISI East) atArlington, VA, tothe USC campus inLos Angeles, CA.

The video output is tested and calibrated on the screen.

The rehearsal the night before the actual event.

Internet2”s Ann Doyle introduces Chris Kyriakakis who describes the RMIsystem to the audience before the performance.

The Internet2 Yima team after the event.From left to right: Shihua Liu, Kun Fu, Wei-Shinn Ku, Roger Zimmermann, and BeomjooSeo. Missing from the picture are CyrusShahabi, Mehrdad Jahangiri, and Didi Shu-Yuen Yao.

A lively discussion between CyrusShahabi, Alexander Sawchuk, AndyPatrizio (Wired.com editor), andRoger Zimmermann.