Beyond The Cell -- Journalists' Video Phone

dimitri_k writes: "This article from poynter.org gives some information about the video phone that has become standard in reporting recently. It uses H.263 for compression, and a satellite phone to call into ISDN lines. Maybe people on Slashdot can brainstorm ways to increase the bandwidth of these things in the short term (i.e. cost-ineffective combination of lines) so that the cable news networks can turn the grainy, live, night-vision shots in Afghanistan clear." This setup looks a little chunky, but when you consider the capability to beam video information from anywhere in the world, it's very impressive.

Comments

Divx Onboard

[anewsome]

Might be the killer application to finally get MPEG4 or OpenDivx codecs into hardware. This alone could probably get higher bitrate, higher quality video transmitted over the lines.

Re:Divx Onboard

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth pointing out that Open Source hasn't delivered jack in terms of an open video standard that gets "higher bitrate, higher quality video". DivX was a hack of existing, closed source, Microsoft codecs.

Re:Divx Onboard

[Anonymous Coward]

what would it take to implement divx on hardware?
map the codec to a xilinx chip?

Re:Divx Onboard

[Anonymous Coward]

Toshiba already make a hardware MPEG-4 encoder last year, although it only work for QCIF

Re:Divx Onboard

[sg_oneill]

That's not fair AC, The windows structure for Codecs is such that hooks in the API let you write a little library that hooks in to provide a nominated codec protocol and kinda bend it around into whatever user level app wants to use it. It you wanted to, you could make , for instance a "BIGIFIER CODEC" that actually makes things bigger, and any given win program could use it.

DivX then is a (slightly tweaked I think) Mpeg4 implementation , bundled into a standard codec, so junky little apps like win media player can play DivX's. It's not a hack therefore , it's an addon. Subtle difference I guess.

This stuff Sucks

[chemical55]

Its not worth the effort, too grainy.

Re:This stuff Sucks

[jiheison]

It doesn't suck! Watching video of this quality stimulates the imagination and motivates viewers to pay close attention to the news.

Pixelriffic!

Re:This stuff Sucks

[stilwebm]

Kinda like those shots of someone shining a flashlight through a bed sheet - err I mean shots through a night scope showing the attacks.

Re:This stuff Sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, so it's relatively new tech in Backwoods, Earth. It'll improve. I suppose you also aren't impressed with the pictures and video of WWI, because they are "grainy," not to mention black and white. Just because the pictures aren't of high quality doesn't mean they aren't worth seeing. What do you really want? Full color, 30fps?

Re:This stuff Sucks

[Jebus_the_spork]

or how about them shots from death valley in arizona?

Re:This stuff Sucks

[sg_oneill]

I'll bite and admit that I haven't read the article yet. But those CNN vid pictures have that distinct zing of MJpeg to them. The reason I say that is that the fuzziness doesn't seem to resolve over static colour regions at all.

MJPeg is for all purposes a bubch of Jpeg's whacked together in sequence (Often with mime info, so that web browsers, specifically Netscape can read them raw). There is no compression over time

MPEG (which is basically what the H2-whatever-it-is-again protocol is) however uses a nutty little technique that *also* compresses over time. I *think* It's called Heirachical vector compression. The basic gist of it is , is it breaks the screen up at start of transmit into four colour averaged squares, and then divides them , and then them ad infinitum, trying to fit as many in before the next frame comes up,

when the next frame comes up, then if anything moves on the picture (mouth , eyes, missiles) it concentrates on that area, and fills that in. WHEN it's done that, it tries to catch up on filling in as much of the leftover squares as possible.

The basic effect, is that over time, and suposing a fairly static-with-moving-bits sort of picture , is the picture gets clearer unless the motion overwhelmns the algorithm.

Now obviously there is more to that, including the ugliness of motion detection, but my suspicion is that that picture is mjpeg, because the background just swirls and flips around without any sort of resolution. Furthermore, I'd even bet it's an AXIS camera server hooked up to a GSM sat phone or something. The AXIS's are rugedised, and you can PPP into the arse end of them (via a GSM modem if necesarry) and , if the bandwidth is kept nice and throttled and res kept way low, you *should* get that basic effect your seeing on the TV.

I'm pretty impressed by them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the technological limitations on these things, the ability to broadcast from anywhere definately shouldn't be overlooked. There aren't exactly a lot of broadcast stations or internet connections in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, and without this clunky-yet-working technology, we wouldn't be seeing much of anything from the front lines right now.

Re:I'm pretty impressed by them.

[czardonic]

Agreed! I found the murky brown pixel masses to be quite edifying.

Re:I'm pretty impressed by them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nor is there the power to support a typical satellite uplink and "normal" lights for video cameras.

It could also be a sneaky way past the Taliban censors/military people, who might be looking for more normal S-band/C-band uplinks that the US military is having its SpecFor personnel use, and thus keep the civvie news people from getting howie'd.

pics not that bad

[AssFace]

I've been impressed with the pics they are sending out, but the rate of refresh leaves something to be desired - jerky images and long delays for audio. but it is very impressive that the images are as clear as they are, and the audio doesn't seem to break up at all - I presume they give prioirty to audio, or since it is a *phone* after all perhaps the voice part is already taken care of.

Re:pics not that bad

[dozing]

I've been seeing a lot of the long audio delays on satallite relays that are just from D.C. to New York. That bugs me more than some slow refresh on a cross world video phone.

Re:pics not that bad

[Red Aardvark House]

To add to above...I seem to have sent it off before it was ready.

Since bandwidth is an issue, priority can be given to audio, since audio takes up much less bandwidth than video for a proportiionate level of quality.

Re:pics not that bad

[4n0nym0u53 C0w4rd]

The long audio delays can come from two different sources. First off, there is the amount of time it takes for the signal to travel from the phone to the tv studio. Second, it typically takes a bit of time for the video decompression to occur. Rather than lose AV syncro, the audio is actually delayed to be played with the appropriate video.

Here's where it gets interesting: When someone asks you a question in real life, they rely on the amount of hesitation on your part to assess how honest you're being. With these things, you always appear to be hesitating before speaking. Imagine a debate or discussion with someone in studio and someone else in the field. You'd have an asymmetry in how honest these people are perceived.

Re:pics not that bad

[dragons_flight]

The low image quality seems rather appropriate. It serves as a reminder that they are working from the field, in the middle of no where.

I think it will be just a bit shocking when the technology matures to the point that real time video feeds from remote parts of the Earth in the middle of a war zone become indistinguishable from local feeds. What they have now is low quality, but still very cool. Once it's no longer low quality will we still realize how cool it is?

Impressive

[jiheison]

This setup looks a little chunky, but when you consider the capability to beam video information from anywhere in the world, it's very impressive.

All the footage I have seen has been a pixely mess.

Great for the pr0n industry

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I hope someone will think of using this to broadcast pr0n videos live from remote places, like "antarctica upside down" or "easter island statue-hard III" or something.

Re:Great for the pr0n industry

[Magumbo]

"Bangkok and Phuket"

Oh wait. That's a travel video.

Re:Great for the pr0n industry

[nzgeek]

Too true.
I've always maintained that pr0n and war are the biggest contributors to new technology!

I thought we were beyond this?

[scott1853]

I thought secretaries were suppose to be able to read their PHBs speeches to them over a regular sized cell phone, complete will FMV? And what happened to the Dick Tracy cell phone watch? What about the head mounted displays for the average day trader that likes to sit in a park full of pidgeons and yell at his computer? Don't tell me I've been fooled by somebodies marketing team!

Re:I thought we were beyond this?

[czardonic]

Get with it, man! I've been playing WipeoutXL in full color on my PDA for years. You know, the version you can play over the net.

Re:I thought we were beyond this?

[Anonymous Coward]

one day... perhaps there will be compact flash sized 3D accelerators for PDAs

Why real-time?

[MikeyNg]

It seems that alot of criticism is being directed at the choppy video feeds. There will always be a trade-off of quality and compression that is limited by bandwidth. I really don't see the bandwidth problem being solved in the near future. But, who says that these feeds really need to be in real-time? Yes, there are certain instances where having a real-time feed is useful, but it would also be good if they could capture some high quality feeds then "squirt" them to the receving stations. It wouldn't be instantaneous, but you could get a better quality feed.

Re:Why real-time?

[Anonymous Coward]

so they can ask stupid questions like how does it feel to be over their in the dark with bombs going off on all sides of you and being in a countrie that hates americans where you could be killed an minute? that type stuff

Re:Why real-time?

[czardonic]

Why would they waste high quality feeds on the sub-standard reporting they broadcast?

Re:Why real-time?

[ReelOddeeo]

Why would they waste high quality feeds on the sub-standard reporting they broadcast?

Don't you get it? It isn't the quality of information or reporting that matters. (That's why Dan Rather has a job.) Didn't you watch the movie (I think it was titled) Broadcast News?

It's all about impression. And fluff. Appearance. Not substance.

It just needs a pretty gui. People who have deep thoughts about human psychology and user interface need not apply.

(Score: -1 - Obvious)

Where's the dish?

[Reality Master 101]

Wouldn't you need to align a dish for this to work? How do get it aligned?

I seem to recall them using similar technology during the Gulf War, but it wasn't this portable.

Re:Where's the dish?

[merlin_jim]

The new generation of satellite phones don't need dishes, though the antennas are usually large and bulky, not to mention the power supplies...

Actually, a lot like cell phones 15 years ago...

Re:Where's the dish?

[Reality Master 101]

It must require way more power to blast the signal every which way rather than use a dish. I wonder how much battery life they get out of the thing.

It seem like there ought to be someway to have a motorized dish antenna that could automatically align itself.

Re:Where's the dish?

[Jburkholder]

You may be thinking of the Al Franken self-contained one-man remote studio with satellite uplink as seen on SNL during the Gulf War. ;-)

Problem was, the dish mounted on his head and the power supply on his back were so heavy they caused him sever back and neck pain (not to mention that when he turned his head during a broadcast, the feed would drop out).

Re:Where's the dish?

[Anonymous Coward]

try reading up in Irudium phones, if i knew how to spell it i wouldn have posted AC, id imagin is along those lines but more powerful im sure it pluged in to a generator or a wall jack

Re:Where's the dish?

