WiVision
A Video Acquisition and
Distribution System Using Multi-Hop Wireless Networks
Group Members
Faculty: Tzi-cker Chiueh
Students: Pradipta De
Srikant Sharma
Ashish Raniwala
Project Description:
The ability to deliver digital video over wireless networks is an
enabling technology for many useful applications, ranging from home
entertainment and security monitoring, to enterprise messaging and
military
reconnaissance, and thus represents the holy grail of wireless
technology
development. WiVision is aimed to be a complete distribution system,
starting
from capturing and encoding analog video signals, managing the storage
of the video content for on-demand playback, and real-time broadcast of
the video over wireles LAN. WiVision also provides easy naviation
facilities
to the user to jump to any portion of the video during playback. A user
can use the closed caption, displayed along with the video clip, to
move
to a portion of the clip corresponding to that caption. One can also
search
for keywords in the caption and skip to a specific portion of the movie
clip that has the content related to that keyword.
There are three main components in the WiVision system:
1. Video Acquisition Server: The Video Acquisition Server
digitizes and compresses the analog video signal in real-time and
transports the encoded streams to the central storage and/or broadcast
servers for further distribution. The analog video signals can be
obtained from any video source such as
Cable TV, for live news broadcast; a VCR, for screening of videotapes;
a
camcorder, for streaming live events like lectures or sports
activities; or any other appropriate video source.
2. Video Distribution Server: Video Distribution Server
subsystem of WiVision is responsible for management, storage, and
broadcast of the video streams and closed caption text. Functionally it
consists of a metadata server , responsible for management of
the metadata related to the video clips, their associated captions,
etc., and the push servers, responsible for relaying the video
data to the clients.
3. Video Clients: The Video Clients are capable of
playing streaming video in real-time and playback pre-recorded programs
on-demand.
Project Status:
We have implemented the complete prototype of the WiVision system.
We are looking into the possibilities of deploying the system iin the
Computer Science department at the Stony Brook University. Currently,
we can make one channel available for broadcast. There will be other
stored programs. Due to the limited bandwidth of the wireless channel
(6Mbps effective throughput), it may not be possible to support
multiple on-demand streams. The live
distribution is broadcast based and therefore can support multiple
clients.
The Video Cleint software is written for Windows based systems. It
uses the Windows Media Player which is embedded inside the application.
We are in the process of building a usable system. We will make the
cleint software avilable for use as soon as we have set up the
distribution
system.
Before you start using the cleint, we would encourage you to go through
the FAQ
page for the cleint.
Related Links: