WELCOME TO VIPER
Video and Image Processing Laboratory (VIPER) is equipped with state-of-the-art technology to digitize, store, process, stream, and display digital video and images. This technology supports research in areas such as the development of new video compression techniques, new streaming technologies, and creating multimedia material for use in video indexing, storage, and retrieval.
Depending on the application, digitizers in the lab can produce digital video in a variety of formats including uncompressed CCIR video, motion JPEG, DV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.26X, and HDTV.
the Laboratory has a variety of methods used to display digital video. All NTSC video devices are connected to a video cross-bar switch so that a wide variety of possible input and output scenarios may be configured at the touch of a button. For primary NTSC viewing, the laboratory has two 36" RCA monitors so that A/B comparisons may be made directly. In addition, the laboratory has a Proscan 36" 16x9 monitor, a 36" RCA HDTV monitor, and a 38" RCA HDTV monitor. In addition, the laboratory has 6 21" computer monitors for viewing digital data directly at each workstation.
High quality uncompressed video is produced by the Truevision TARGA digitizer, while lower quality video for streaming purposes is produced by the ViewCast Osprey 100 digitizers. Currently the laboratory can digitize four separate video sequences for streaming purposes. In addition the laboratory is equipped with a motion JPEG digitizer that is used for high quality multicast streaming over Internet2. To generate long, high quality, digital video sequences, the Laboratory has two Sony 3 CCD DV Camcorders, a Sony DV VCR, and a Sony DV-Firewire converter. The laboratory also has a complete suite of video editing equipment and a real-time fully configurable MPEG-1/MPEG-2 encoder developed by C-Cube. For Internet applications, the Laboratory is equipped with several Optibase real-time MPEG-1 hardware encoder cards. For recording/streaming HDTV signals, the Laboratory has a Sencore HDTV 996 VSB video server.
The storage facilities of the Laboratory are organized around several file servers. These include one 4 processor and 3 dual processor Sun UltraSparc servers, and a dual-processor Intel server (running NT). The servers are connected to the Engineering Computer Network (ECN) and have a total disk storage capability of 0.6 terabytes.
The Laboratory is equipped with a variety of computers for manipulation and processing of the digital data. In addition to the above file servers, the laboratory is equipped with the latest Intel and Sun processors, including a dual processor Pentium III Xeon and a Sun Ultra Blade. There are in total 3 Sun workstations and 8 PCs used exclusively for digital video research.
To efficiently stream digital data, the laboratory has a video server and several dedicated Intel Pentium IIIs for real-time streaming of live data. The laboratory has the capability to multicast multiple simultaneous live video streams in real-time using several different video formats including MPEG-1, RealVideo, Windows Multimedia, H.261, H.263, and motion JPEG.