[Reality Master 101]

That's true, I forgot about the Iridium phones. But they broadcast to a very low altitude satellites. Does this video phone broadcast the LEO satellites or regular satellites?

Re:Where's the dish?

[RussGarrett]

On many large yachts, they have small satellite dishes inside fibreglass domes which automatically rotate to track the satellite as the boat moves along, so you can watch satellite TV whilst moving, and also access satellites for comms and phone. These only cost a few hundred dollars, so it can't be that hard to put one of these on a satellite videophone...

Re:Where's the dish?

[jeffehobbs]

This makes me think of Al Franken with a small satellite dish on his head, reporting from the (first) Gulf War on Weekend Update/SNL.

~jeff

Re:Where's the dish?

[rhammack]

IIRC, range and bandwith are determined by 2 general factors (ingnoring frequncy, etc.) a useful abstraction is that the range and bandwidth depend on 1)Power & Efficiency of transmitting antenna, and 2) Area & efficiency of recieving antenna. this means that you have two approaches: bigger, more powerfull transmitters, or bigger, more sensitive recievers. To get really good bandwidth from a small, low-power sat-phone, you need a BIG, sensitive recieving antenna in orbit. in short, maybe the telecom industry should concentrate on the sattelite end, rather than the phone, since any practical hand-held has size and weight constraints, whereas a sattelite (ignoring cost) can be as large as needed.

Re:Where's the dish?

[kaimiike1970]

There was a [second] gulf war?

Re:Where's the dish?

[kaimiike1970]

Isn't Afganistan landlocked?

Re:Where's the dish?

[NuttyBee]

Ok, a quickee on how these videophones work.

It's basically an Iridium type unit the size of a laptop computer. The antenna is quite small (think laptop screen) and aiming is not critical. The signal goes to an Immarsat or similiar.

By contrast, in order to put a signal up on a commerical Ku band satellite. You need:

a. Permission to transmit. 14 Ghz signals coming from 1.8m dishes with a clear view of the south sky aren't that hard to find in a country like Afghanistan. Tough to do without attracting lots of attention.

b. You have to get a hell of a lot of equipment in. Video equipment, MPEG compression equipment, a carefully aimed 4-6 ft dish, an exciter, possibly even an high power amplifer (which aren't cheap), and don't forget where these reporters are.. You can't get clean water let alone electricity in most places. So don't forget the generators and gasoline!

In short, we're lucky to have the pictures we do have.

Re:Where's the dish?

[Bob[Bob]]

It uses the Inmarsat network of geostationary satellites - there are four satellites that cover most of the globe, up to around 75 degress north and south.

Inmarsat terminals can be quite small: modern terminals are basically the size of a laptop PC, with a fold-out three panel antenna which you mount on the lid (e.g. Nera World Communicator). You generally tell the terminal your position on the globe, and it tells you which direction to point the antenna to see the satellite. It doesn't need to be pin point accurate, and you'll have a signal strength meter so you just wiggle the thing about until you get the best signal. I think the videophone has a 40cm folding antenna that you connect externally.

For data, your computer sees the satellite terminal as though it were an ISDN line, and you get up to 64kbps - hence the restrictions to the audio/video quality. The key thing about 7E's videophone is that all the kit you need is integrated into a single case, and it's been made simple enough for news field crews to use.

Re:Where's the dish?

[merlin_jim]

There are solid state solutions to this, mostly involving fractal antennas and the like, which don't require any moving parts. But, even a simple dish antenna is possible. The problem is that the entire system becomes a bit more complicated as a result...

NBC scales down image to clear it up.

[John Harrison]

I noticed on NBC last night that when they showed footage taken with a video phone they only used the left 1/3 of the screen for the video phone image and then showed maps or other footage in the rest of the screen.

This made the lack of resolution less apparent. Scaling the image up to fill the screen produces a very pixelated image. Also it seemed that the low framerate was less noticable this way. It wasn't nearly as annoying as the video phone footage that I've seen in the past.

Perhaps if they don't want to transmit in real-time and can afford a minute or two of delay they could record some footage at a higher resolution and/or framerate and then send it to the network and have them assemble it at the network. It might take 3 minutes to transmit 1 minute of footage this way. You lose the realtime aspect of the current setup but you could get better quality.

Re:NBC scales down image to clear it up.

[Jburkholder]

>they could record some footage at a higher resolution and/or framerate and then send it to the network and have them assemble it at the network

That's exactly what it says in the article. The tradeoff is the amount of time it takes to transfer the data. If it is breaking news and you want to get it on the tube first, you sacrifice quality.

"It can edit the story in the field and send the completed story back; but in Afghanistan, it usually sends the 'raw tape' back and the bureau assembles the story"
...
"Those at the receiving end can decide how much quality they are willing to wait for. To feed a minute of video at top quality would take between 5 and 30 minutes, depending on the quality of the connection."

Re:NBC scales down image to clear it up.

[JabberWokky]

It might take 3 minutes to transmit 1 minute of footage this way.

First off, a 3 minute delay is still "live". So, you can live with that... you just can't interview the reported with the video synced. Second, if they do this with three systems, they get the video streaming. Third, if they are using three systems, then why not just link the streams? (interleave the frames, preferably, so if one drops, you just loose one out of every three frames). You then get near realtime (a chunk of a second lost in the bounce for an uncomfortable pause), and have a nice fallback.

Of course, if it were this easy, they would presumably be doing it. Or this may be very first gen, throw it together and hope it works style tech, and in six months we'll see all the good obvious ideas we post here are used as standards.

Or (donning my conspiracy hat), the obvious ideas are all held up by patents.

--
Evan

With the help of McGuyver, maybe....

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people on Slashdot can brainstorm ways to increase the bandwidth of these things in the short term (i.e. cost-ineffective combination of lines) so that the cable news networks can turn the grainy, live, night-vision shots in Afghanistan clear.

Is the above comment some kind of joke? There are companies with R&D teams working on this for quite a bit of time and this fellow think all we need is a brainstorming session on Slashdot.

Hey, buddy, get a grip...

Re:With the help of McGuyver, maybe....

[zangdesign]

Probably chumming for free labor ...

Re:With the help of McGuyver, maybe....

[pi_rules]

Whoop... the R&D goes into compression algorithms, not increasing bandwidth for a broadcast machine. Getting more bandwidth to a remote area isn't an easy problem, but thankfully we're talking about getting more bandwidth to -one- location than actually networking the Afghan mountains.

I'm not sure how sateline phones work, as I don't have one laying around to play with, but what about using technology to "shotgun" two modems together? This was popular roughly 2 years ago if memory serves, and is supported by Linux in some way shape or form.

Granted, the tech was meant for land-line modems, but assuming that two sat. phones within a close proximity don't knock each other's bandwidth down something like this would work.

Why aren't news companies doing it then? It takes some setup, no doubt, and you'd need a laptop, more equipment, and basically a sys admin along with camera crew and reporter that they've already got over there. Imagine that help-wanted ad: "Linux sysadmin willing to travel abroad to war torn nations. Hostile work environment, could possibly be hit with mis-guieded cruise missle. Excellent health benefits."

Re:With the help of McGuyver, maybe....

[Anonymous Coward]

MacGyver eh?

Check this Yahoo News story on using Hollywood writers to devise terrorist scenarios...

Re:With the help of McGuyver, maybe....

[kaimiike1970]

I would answer that ad. In fact that would be a dream assignment.

It depends on what's going on:

[Red Aardvark House]

From the article:

The networks have learned that if they keep the images simple, the live shots feed with higher resolution. There is a reason. Sharp says the system only updates the pixels in the screen that change from frame to frame. So if a correspondent is standing in the dark with a few lights in the deep background, the only thing that is changing on the screen is the reporter's face. If the background is busy with activity, the whole screen has to refresh every frame, so the image is not as clear. All of the bandwidth is being spent updating the entire frame.

A Beefier encoder...

[Anonymous Coward]

... tends to make H263 improve, simply because it can try out more possibilities for using the bandwidth. Since these things tend to get shown more than once, uploading a igher bit rate version afterwards is probably the simplest option.

I'm not sure MPEG4 is much of an improvement on H263. H263 is pretty smart, which you can see if you teak the software version to ignore the silly bandwidth restriction which is built in to the encoding.

Sat uplinks?

[Quasar1999]

Perhaps I missed something, but why don't they just use their satellite uplinks??? Why use these crappy videophones that look worse than streaming video on a 56k modem?

I'd much rather be watching 30 minute old footage, then grainy 'live' (2 minute delayed) 'images'. Why don't they just record them with a standard handheld camera, send the tape to a nearby satellite uplink site, and beam it back to CNN???

and besides, I have seen CNN rewind 'LIVE' events before my eyes... When they put the little 'LIVE' Icon on the screen that don't mean crap... Just watch CNN for a few hours and watch them do it... Pausing/Rewinding of LIVE feeds happens way too often...

Re:Sat uplinks?

[anzha]

One of the primary problems is as these devices become more and more ubiquitous, there will be more and more competition to get the feed in now .

If CNN didn't have at least the grainy picture, someone else would and would lose viewers cuz what they're seeing is less real-time. (or so the argument goes).

Additionally, how much does the normal sat transmission equipment weigh? How bulky is it? I suspect that that might be another reason...

For now, the mix of crappy live feed from the Boonies and better, but not real time will be what is around. At least until the algorithms and hardware are more up to snuff.

I'm surprised that we are not seeing a few news UAV's...

Re:Sat uplinks?

[_typo]

Pausing/Rewinding of LIVE feeds happens way too often.

You mean they've got Tivo's?

Re:Sat uplinks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where the fuck do you think these guys are? Damn you are stupid.

Re:Sat uplinks?

[Schaffner]

> Perhaps I missed something, but why don't they just use their satellite uplinks???

OK, we got the footage. Now we'll just dash over to that handy satellite uplink truck over by that rock. Oops! The truck was just blown up! Oh well.

Re:Sat uplinks?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only takes two or 3 plane tickets to move these crews, not all the extra required for the older (but faster) HW, which requires extra bags, which requires extra security checks at customs and ticketing, which requires getting it past other censors who are probably more keen on stopping the "normal" stuff, etc.

Travel light, freeze at night...

