Nara (Japan). The UltraGrid technology, developed by CESNET specialists at Brno-based SITOLA laboratory, was awarded at the prestigious ACM Multimedia 2012 conference. The 20th annual congress of researchers dealing with multimedia content and processing took place in Nara, Japan, on 29 October to 2 November. The ACM Multimedia 2012: The Best Open-Source Software Award was accepted in person by Petr Holub, head of the UltraGrid team of CESNET.

The ACM Multimedia conference receives the best rating (A or A+) among this type of events on computer science. Based on the citation impact, it ranks among the first 15% of the best conferences in the area.

UltraGrid had been enrolled into the Best Open-Source Software Competition by the paper titled UltraGrid: Low-Latency High-Quality Video Transmissions on Commodity Hardware by Petr Holub, Jiří Matela, Martin Pulec and Martin Šrom. It won the award based on the quality of the software, the paper, and the final presentation during the conference.

http://www.ces.net/doc/press/2012/pr121107.html

Nara (Japonsko). Technologie UltraGrid vyvíjená odborníky sdružení CESNET z brněnské laboratoře SITOLA získala ocenění na prestižní konferenci ACM Multimedia 2012. Už 20. ročník vrcholného setkání výzkumných pracovníků zabývajících se multimediálním obsahem a zpracováním dat probíhal od 29. října do 2. listopadu v japonské Naře. Cenu ACM Multimedia 2012: The Best Open-Source Software Award na něm osobně převzal vedoucí týmu UltraGrid Petr Holub ze sdružení CESNET.

Konference ACM Multimedia se těší nejvyššímu hodnocení (A až A+) mezi podobnými akcemi v odvětví počítačové informatiky. Měřeno počtem citací se umisťuje v prvních 15 % nejúspěšnějších konferencí oboru.

Technologie UltraGrid byla do soutěže o nejlepší open-source software přihlášena prostřednictvím zprávy UltraGrid: Nízkolatenční přenosy videa ve vysoké kvalitě pomocí volně prodejného hardwaru autorů Petra Holuba, Jiřího Mately, Martina Pulce a Martina Šroma. Vyznamenána byla na základě kvality vlastního softwaru, uvedené zprávy i závěrečné prezentace v rámci konference.

http://www.cesnet.cz/doc/tisk/2012/tz121107.html

On October 11th, 2012, at the 12th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Chicago, sponsored by the Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF), an international ultra-high-definition, high-performance, digital streaming application was showcased by CESNET researchers at the SITOLA laboratory in the Czech Republic. To elevate digital media resolution to match the capabilities of human vision, which traditional media does not, 8K digital media (ultra-high-definition video with 16 times the resolution of common Full-HD video) was demonstrated. The size of these data streams is much higher than those that can be supported by today’s networks. To address this challenge, SITOLA researchers are developing new capabilities for video compression and processing using graphical processors and advanced protocols for video distribution in the computer networks. An implementation of this research, shown at GLIF, is the open-source UltraGrid framework.

More specifically, at the GLIF workshop, SITOLA streamed an 8K movie from the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University in Chicago to the SITOLA laboratory in Brno, Czech Republic, and to the site of the demonstration—the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Participants on both receiving locations could control the streaming interactively. UltraGrid used JPEG compression at 2 Gb/s, on-the-fly recompressed to DXT5-YCoCg compression at 6.5 Gb/s and displayed the images on a high-resolution tiled-display walls using EVL’s SAGE middleware, which is interoperable with UltraGrid.

Currently, such capabilities can be used for specialty venues, such as conferences, and for advanced research applications, such as medical training, but in the future services such as this will be available to consumers. Because of the resolution limitation of human vision, 8K or ultra-high-definition video is perceived as the ultimate technology for broadcasting and cinematography applications. It is 16 times the resolution of standard Full-high-definition, and enables the viewer to be better immersed in the scene. This standard was demonstrated during the Summer Olympic Games 2012 in London by NHK and BBC, where custom hardware and networks were used to transmit the content from the stadiums. The format has been standardized and is expected to be deployed in production around the year 2020.

This demonstration was supported by CESNET, the Czech national research and education network, the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, the Electronic Visualization Lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the StarLight International/National Communications Exchange Facility. The 8K movie was originally produced by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for Adler Planetarium’s domed ceiling.

http://www.ces.net/doc/press/2012/pr121017.html