Re:Sat uplinks?

[kaimiike1970]

send the tape to a nearby satellite uplink site

This is, in fact, the problem. There is no 'nearby' satellite uplink site. Hence the whole reason for the story. They want something portable.

One thought to improve bandwidth

[esvoboda]

This might be brute force, but how about add the capability to transfer data over two or more phone lines simultaneously, in parallel, if they exist at a location?

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Give this man a button!

Instead of using seperate phones, you could simply give one phone more parallel transmitters. If the satellite can take in numerous simultaneous feeds, then simply have the phone split the data into chunks and transmit them all simultaneously.

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[kaimiike1970]

I believe this is what my DirecTV dish does. It has dual lnb's which allows me to get multiple feeds at once (4 in this case). Why couldn't the uplink utilize 4 or 8 or 12 streams? I would imagine (and I have no practical knowledge about satellites other than the fact that they are in space or something and that government agents watch us every second :)) the satellite could accept multiple uplinks from the same location.

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[Jerp]

Agreed. The technology to do this has been around for years. Also known as 'modem aggregation' or multilink, this technology allows IP packets to be distributed across multiple channels, and be recombined on the opposite end.

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[kfckernel]

This is actually a great idea. Why stop at 2? Even though the sat phones are bulky. You could still easily cart around 5+ in a backpack.

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

The article says ISDN running at 112kb/s (i.e. two ISDN channels - extra error coding for the sat), so it's already doing this.

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[sg_oneill]

The techs definately there. In conventional ISDN video conf , usually there are 2 to perhaps up to 8 B channels (56k US 64k rest of world I think) bunged together through an Inverse Multiplexer (IMUX) like an ascend box or a promptus (Not a platopus!). If those things work as I suspect and use the satelite as a ad-hoc ISDN substitute, it'd be pretty straightforward to just insert an IMUX, a coupla sat-modems and crank up the bandwidth. Viola!

Re:One thought to improve bandwidth

[siliconowl]

This might be brute force, but how about add the capability to transfer data over two or more phone lines simultaneously, in parallel, if they exist at a location?

In fact this option is available from 7E and I believe is the version used by the BBC.

Great

[czardonic]

I noticed on NBC last night that when they showed footage taken with a video phone they only used the left 1/3 of the screen for the video phone image and then showed maps or other footage in the rest of the screen.

Now they have a legitimate reason for those irritatingly cluttered screen layouts. Not only will they be broadcasting 7 different feeds simultaneously, but they will all have crappy resolution!

Excellent post.

[Bender Unit 22]

Now this is really what "news for nerds" is all about. I'll bet that I was not the only one who sat thinking about how the videophone worked/looked instead of listening to the actual news broadcast. :-)

Re:Excellent post.

[merlin_jim]

I can definitely second that...

I was watching it last night at about 7:00 EST and noticing how much vidphone technology had improved, and wondering how they were doing it...

Actually, now that my nostalgia processor has kicked in, I was actually musing that this was the worst live feed I'd ever seen and that it must therefore be some new, super-portable digital application that I hadn't heard of yet...

multiplex

[Anonymous Coward]

2 or more phones and multiplex each one's bandwidth into one

When Will They Learn?

[Livn4Golf]

"By then, Sharp will be the ripe age of 26, and will be able to tell his friends tales of the old days, back when the Internet started and he was a teen-ager. "

Umm, the Internet is older than Mr. Sharp. It turned 30 way back in 1999.

Re:When Will They Learn?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean AOL is not the internet?

Not anymore...

[Svartalf]

They're using their own sources and it's in the same ballpark as what the hack of the Windows codec did.

Re:Not anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, but they're still not "innovating" anything, just copying existing technology. The original poster makes it sound like there is this spectacular new technology that is 0wn3d by the Open Source camp that is so much better than commercial video compression technologies, which is just crap.

Something tells me that this video phone, which is probably cost-no-object for the news bureaus, has whatever the latest technology is.

Re:Not anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Well, but they're still not "innovating" anything, just copying existing technology.

No. They are innovating. The windows codec was crippled and could not encode AVI streams.

Now you can encode MPEG-4 AVI streams. This means you can have working, open source, video on just about any platform.

MPEG-1 encoders were also availiable very early in open soure formats.

The spectacular new technology is that you can encode your videos to a format that will be there tomorrow. Microsoft has a history of dropping anything they aren't interested in like a hot potato.

Do you want your file footage to depend on ainchent software and hardware? Or would you rather your file footage work on any modern hardware? You can't put a price on that.

So there you have it. Free software has innovated open standards and longetivity into video capture. Again, you are very wrong.

>which is probably cost-no-object for the news bureaus

You can't put a price on making sure that all-important mega-bomb footage lasts. And you know as well as I do that all too often important information gets lost because people screw up the backups and the original file format becomes unusable. Well, if you don't agree with that, I have some Pocket Writer 1.0 files for you to read into MS-Word.

Re:Not anymore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgot to mention another open source innovation to MPEG-4. Unlike the windows codec, DiVX now encodes any content with a width and length evenly divisible by 2, rather than 16.

This means you can letterbox lower-resolution content without wasting bandwidth.

Digital Camcorder

[thetechweenie]

Why don't they just record everything in a digital format, then ftp the freakin things? DivX would be great solution here. I'm pretty sure that the US Ships have Internet access on board. I'm sure that there is a way to increase the quality of the films, and stream line the process. However, I'm not going to waste anymore of my time here. No one is going to take any of these suggestions, there all watching shitty videos on the news... ;P

Re:Digital Camcorder

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you going to get that big assed file to the ship? Via the oc-48 to Kabul? Via radio? What? They have a hard enough time getting small grainy videos sent via their sat links.

More bandwidth?

[merlin_jim]

Well, first off, cut out the full duplex operation. Send voice only out to the field, and use the extra bandwidth for more frames. The reporter on the other end rarely needs to see what's happening in the home office, while the whole world would appreciate a clearer picture.

They're using H.263 compression algorithms... some dismal figures (it was made to be used at 10 fps, for instance!) Here's a nice page detailing the standard and some comparisons to MPEGs...

Here's a great page comparing H.263 to MPEG-4... Hmmm... Jurassic Park encoded in High Quality MPEG-4 beat the 64 Kbit/s rate of H.263 by nearly %20... the video phones are, according to the article, 112Kbit/s... Anyone have any clue about using MPEG-4 to do this? Sounds to me like it'd be a much better compression algorithm...

Re:More bandwidth?

[timholman]

MPEG-4 may be a better algorithm, but is it a suitable algorithm for real-time or short-turnaround compression?

These reporters want to stream this stuff live, or at least get it transmitted ASAP. I would personally choose the Sorenson compressor, but I know how much time it takes to compress even a short clip. Waiting an hour to compress a 3 minute video clip may not be practical.

I think that H.263 may have been chosen as a more suitable compromise between compression speed and video quality for reporters in the field who may sometimes be running for their lives.

Re:More bandwidth?

[SanLouBlues]

Wouldn't MPEG-4 result in drastically shorter battery life due to larger processing requirements?

Re:More bandwidth?

[redcliffe]

I do remember there is a project to make a streaming version of OpenDivX. This could be used. You would probably need a laptop to do the encoding, or a phone powered by a Transmeta chip or something.

My set up for doing something like this would be a Digital Camcorder, running into a laptop encoding it to DivX, then to the satelite phone, preferably with two or more sat phones load-sharing a multilink PPP connection.

It's probably not as portable, but if they were working out of the hotel that is being used by the foreign journalists(and is not a target) what else would you need. If you were running around the streets(and risking your life) to look at damage, then you would use the video phone, and record something, then broadcast it at higher res.

David

Re:More bandwidth?

[suwain_2]

Hmm... I like this idea. The only real problem would be the added overhead; someone already replied, mentioning the decreased battery life. Decoding the transmitted video at the studios, though, you can easily have a small cluster of computers for real-time decoding. If studios spend tens of thousands of dollars for a single video camera, they probably wouldn't mind the comparatively cost.

There is one problem, though. If the compression is going to introduce a delay, it could really throw a wrench in the works during live interviews.

Re:More bandwidth?

[dimitri_k]

Well, first off, cut out the full duplex operation...

It does seem intuitive to use one unit's bandwidth (112 Kbs, or 128Kbs depending apparently on the ISDN line; see the datasheet) for only the video stream, and another satellite phone line for full-duplex audio only. I wonder if this is being done? Is there a Slashdotter at a news network (or) who knows?

Also, could analog video filters be used pre-compression to make the stream more compression friendly? Especially when they are using the night-vision. There is so much random grain in each frame that I'm sure H.263 (meant for stiller sources) wastes most of the bandwidth on noise.

Could we easily loose the color depth for more frames per second? Again, especially for the night-vision shots which are intensity only anyway. My guess is no, because the unit doesn't look very configurable.

Which brings up the fact that while the per unit cost ($7,500 for field unit) isn't too bad, especially for media outlets, it certainly seems to be largely a compression application that a properly peripheraled laptop could undertake, and be more ready to accepts better (or environment-specialized) codecs.

Re:More bandwidth?

[NMerriam]

Which brings up the fact that while the per unit cost ($7,500 for field unit) isn't too bad, especially for media outlets, it certainly seems to be largely a compression application that a properly peripheraled laptop could undertake, and be more ready to accepts better (or environment-specialized) codecs

Its a bargain -- yes a computer could do more for less money, but they don't want features, they want reliability.

You turn it on, it works. You don't want to miss the big story because windows won't boot.

Its a hardware codec, and a butt-expensive sat phone rolled in with a video system and mixing station. How cheap do you really think something like that could be built for? Heck, the Pelikan case along costs $150+...

Re:More bandwidth?

[itachi]

Actually, in the article, they mentioned that the feild unit is 7500USD, and the home unit is 6500USD. Not too bad. As for the filtering, I think that the easiest way to do that is filter at the camera, or between the camera and the video phone (assuming that schelping some video mixing equipment would be feasible...)

itachi

Re:More bandwidth?

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but on the other hand if they used an AMD processor it would keep the reporters warm and toasty during those cold Afghan winters..

Re:More bandwidth?

[stux]

Ahem,

I design and write an MPEG4 video codec... its called 3ivx... you *might* have heard of it :)

Anywho,

We can realtime encode CIF type video on a PBG4 (Titanium)

With a 1 frame latency.

:)

MPEG4 is based on H263... so its perfect for this type of application.

http://www.3ivx.com

Re:More bandwidth?

[stux]

No, the MPEG4 encoder would be implemented as a custom ASIC (chip) and would more or less have the same power requirements as the H263 encoder.

"http://www.3ivx.com" (the mpeg4 video codec that I wrote ;) )

Re:More bandwidth?

[stux]

Its actually fairly easy to decode MPEG4... well... relative to encoding it in realtime in the field :)

http://www.3ivx.com (the mpeg4 video codec that I wrote ;) )

Re:More bandwidth?

[Bob[Bob]]

The BBC's John Simpson in Afghanistan is currently using two of these 7E videophones hooked together, to get an aggregate 128kbps bandwidth.

Re:More bandwidth?

[merlin_jim]

I think one could easily build an MPEG-4 encoding cluster. Since the system is in an aircraft aluminum box anyways, it's not like you would be making it much less portable, especially considering the size and complexity of the camera in the first place.

Just use some PC/104 or similar embedded technologies to build a cluster that does realtime MPEG-4 encoding. Or even better, use some of TI's new high-speed Digital Signal Processors (I have one sitting on my desk that runs approx. 2.4 GIPS and cost here is a company that has already done an embedded MPEG4 encoder for videophone apps...

Re:More bandwidth?

[Ben Hutchings]

Can you run that off the cigarette lighter in a car, though?

Re:More bandwidth?

[stux]

Can you run that off the cigarette lighter in a car, though?

yes :)

Ugh. H.263?

[Chasing Amy]

The guy who mentioned DivX and MPEG-4 above wasn't far off at all. The problem here is definitely the compression technique. The one they're using is utterly ANCIENT by today's standards, which can produce better framerates and image quality with lower bandwidth. Anyone remember the similar i.263 codec that used to be used in AVI videos traded over the Net? No? Now you know why nobody uses it anymore.

I too have been seeing those video phones in use, on the Fox News Network. But I had no idea ancient software was to blame, I just thought it was all the bandwith's fault. But they're not using that bandwidth to its full potential. They need to use an MPEG-4 based codec instead. Make their own, or use Microsoft's little AVI-based implementation, or anything--just use a modern compression technique.

I'd also imagine they could improve quality substantially by interpolating any lost frames, back up to the NTSC standard or a flat 30FPS. Surely a big news conglomerate can afford the hardware and software to do that relatively simple, though horsepower-intensive-in-realtime, chore.

Cheap bastards. ;-)

Videophone can be done anywhere...

[Svartalf]

...broadband sat uplinks require a big, bulky satellite rig by comparison and can be a liability if you have to move in a hurry.

Well then!

[GTRacer]

Maybe people on Slashdot can brainstorm ways to increase the bandwidth of these things in the short term (i.e. cost-ineffective combination of lines)...

Well, if money is really no object, why stop at cost-ineffective line-aggregation tricks? Why not send every correspondent in the field with a Delta and a CommSat and a laser uplink (some assemply reqired)?

GTRacer
- Oh well...

Need to rewrite the transmission and control proto

[Anonymous Coward]

". Maybe people on Slashdot can brainstorm ways to increase the bandwidth of these things in the short term (i.e. cost-ineffective combination of lines) so that the cable news networks can turn the grainy, live, night-vision shots in Afghanistan clear"

Doing so would require one to re-write the transmission protocol (RTP) to enable packet switching. Right now, that is handled by TCP, and both RTP and TCP are very sensitive to time-stamping.
And even if one was able to re-write the protocol, the compression standard is lossy by default (think: JPG).

------------------ Silicon Ghetto/Little Village - 26th & Pulaski, Chicago, IL 60623

But if you ignore the bandwidth restriction...

[Chasing Amy]

But if you ignore the bandwidth restriction, then you're left with a feed that uses too much bandwidth for those satellite phone feeds. I'm fairly certain that *at the same bandwidth limit*, MPEG-4 will almost always produce better image quality/framerate than 263.

Technology is only one factor:

[Anonymous Coward]

"CNN is using revolutionary video phone technology
to get correspondents into the heart of the action in the Middle East".

Too bad CNN doesnt use evolved human brains
to go beyond U.S. government propaganda.

It's Iraq.

Is live necessary?

[Methuseus]

I understand that news agencies really love "on location live" shots, as can be evidenced by the nightly news almost any day of the week, showing the hospital that so-and-so is in after the accident at 11 pm. But when reporting something from that far away, I think they would want at least broadcast quality, especially since our government's image to the world may hang on what they say. Yes, it would prevent a live question from the home team, but why not beam those questions over a voice-only feed and record them on the same tape as they are sending anyways? this live news crap is going way too far.

Re:Is live necessary?

[motherhead]

Tell me about it, i think it is too fill in the spaces when they have nothing to say. Yesterday I watched on MSNBC for eleven minutes as they marveled at how bright the headlights on a pickup truck looked at seven miles with their new infrared cams...

Lame lame lame lame lame, live broadcasting.

Oh and here is another thing, how secure are these reporters? Why the hell should we be delivering state of the art communications equipment to a country where the foreign press has far more advanced tech the standing government?

Re:Is live necessary?

[gorillasoft]

This camera was the only way the world was able to see the departure of the crew of the US intelligence plane from China. The Chinese would not allow broadcasting, and a several ton van with a sat. uplink could not be smuggled close enough to film the departure. However, these small video phones fit the bill nicely. These should enable footage to be filmed under similar circumstances in the future that would otherwise go unreported or lack effective visuals.

Re:Is live necessary?

[Anonymous Coward]

All you would need is a slight delay for compression.... probably under a minute....

It's in the hardware.

[Anonymous Coward]

The sat phone's don't need a dish to be aligned, and the unit, AFAIK, is about the size of an older car-cell phone. The biggest reason that they are using the older compression is that the encoding is done in hardware, and so they will go with an older, proven standard first.

Re:Need to rewrite the transmission and control pr

[Havokmon]

While we're at it, replace that damn Xmodem transfer with Zmodem MobyTurbo(tm).

Not the first prominent event to use these...

[gorillasoft]

CNN used them to film the US spy plane crew returning from China...

http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSMediaNews0104/30_video-ap .html

Anne Tomlinson admins CNN's uplink network!

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a link on Drudge Report stating that it's Anne Tomlinson's responsibilty to service CNN's video phones and to maintain the uplinks. He quotes CNN's Aaron Brown with this ditty, "She had no idea what she was doing and ran off in a 'huff' [while]Christiane Amanpour was sitting there with no live feed...".

Solution: Fire Anne Tomlinson.

Partial media

[Anonymous Coward]

What's the point? They're not gonna show us fleeing starving people being bombed to pieces anyway. They're gonna give us the same tactical computergame rethoric that they used in the attack against Jugoslavia. You don't need video for that, only a powerpoint presentation.

Other cheap, portable technologies

[MadCow42]

If they don't need real-time uploads, there's a lot of "cheap" consumer-level products that can create digital video of sufficient quality (between their current phone and real video).

Personally, I use a $200 Kodak camera (MC3) to shoot video while skydiving... it's not as good as a video camera, but more than enough for use in these situations. Going into the $500+ market, you'd get even better quality. (for samples, see: My Skydiving Weblog )

Sure, it'd be a pain to upload video manually after shooting, but you could still do it on your satellite phone, and it'd be better quality.

MadCow

ISDN over Inmarsat

[lalleglad]

Let me just plug a little for Inmarsat, which I don't work for, however I do work for a company that make products for their satellite system.

The present high speed is 64kbit and an ISDN line may be one way to transfer data.

It may not seem to be a lot, but it works, it works well and it works now and at affordable prices.

Otherwise there probably wouldn't have been sold 100.000'ands of terminals (including A, B, C and M systems) all over the world.

Other services may promise higher speeds in the future, but Inmarsat and related companies of course aren't standing still, so also there higher speeds will appear in the future.

In any case I hope a race/competition for higher quality of service, eg. higher speeds, will evolve because that will be great for end users as well as producers (not all producers understand it, though :-)

It's The Cameras, Stupid

[istartedi]

turn the grainy, live, night-vision shots in Afghanistan clear.

Even if they had more bandwidth, it wouldn't help that much. The low bandwidth causes blockiness. The graininess and the poor color comes from the fact that the cameras just don't work well in low light.

Now, a while ago I saw something on the Discovery channel where a guy had a low-light camera that he was using to capture the aurora borealis in real time. They could use something like that.

Of course, I could go on about how there isn't really any need for us to see explosions at night in full technicolor, but that's beside the point.

First things first....

[squeegee-me]

The night vision they are using is probably where the grainy-ness first comes in. It's not to say that the News Corps. arround the world cannot afford some highend night vision equipment, it's that the US and NATO will not allow anything above a certain level to be exported to non-NATO approved country, such as Afganistan. They want to keep the nice equipment out of the terrorist hands. Ever look for Night vision online? A lot of dealers will say "cannot be exported outside the US" for this exact reason. They are selling everything from Gen 1 to what some are calling Gen 3+, but only Gen 1 and maybe some Gen 2 can cross the boarder.

I have an old Ukranian Gen 1 scope that looks similar to the footage you see on TV, but when I use my newer Gen 3 scope from ITT, it's like daylight. Hell, I've even used it to read stuff in the dark, and navagate boats with it. Gen 1 scope... uggg.... New boat anchor. Gen 3 scope... I'm hunt'n wabits... on the other side of the lake... at 3 AM... with no moon light.

I aplaud the idea of enhansing the video, but realise, when the daytime footage come through, it's fine, night vision feed from an exportable scope, looks like crap.

you may try to point out the military's footage looks just as bad, but you think they are going to let the enemy know they can spot an untied shoelace at a mile and a half?

Re:First things first....

[barrettlight50]

"They want to keep the nice equipment out of the terrorist hands."

... and only give them the bare necessities like Stinger missiles.

Re:First things first....

[SuiteSisterMary]

... and only give them the bare necessities like Stinger missiles.

I'm reminded of Dogbert's stint as a substitute teacher. Dogbert: Jimmy! Is that a stinger missile? Well, I hope you brought enough for everybody!!!
Jimmy I did.

Re:First things first....

[MegaGremlin]

Just so you know, the Stinger has a max range of 8,000 meters and a flight ceiling of 10,000 meters. I'd hardly consider that an effective defense against a bomber at 30,000 feet. And that's assuming that they've got the latest revision of the weapon system.

Re:First things first....

[neafevoc]

Do you mean 10,000 meters and a bomber at 30,000 feet or is that also supposed to be meters?

Re:First things first....

[MegaGremlin]

good catch, my error.

The flight ceiling for the weapon is 10,000 FEET and the bomber is at 30,000 (or higher) FEET.

Re:First things first....

[_Splat]

10,000 meters > 30,000 feet; however, our bombers can and do fly higher than that.

Re:First things first....

[cascino]

Keep in mind that the Stinger has a flight ceiling upwards of 31,000 ft (10,000 meters), and thus poses a credible threat to the bomber in question - in theory at least. Granted, aiming could prove to be difficult, and as you mentioned, that's with the latest revision of the weapons system, but comparing feet with meters gives an obviously distorted view of exactly how effective the Stinger *could* be.

Re:First things first....

[barrettlight50]

I do not know the effective defense of a satelite phone vs a bomber either - but even with a really good throwing arm I'm guessing it's less than 10,000 metres or 10,000 feet - whatever revision they're packing.

Re:First things first....

[hughk]

You can get some very good night-vision outside the US. You may, for example, try here, for example. Other companies would quite happily put the whole thing together and produce the software.

The military stuff is harder to get, but if you get them to do the equipment assembly, then it becomes a low-light news reporting equipment and somewhat easier to process the export certification. Russia gets very nervous about high end equipment going south.

Re:First things first....

[MegaGremlin]

The flight ceiling is 10,000 FEET (3.046 kilometers or 3,046 Meters) according to fas.org

Re:First things first....

[MegaGremlin]

and the stinger also has a max range of 8km. If you fire it from sea level, it could only get to 27-28 thousand feet (if you fire it straight up - but this is beyond the 10,000 foot flight ceiling) Basically this weapon is for low-altitude aircraft.

On a side note, does anyone know why the US military seems to give altitude in feet and everything else in meters?

"Talking Head"

[ackthpt]

I like that. I have always considered the term "Talking Head" to be a slight to reporters, particularly TV news anchors (as in there's a head that talks, but there's no heart or other substance below the head, sorta like a trained parrot) and here's a product called such.

Cool for the adventurous Christine Amanpour. Not what I visualized from the article header, which made me think "Cell Phone with Camera", which I'm sure if doesn't exist will if they ever can work out enough bandwidth. (How about Slow Scan ;)

Re:Ugh. H.263?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember the similar i.263 codec that used to be used in AVI videos traded over the Net?

Actually, I was dealing with a some video clips encoded in i.263 yesterday. I pasted them together and re-encoded them in DiVX fast-motion. Same quality, smaller size.

It was an "educational video" about "riding". Yeah, that's right...

hire ventriloquists as reporters

[G Neric]

they should hire ventriloquists as reporters: ventriloquists can talk without moving their lips and this will save a ton of compressed bandwidth!

Re:hire ventriloquists as reporters

[House of Usher]

I'm not sure of anyone that you could pay to put their arm up any of the broadcasters butts :-)

Re:Need to rewrite the transmission and control pr

[jandrese]

Interestingly enough, zmodem is terrible for high latency satellite links. Zmodem is designed for phone line connections where each frame (I can't remember exactly what they're called unfortunatly) can be ACKed before the next one is sent. When you have latencies approaching 2 seconds, waiting for those ACKs will kill you.

IIRC, kermit performs admirably over satellite links though.

Anthrax vaccine not available to general public!

[thedarb]

I submitted this to slashdot as a headline, but it was rejected.

This is probably irresponsable reporting, but you should know. After it was reported that a second Florida man had been exposed to anthrax in Florida, I tried calling my local clinic (Valley Medical East Team, Kent Wa.) to get myself and my daughter vaccinated against this horrible disease. I was told they don't have it and that it isn't available to the general public.

What?!?

While the Feds investigate whether it was terrorism or not that exposed the two men to the fatal disease, incubation time keeps on ticking. Pretty much by the time you realize you are sicker than the common cold, it's too late. Why on earth haven't they started vaccinating people?

Better to vaccinate and find out later that it was not terrorism than to wait to find out... when some people may be to late to save.

I really don't care if my insurance will cover it. I will pay for the shots. Just let me have them, is that so much to ask?

Come on CDC & FBI, let us get our vaccinations! I urge folks to call their congress man or woman and begin demanding the availability of these vaccinations. Because if it was terrorism, who knows how wide spread? I don't want to wait until it is too late.

Here are the CDC information pages on this.

You can lookup and call Valley Medical yourself to confirm this.

Multiplex!

[farrellj]

Get a couple of phone connections, and multiplex it between two channels...should give you about 80% more bandwith...maybe more depending on the code.

ttyl
Farrell

Re:NBC scales down image - NOT!

[Anonymous Coward]

NBC really scales down content to make up for
the lack of news.

Re:Ugh. H.263?

[ReelOddeeo]

They need to use an MPEG-4 based codec instead

But they need real-time video compression.

If you're compressing pr0n with mpeg-4, then you can use an asymetric compression such as mpeg-4, since you don't care if the compression takes ten times as long as the decompression.

A design goal of some compression algorithms is to spend a disproportionately large amount of horsepower in compression to make decompression easy for 386 machines with low-end web browsers. But the compresser guys can use high end equipment.

Now apply this algorithm to a jello-vision situation and it doesn't work. Some parts of a video might take longer to compress and some parts take less time to compress. But on a live feed, you can't have extra slow portions of compression, because the data is comming in live and you end up missing frames.

Re:Anthrax vaccine not available to general public

[ethereal]

For one thing, I believe the anthrax vaccination is a little more dangerous than other standard childhood vaccinations; so much so that there was some question about this when the entire U.S. military was vaccinated.

Also, anthrax is apparently not very contagious. I'd worry more about smallpox, which almost no one has a current vaccination for (it wears off in ten years), might kill 1 out of three, but in an unexposed population like the current world might have even higher mortality than that.

read the article.

[rebelcool]

you need a friggin' truck to do a satellite uplink. Not exactly easy to get in and out of a hostile country is it?

Remember Tianamin Square?

[paul7e]

In '89, I remember watching CNN's coverage of the Chinese suppression of students in Tianamin Square. The CNN crew didn't have cameras, but had an early ancestor of these phones - it sent the "video" at a frame rate of about 1 frame per MINUTE - the image would come in scan line by scan line, and when it got to the bottom of the screen, start updating again at the top. Very hard to watch, but hey, it was pictures...

So things have come a long way.

They need to fix the LATENCY

[ReelOddeeo]

I think it is much more important that they fix the latency more than the bandwidth problem. The picture quality right now is acceptable. And it will improve.

But latency is a much harder problem.

I wonder how many satellites this has to bounce off of? Won? Too?

Each satellite is abou 23,000 miles out. And 22,300 miles back. Then the reporter gives an answer. Then the answer goes another ~50,000 miles. Round trip distance: about 100,000 miles.

Now let's see, at the speed of light, this is how many seconds? 0.6? Now add in all the processing time of video compression latency. This is probably even more time than just the distance to the friggin satellite(s).

No wonder they ask a question and it takes 3 seconds before the remote reporter's lips start moving. And they get into "interruption wars" and "courtesy wars" due to the extreme latency.

Re:They need to fix the LATENCY

[kaimiike1970]

I wonder how many satellites this has to bounce off of? Won? Too?


WHy are you asking the two chinese guys who work down the hall from me? Won and Too are not satellite experts y'know.

embedded software

[warnerpr]

Remember, while it is easy to write some software for windows or linux to make it do some fancy new video format, for a video phone device like this I suspect they may have custom made hardware to drive the H.263. Making the same thing for a newer codec may be a good idea but it will take longer to get into an embedded device like this an onto your desktop. They should be inverse multiplexing over several line though. But that is a pretty obvious solution so I assume they had a good reason not to do it.

Re:embedded software

[darkonc]

This points to my first question:
What sort of CPU are they using for this thing? The solutions open to us may differ, slightly, depending on whether they are using a dedicated/ custom DSP chip or a general purpose CPU. Then we've got questions like (P)ROM vs. EEPROM. The PR sheet didn't give any of these kinds of data. Is anybody able to contact the manufacturer for this info?

If we can get a combination of people with close links to the manufacturer and people with a good history, perhaps it would be possible to arrange the loan of a few units for people to hack on? The hackers would get some interesting toys to use for some interesting project, and the company would get access to the resulting open software. I think that it could be a pretty good win-win situation.

Unmanned Heli-cameras

[edLin]

The pictures of war are crap.

We want proper 24 hour War Television.

Small unmanned helicopters, lots of cameras, be able to get some great footage for news services.

We want 3D Matrix style, Bullet Time, spin-around, video of buildings being blown-up.

Re:The Evils of Islam

[Anonymous Coward]

Jack Chick has less than a clue. If he did, he'd be telling us the truth. That there is no god.

live and direct

[Mr. Slippery]

For some reason I keep thinking of the old Max Headroom TV series.

Reporters coming to you "live and direct", without depending on truckloads of gear - just a man (or woman), a camera, and a datapath, bringing the truth to your living room.

This could be quite a tool for getting around news censorship.

Re:live and direct

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha. max headroom, that dragged some childhood memories out of the cobwebs in the back of my mind haha, people will make fansites for anything haha.

Know Your TV News Babes

[Anonymous Coward]

In the coming weeks, you will be seeing a lot of pretty, pert, young (and not so young) news babes. It's hard to keep track of who's who without a scorecard. For your TV viewing enjoyment here is that scorecard. Check 'em out, and happy viewing!

"Array" of Phones?

[suwain_2]

It sounds kind of akward, but I think I've got an idea.

If near real-time is a requirement, why not chain multiple phones together? This was popular back "in the day" when dial-ups were popular; why not try the same with cell phones? The poor cameraman need not carry a zillion 'normal' phones in his pocket, a bunch of transceivers could simply be put in this already large-ish box.

There is the obvious issue of power consumption, but I guess you could counter that by simply adding a bigger battery...?

Re:"Array" of Phones?

[Boone^]

So did you just advocate making a beowulf cluster of sat phones without actually saying the word? :P

Re:Anthrax vaccine not available to general public

[SuiteSisterMary]

but in an unexposed population like the current world might have even higher mortality than that.

Yeah. Just ask pretty much every North and South American native tribe.

Re:The Evils of Jack Chick

[farrellj]

Chick comics are some of the most evil pieces of racist and religioius intolerance propaganda ever published. Please moderate the post this is a reply to into the trash heap!

The last thing we need in North America is divisive people like said poster. Muslim, Christian, Pagan, Hindu, Jew, etc. all are the target of bin Laden, simply because they live here in North America. He is targeting those who do not agree with him, and killing those who do not agree with you is not a civilized response.

ttyl
Farrell

Re:Anthrax vaccine not available to general public

[Small Hairy Troll]

Because:

A) The vaccine is not FDA approved... if you want to be a guinea pig, go right ahead.
B) It is not just a single injection. You require multiple shots for the vaccine to be effective(nine injections over 18 months I believe).
C) There are a whole bunch of nasty side effects.
D) Anthrax is not contagious.

Re:Ugh. H.263?

[SuiteSisterMary]

I don't know much about MPEG-4, but I can tell you alot about MPEG-2. MPEG-2 is designed to be encoder-intensive, as well as encoder-biased, meaning that improvements can be made to the encoding process, but a five year old decoder will be able to decode it. MPEG-2 encoding is also a multi-step process; you go through, cobble together a rough-encode scheme, then go BACK through and re-encode it. Also, a lot of the neat tricks, like VBR, wouldn't be much use. With MPEG, you're playing for space; how much video can you cram onto that VCD or DVD? With these phones, you've got bandwidth; you want to fill those 64 KB of space, at all times, or it's just not worth it.

Most of this is done already

[NMerriam]

I can tell most of the folks commenting on this thread have not used high bandwidth sat phones or done much live video (or both).

The InMarSat system is a geostationary constellation, and requires a pretty decent amount of power to transmit.

It requires a directional antenna, which is part of the reason the phones are as large as they are. The smallest are the size of a small briefcase, and these videophones are not much larger than that.

You can mux together multiple dishes to get 64k, 128k, 192k, 256k, etc, but each 64k requires another dish, another power supply, and more space.

Yes, the codecs are less than perfect, but they are standard, and allow you to connect virtually anywhere in real-time.

We've experimented with live encoding into more efficient formats and quite frankly you don't get much better quality, and the lack of built-in videoconferencing smarts on the part of the codecs costs as much as you gain in efficiency.

Yes, if you can record, encode and transmit in near-real time the quality could be better, but then you're talking about a much more technically complicated setup that a reporter with limited resources has to manage.

Operating a computer in your office is much simpler than doing it on a frozen rock with bombs falling nearby and a poor power supply. If you have a connection, you transmit because you never know when it may go down or your power will die. Getting a few extra FPS for extra time sounds nice in theory, but getting the story out ASAP is more important because 30 seconds from now things could change.

The videophones are an amazing package, and little can be done to improve them much more than the simple march of technology. They'll get smaller, we'll get better sat systems with more bandwidth, the codecs will improve, but for what resources exists now, these things do an AMAZING job of wringing out all the performance possible.

codecs and plastic instead of glass

[johnjones]

the problem is that most reporters use combi sat /POTS/ISDN and they hate technology

because it has to work anywhere say even on a rock outside kabul (sat)

that limits the bandwidth to 33.6 now you can do really well with open source codecs on 33.6

just recently :
On2 open source the VP3 video codec

On2 technologies have released their VP3 video codec to the open source
community. This provides the open source community with a high quality CPU
intensive codec to go with the real time CU30
codec which Cornell made available.

so it looks up its just putting a box togther that runs them which would not be all that hard if your box ran uclinux or plain linux (no porting involved yey)

so that what I think you should use

regards

john jones

-1, Inciteful

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, calm down. I know the man on Fox News told you anthrax was super-duper scary, but the simple fact is you can't just whip up a batch of weapons-grade _anything_ in a cave with no lab equipment. You have nothing to fear. Move along.

H.263 vs MPEG4 - latency vs. compression quality

[klapton]

First off, I watched one of the news reports via videophone and I was quite impressed by the audio clarity and the video quality. M$'s NetMeeting can't even compare at the same data rate.
MPEG4 is an outgrowth of H.263.
The reason H.263 is chosen over MPEG4 and other similar streaming codecs is because the latency from video capture to transmission of the encoded image is better under H.263. During some informal testing, latency of H.263 video conferencing on a LAN was well under 2 seconds. The best I could do with Real's RealProducer using their G2 codec was around 4-5 seconds. The best I could do with Microsoft's Media Encoder with the MPEG4 codec was around 7-10 seconds.
Because of the way that MPEG2 and MPEG4 take advantage of the time domain to achieve higher compression also makes them unsuitable for 'live' 2-way video.
Here are some links to chew on:
http://myhome.hananet.net/~soonjp/vclinux.html
http://archive.dstc.edu.au/RDU/staff/jane-hunter/v ideo-streaming.html
http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/
The H.263 spec is available at http://www.itu.org for a fee.

Re:The Evils of Jack Chick

[Anonymous Coward]

But as all good comics, this one is hilarious. I was reading his deconstruction of the teaching of Islam and then almost choked laughing as he used the same "proof" to prove Christianity as he debunked while ridiculing Islam.

To fix latency, let's just change light speed

[WillSeattle]

Now let's see, at the speed of light, this is how many seconds? 0.6? Now add in all the processing time of video compression latency. This is probably even more time than just the distance to the friggin satellite(s).

No wonder they ask a question and it takes 3 seconds before the remote reporter's lips start moving. And they get into "interruption wars" and "courtesy wars" due to the extreme latency.

I'd started to notice that too. You'll notice when they're using a phone feed the latency effect halfway across the world is not quite as bad as the recent transmissions, so they must really be bouncing a lot to get that time lag.

This also ties in nicely with SciFi stories where they always broadcast with a banner image behind them - since the banner image is constant, the image transmits more quickly with the bandwidth limitations.

Seems to me the real major point of improvement would be in the battery technology and power system, not the casing or shell or antenna portions.

Re:To fix latency, let's just change light speed

[i22y]

Uh, instead of joking about changing the speed of light, why don't you change something that IS changeable? Though it would require massive hardware upgrades, why can't we get some LEO (low-earth orbit) sats up there that are dedicated for low-latency high-bandwidth communications?

Re:To fix latency, let's just change light speed

[ReelOddeeo]

Though it would require massive hardware upgrades, why can't we get some low-earth orbit sats up there that are dedicated for low-latency high-bandwidth communications?

I was thinking about that too.

You must have a network of them. Enough so that one is always within reach. You must track them. You have to point your antenna at the right one, or use sufficient (still not much) power to reach whichever one is nearby. Manage hand off to different sats as they pass out of range. Track where you are at so someone can call you back, and which sat you're connected to.

It seems like you begin to design a system with complexity approaching that of GSM. (i.e. cell phones)

Re:I'm talking at YOU Muslim boy. Yeah YOU asswipe

[URSpider]

You know, the phrase "Anonymous Coward" has never seemed so apt as right now.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

on the news a few days ago..

[Anonymous Coward]

When they started bombing afghanistan and they had the reporters there talking with the people from the news room new york, california wherever and the video looked choppy like they were talking into a webcam. it wasent choppy like it more of a low framerate.

NTT DoCoMo FOMA Video Cell Phones

[kyoko21]

I saw this last night on TechTV and the new release of these video cell phones in Japan. They looked really nice and actually had nice video feeds. You can read more about the phone here on this link Read here.

How to get higher quality video

[Skapare]

You need to make sure you have a higher quality camera. If it records high quality, say on a hard drive or at least flash ram, then it can do the low quality transmission first for the live broadcast. Then between live feeds, do the file transfer of the parts of the high quality shots ... if you're not on the run for your life (sometimes the case in places like this).

This is technology intended for a certain (1 56K channel) level of bandwidth. In the future specialized units with some more bandwidth could come along specifically for the news media ... after the CIA lets the contractors de-classify that technology.

Twenty Minutes into the Future...

[gilroy]

... this is Edison Carter, coming you very much live.

:) Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Re:Twenty Minutes into the Future...

[etceteral]

Yay.. okay, so I'm not the only one who thinks the environment of Max Headroom is eerily premeniscient. =)

Seriously, the world could do some good for itself if it sat down and studied the world that was created for that story. Far too many things from that show are easily possible today (or in a few years).

And really, the method of having a single roving reporter/cameraman like that is very exciting :)

We can't possibly improve the codec, then!

[roystgnr]

Operating a computer in your office is much simpler than doing it on a frozen rock with bombs falling nearby and a poor power supply

And H.263 encoding is effortless, whereas MPEG-4 would require the reporter on the scene to recompile the Linux kernel before he could transmit!

Yes, if you can record, encode and transmit in near-real time the quality could be better, but then you're talking about a much more technically complicated setup that a reporter with limited resources has to manage.

There is no such thing as one codec which is more "technically complicated" to the user than another. The underlying math may be harder, but it all boils down to "frames go in here, encoded byte stream comes out here" in the end.

I suspect that changing the codec would require new videophone hardware, and that's the real problem... but the new phone won't be a whit more complicated than the old, and won't require any changes to the data link inbetween.

Re:We can't possibly improve the codec, then!

[NMerriam]

And H.263 encoding is effortless, whereas MPEG-4 would require the reporter on the scene to recompile the Linux kernel before he could transmit!

No, but using an appliance is simpler than using a computer. The videophone is an appliance (although a complex one). Everyone in the message threads suggesting they just hook up a PC and hack out some software to get better codec quality is suggesting a solution that won't work in the field because it requires using a more complex system.

There is no such thing as one codec which is more "technically complicated" to the user than another

I never claimed there was. What I said was that the near-real-time use of video that would require recording, compression, and then transmission (a multi-step process), would be more complex for the user than a real-time method with lower quality.

The point is that quality is not the ultimate goal here -- reliability is. Using a real-time standardized codec guarantees that if you can get a connection to the satellite that your video will get out.

yes, MPEG4 would be wonderful, but the standard was finalized literally days ago. Once we have hardware that can compress it in real-time and be sure that they'll be able to connect to other systems using the same standard, then someone will build that into the videophone, but not before.

Say what you will about the quality of the h.xxx videoconferencing codecs, but the fact that you can get a windows PC, a mac, a unix box, a videophone, a teamstation system, and a picturetel system all in a videoconference together, over WIDELY divergent bandwiths and topologies is FAR more important than getting a few more FPS...

Re:We can't possibly improve the codec, then!

[dwater]

Does MPEG4 encoding have to be a multi-step process?

I don't see why they don't use the same style of compression that digital cable uses. If it's good enough to be used at the destination, why can't it, or something similar (perhaps the codec used for cable TV doesn't provide the necessary compression ratio), be used at the source.

Sure, it'll require changes to the hardware, which won't happen in time for this application (but it will be lasting years, right?), but it's not like you can't use a compressor in a continuous mode, rather than the 'record to file, compress file, transmit file, receive file, uncompress file, view file' mode. Perhaps you can't use MPEG4 in that mode; I don't know.

Max.

Re:We can't possibly improve the codec, then!

[NMerriam]

Right now MPEG4 can't be done in real-time with any consumer-level chips (of course the MPEG4 standard was only ratified a few days ago, so nobody could have manufactured them confidently anyways).

Right now most things you see are MPEG2 -- digital cable and DVDs use MPEG2 which can be done in real-time with the right hardware, but generally requires at least 2-4 megabits/s to have full-screen quality. So if you REALLY pushed a real-time board you could do a 320x240 MPEG2 at under a Mb/s, maybe even down to a few hundred kb/s.

But we're talking about a sat connection that is generally 64kb/s (sometimes 128kb/s). You can add in overhead for some kind of IP (because we're no longer using an ISDN video connection -- we're sending data), then you have to leave room for audio, which DOES have to go both ways (though you can do audio on a separate voice phone).

Regardless, you have to make a codec that works well at ~50 kb/s. A LOT of codecs (real, Windows, MPEG4, Sorensen) can do well at that low data rate, but the h.xxx protocols have been doing it successfully for several years now, and have a huge base of compatible equipment.

Right now the only way to use MPEG4 would be to compress in near-real time and transmit after the fact. Most other codecs would require the same kind of pre-processing, or basically running a streaming server from the phone (to do something like Real or WiMP). Using a computer that isn't hard, but again its the difference between an appliance and a computer.

We've done the remote streaming server trick to get better one-way video quality over sat, but honestly it wasn't so big of an improvement that it would be worth the hassle for non-techs to worry about it. There's only so much codec trickery you can pull off with 40-45k/b of bandwidth for video (we leave 16kb/s for full duplex audio).

its chunky because of the nightvision equipment

[Anonymous Coward]

Video compression algo's choke on rapidly changing pictures(DBS, DVD, being prime examples.) The night vision equipment, when improperly set up, generates an -enormous- amount of visual noise that is highly random. The videophone is trying(and failing) to compress everything.

If they just turned down the gain a little, so there was less noise, we'd actually see -great- pictures, since the only thing happening is occasional blips of green stuff in small areas of the screen.

All this bears to ask...what is the point? I watched the footage, and all I could see were occasional flashes of green light. Whoopee. This isn't even close to footage from the gulf war, when we saw thr iraqis going absolutely NUTS with antiaircraft fire(which seemed to have a lot of tracer bullets in them.) It made for a spectacular fireworks display, but even that wasn't really news. No such luck here(they're in the city, the attacks aren't in the city, they're all over the country going after camps and radar stations, which is not where the reporters are), so why bother? It's so pathetic watching the networks sink to all time lows for what they'll consider newsworthy/important; they've got the live capability, but war has jumped them once again; they don't have the ability to get where the action is. They'd probably get higher ratings simply saying what's new(not repeating things we've heard 10,000 times before), and then going back to regular programming. We don't need to hear some guy who has absolutely no idea what he's talking about babble on and on and on.

All of this reminds me of when the flights first crashed into the towers. One reporter, in Boston, asked the Logan director of security if one of the flights were non-stop. It was entirely inappopriate for the person in front of the mic(a security director), pointless(who the fuck cares) and wasted everybody's time and kept another reporter from asking a more intelligent question.

You forgot one little cost.

[El Camino SS]

Price per pound to orbit one of those babies.

Ka-Ching!

-Alex

Re:Need to rewrite the transmission and control pr

[Havokmon]

DagNabbit! Why are my pseudo-nerdy attempts at humor posts always shot down by the ultra-nerdy?

Come on now, how many people here REALLY know what MobyTurbo is, other than a silly name?

I call your "kermit +", and raise you a "gsz rz -m -r"!

No

[Chasing Amy]

MPEG-4 is processor-instensive, yes. But it's actually fairly simple mathematically, just slow on general-purpose processors. That's why a video phone device should have it in a hardware encoder. Surely the budget of CNN and FoxNews can afford the fundage to get it done.

Re:No

[ReelOddeeo]

I understand that hardware is the best way to do it. But Mpeg4 seems designed to solve a different problem -- as another poster points out. That is, the problem of fitting in minimum space.

What a sat phone needs is a way to fit a fixed bandwidth. What happens if a certian segment of your live feed, after encoding, no longer fits into XXX Kbps? What is needed is an encoding algorithm designed to fit a fixed bandwidth -- which is a very different design goal.

Re:No

[Chasing Amy]

In case you didn't know, just as with MPEG and MPEG-2, you can set a *maximum* and *minimum* bitrate in MPEG-4 encoding.

Therefore, setting the max and min bitrate to whatever the sat phone can handle, would prevent any problems. Not all MPEG-4 recording has to be done in 2-pass VBR, which some don't seem to realize. It still provides better compression than H.263 even with single-pass CBR at any given bitrate, except maybe for extraordinarily small ones, much smaller than I'm sure they're getting on those sat phone uplinks.

Not everyone realizes this though, since the most common MPEG-4 implementation is Microsoft's hack of it into an AVI codec, and in "official" versions of their MPEG-4 codec this functionality is usually hidden. In fact, in most of their MPEG-4 releases, the ability to record in that format at all is disabled.

Re:No

[ReelOddeeo]

No, I didn't know this. But (given sufficient processing power) can mpeg4 also produce a given bandwidth in real-time! It's not that I want the mpeg4 to limit itself to a playback of 128 Kbps, but I want the encoding process to produce 128 Kbps.

This opens up the interesting question (can of worms?) of how do you pre-determine (calculate) the processing power required to product X bits-per-second? So you can pick which embedded processor to use in your new Phone-O-Matic design?

Re:Anthrax vaccine not available to general public

[guidobot]

There are several reasons for this. First of all, the vaccine is not known to be safe. Lots of people have gotten sick from it.

And more importantly is that they don't have enough of it. Since this article was written they've started production of it again, but there's still not even enough for 'essential personnel'...

Nara, another solution

[southern]

Nera have a family of products that provides the same band widths. But not as compact.

What is the minimum bitrate possible for DiVX?

[AnimeFreak]

ISDN is dual channel 64 kbit, therefore you can have ~64 kbit of video going each way. Is it possible to use DiVX at 50-64 Kbit? What would be the quality of it? Good, bad, decent, piss-poor?

Here's the Skinny.

[El Camino SS]

I am a news videographer, and as a man that does the occasional sat live, there are a few things that you should know. This is really interesting technology. The old way took a load of equipment, time, and money. Time is the problem... in a war, the stationary time is the dangerous part in a hostile country.

I know that everyone is complaining on Slashdot about the picture quality of these new suitcase devices that can transmit anywhere in the world, and they are very impressive. The issue here with these transmitters is that they had to sacrifice something to get the video image in, so it was compressed to the point of massive lossiness. It is acceptable in the news business, because, well, in a situation like this, you need to be able to get out very fast.

But to compare to current inconvenience, they are incredible. Even the newest full band KU band digital transmitters are usually packed in the size of a SMALL TEN WHEEL TRACTOR TRAILOR. Woof. Granted, the viewing of the shot on a full bandwidth is like that in the studio. But in the field without the giant tractor trailer, to get the full signal requires an engineer with a nights prep, and a Ford Econoline-size van of equipment to do it right in the field. Not less important, a rather large amount of electricity which in those situations is often hard to find. So many times you had to bring your own generators. I am not kidding the difficulty of full quality broadcasts... many of the field engineers are ex-military comm school types. It is a tough business. Matter of fact, all of news is a tough business.

I occasionally get to speak with some of the network engineers who travel overseas in hot zones, and they say that some of them keep about 4-thousand US dollars cash on them at all times just to bribe all of their equipment into the country. When Bosnia took off the engineers were some of the first ones in, and they had to weld steel plates outside their dishes so that the snipers wouldn't destroy their transmitters. They were sandbagged in. And they had a military guard.

I can only say that a device that does the work of a nights engineering and a truckload of equipment on a 12V DC source is amazing... AND IT DOES IT LIVE. This will save lives of newsmen by keeping them on the move, and it will keep us in touch in the world. This will soon change everything. I assume that very, very soon that the whole thing will go studio quality, and when it does, it will change the whole nature of live television. Imagine network cameras with this technology built into the camera itself. The world will not miss a thing. It sounds scary and Big Brother like, but for newsmen, we will be able to SHOW you, without the unbelieveability of us TELLING you what is going on.

Better communication. Perhaps more people will understand the truth out there when they see it. It is a good thing... really.

Re:Here's the Skinny.

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought a Ku transportable. Damn expensive and all of the equipment to make it work fits in about 12 air crates - thats before you figure out how you are going power it. It is still not going to work worth a damn in rain, snow or dust storms, somewhat of a problem in Afganistan. And does your boss have enough guts to send 100k worth of equipment to someplace it might get bombed? Or hell, the sand is gonna kill it anyhow?

Spoiled folks - not too many years ago, reports like this would take days if not weeks. Secondly, and most importantly, this stuff is traceable as hell. You want your reporter killed as he lights up the dish? Even the sat phones are dangerous. RSN, the military may be chuncking bombs back down those radiation beams since in Afganistan, only the terrorist, drug dealers, or Taliban are going to have the phone. And our little birdies in the sky can find them real time, no problem.

Re:Here's the Skinny.

[sql*kitten]

I can only say that a device that does the work of a nights engineering and a truckload of equipment on a 12V DC source is amazing... AND IT DOES IT LIVE.

I only hope they can get these on Star Trek, so the away team don't have to be always saying, Captain, you'd better get down here...

I remember one episode of TNG where they only way they could visually link the away team with the ship was via Georgie's prosthetic. Ridiculous! These people can travel faster than the speed of light and they can't even transmit video over a few tens of kilometers from the surface up to orbit! Hell, my Nokia 6210 is more powerful than a Star Fleet communicator! Hook it up to my Psion and it's more powerful than a Tricorder too!

Anyway, back on topic. If, and this is a big if, 3G ever takes off, then assuming the infrastructure was there (a portable base station with a satellite uplink, maybe in a truck 10 kms back perhaps) then we can have reporters on the ground send reports back by mobile phone. And if we all have the 3G infrastructure back home, we can watch it like that too...

Re:H.263 vs MPEG4 - latency vs. compression qualit

[Anonymous Coward]

The latency mention above is due to software /processor speed. Toshiba already intorduce MPEG4 encodr for cellure phone application. If there is demand, maybe we can see cellure phone carring real-time MPEG4 stream within 2 years.

use 3ivx, that'll do it :)

[stux]

We're currently working on a next generation "VideoPhone" system using our 3ivx video compression :)

Essentially you get more video in the same bitrate ;)

Its pretty cool...

http://www.3ivx.com

Re:H.263 vs MPEG4 - latency vs. compression qualit

[stux]

Ummmm,

3ivx MPEG4 has a two frame latency... that oughta be good enough.

http://www.3ivx.com

Re:Ugh. H.263?

[Anonymous Coward]

you don't need terribly fancy hardware to encode opendivx in realtime... a new P3 laptop can do that.

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

Gzip your Handycam and wire it over your Nokia!

Maybe they don't want a better bandwidth

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

Has it ever occurred to you that they don't want better images? It may have something to do with the fact that the whole world - that means OBL as well - is watching and the US military don't want people to clearly see what's going on, hence the grainy images.

Limitations of the Satelites

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a company that works with Inmarsat which probably carries all of these transmissions. We've done work on multilink PPP over these things and the limitation rapidly becomes how many satelite channels you can get. These reporters all all out in Kabul trying to grab one of very few (thing less that 100) 64K channels. There's no reason you couldn't grab 4 of these and do perfect video, but Inmarsat would never be able to provide the channels.
If you want to understand cool though, glance at their web site about the BGAN stuff in the next gen satelites. 76kb/s over a terminal the size of you palm pilot or 700 or kbs over a briefcase in full packet mode (i.e. Ethernet in the sky)

Makes me realise how far we've come

[Lurks]

Sure when you see these videophone interviews on the news channels, you can argue we have better technology today and ought to be using it. That's undoubtedly true but it does make me think back to not so long ago when this sort of stuff would have seemed like sci-fi.

I remember when I was at Uni in remote far Northern Australia. I worked in a facility there which did a lot of video production and so on. The Uni operated a commercial video conferencing center, charging hundreds of dollars an hour. It did brisk trade because the alternative was flying the length of Australia which took a day and a whole hell of a lot more cash!

The box that did the codec work was HUGE. It had boards loaded with 68k series CPUs. We mounted a professional camera on a big custom-made roller stand with a huge TV in it. 2 *megabits* of bandwidth got you video quality which I put roughly at what we're seeing on these newscaster videos today. Of course you had to phone up the telco and get them to route through 2 megabits of data stream to the other side of the country at the time.

Now you can do this stuff anywhere on the planet via a satellite phone, probably for cheaper than we did it back then. That's pretty amazing really and looking at things in perspective like that, you start to realise that practical consumer video-capable mobile phone really will turn up one day. Not for 3G, but one day.

I sure would like to call up the Old Man and speak to him face to face, even though he's the other side of the world. It's gonna happen soon and that's something to be impressed with in my opinion.

Re:Makes me realise how far we've come

[sg_oneill]

On a personal note: Lurks, I'd suppose you probably would of used Telstras TOC (Television Op center). My old man used to run it here in West Aust, before running the bandwidth for Sydney Olympics and then retiring.

I can confirm that they still are using those monster 2mbit connections for true broadcast quality video (Using MPEG to boot), and still will for a while. But the codecs now screw into a one or two U rack and kinda don't get seen ever.

Meanwhile the rest of the world is still imagining out their ass that netmeeting could one day somehow replace a fifteen grand 384k ISDN codec.

It'll happen but I contend it won't be for a while. Switched stuff rocks solidly over unpredictable packet nets like the internet. And it's reliable (Even if telstra still wouldn't know an ISDN linklayer fault from a dogs assend)

Talking through your ass

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher bitrate through a different codec?

ROFLAMO! You've quite obviously NO IDEA about any of the issues involved, so why not just shut up and continue downloading your "high-bitrate" divX pr0n?

Re:Anthrax vaccine not available to general public

[ethereal]

Exactly the example I was thinking of.

Bandwidth the problem?

[Pyrosz]

Since that does seem to be the problem, are they doing 2 way communication with video? If they are doing that, why not just use text messaging from the studio to the reporter? This would free up some room in the pipe.

I look forward to the time that the news corps get access to some of that modern satalite imaging and start to do real time from the sats. Even 10 meter resolution would be amazing in real time. I would love to see what the military can do now with this stuff. Or if the sats are too expensive what about those unmanned drones they have? Its all real time and the shots would be great! I've done a simple version of this with RC aircraft and a simple video camera onboard. Its really easy to do and cheap in terms of around $500 per plane. Even civilian transmitters for RC have a range of around 2 miles and it wouldnt be hard to boost this up. These planes are hard to shoot too. Trust me on this :) The Canadian military uses RC aircraft to train the anti aircraft gunners. Most of the time the planes will still fly with rather large holes in them.

Re:Bandwidth the problem?

[El Camino SS]

Like most sattelite systems, it is usually not duplexed or two-way at all. The way that they are getting a hold of everyone and listening to the station is an old fashioned method... They are dialing into the stations and listening in on a phone line to the control room and the CNN broadcast audio. They could not be able to watch CNN or do anything like that because of the extra equipment weight. Also, there is an issue with the reporter keeping up with the studio, because the light speed delay of about three seconds to get it around the world. It takes a lot of training to look professional and be able to have a conversation with a three second delay in a different time zone.

Computing Munitions

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the reason they don't move to MPEG4 is that they probably can't take computers powerful enough to do that compression to countries like Afghanistan. There are export restrictions on them!

-D

Pictures not that bad, considering...

[Fizzlewhiff]

They don't look that bad when the picture is in a window over another picture on the TV. It's only when they blow it up full that it looks bad (especially on my digital widescreen Toshiba.) Yesterday afternoons coverage of the bombings on CNN was pretty bad. I was essentialy looking at 3 inch by 3 inch blocks of green when they went full screen with it.

The gist of Poynter's blog...

[Anonymous Coward]

"there is [not] some moral equivalency between a civilized, if imperfect country, and a band of murderers who steal huge airplanes and crash them into buildings full of innocent people. " People "who accept such a moral equivalency are the ones taking sides -- siding with the terrorists." (I substituted "Journalists" with "people" in general. There are too many people these days who seem to have collectively, completely, blocked out what happened a month ago, and are complaining now about how whatever actions we are now or going to be doing are unjust, unwarranted, will lead to more violence, blah blah blah. Stuff some gas-filled rags in your holes and light them, ASAP, please. Y'all can't even look at how the US has been not responding in the last 10 or so years, can't read up more on what the problems are and aren't, protest also against your state and local police and the paramilitary boogeymen they have and use to get bad people ["they're not bad, they deserve the same rights to pursue life, liberty and happiness as the rest of us"], etc. While the reputation of Americans outside the US is warranted, if stereotypical, hey, welcome to the human race. When was the last time you laughed at a joke somebody else, of course, about that Japanese tourist who want to do nothing more than buy up Hawaii and Seattle, those Mexican workers mowing your grass, cleaning your house or office or cooking your Chinese food?)

It may be an issue there that is deeper.

[El Camino SS]

One of the reasons they might not be using the latest compression is the latency of audio vs video. The higher the compression, the more the buffering... and well, for overdubbed movie reasons, the shots have to be live in news. So a higher compression just doesn't work because processor time is yet another delay.

I am a news videographer, and I work in digital, and the audio/video delay is a pain with compression. It makes overdubbed movies... even without a high compression and no sattelites.

Re:Ugh. H.263?

[jmitchel!jmitchel.co]

I don't know how much you've used some of the fine divx encoders out there, but I have a bit of experience with them. Using the standard packages for linux, I could encode TV at 320x240x29fps at 500-700 kbps in aproximately real time on a Dual Celeron 500.

The process encoding video used one processor completely, the one attacking audio used about 10% of the second processor. Compressing it to a lower bandwidth will require a bit more CPU power to handle. Notwithstanding, you should be able to get acceptible results out of a Athlon 1.4Ghz box.

If one really needs to slim the bandwidth or CPU requirements, you can cut the frame-rate in half, which will be noticeable, but not yet painfull to watch, and trim the resolution. There is no question in my mind that I can get a far more tolerable aproximation of TV quality for the same price-point with off-the-shelf hardware.

There are other considerations

[Tungz10]

I read in one article that superior technologies exist, however the equipment is much heavier and requires a van to transport it. Other news agencies are using this technique in the area successfully, however they can't get as close to the action and I'm not sure if they transmit "live" footage.

The videophone assembly ways 20 pounds, if you had three of them, you'd have more weight in equipment, batteries, etc. And that's not to mention bulk.

Compare the reporter's load to that of a soldier. An infantryman typically carries about 60 pounds, as far as I know. The reporter may not be in as good shape and also needs to carry food, water, etc.