Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
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.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
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.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
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.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
It doesn't suck! Watching video of this quality stimulates the imagination and motivates viewers to pay close attention to the news.
Pixelriffic!
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.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
Lasers Controlled Games!
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...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
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?
They're using their own sources and it's in the same ballpark as what the hack of the Windows codec did.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
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.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
...broadband sat uplinks require a big, bulky satellite rig by comparison and can be a liability if you have to move in a hurry.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
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."
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.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
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...
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
CNN used them to film the US spy plane crew returning from China...
p .html
http://www.canoe.ca/CNEWSMediaNews0104/30_video-a
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.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
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?
Who wants Pork Chops?
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?
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
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
they should hire ventriloquists as reporters: ventriloquists can talk without moving their lips and this will save a ton of compressed bandwidth!
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.
I read the internet for the articles.
Kinda like those shots of someone shining a flashlight through a bed sheet - err I mean shots through a night scope showing the attacks.
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
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
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.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
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.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
you need a friggin' truck to do a satellite uplink. Not exactly easy to get in and out of a hostile country is it?
-
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.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
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.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
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.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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.v ideo-streaming.html
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/
http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/
The H.263 spec is available at http://www.itu.org for a fee.
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.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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.
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
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.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
:) Sorry, I couldn't resist.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
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.
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.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
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'...
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.
So did you just advocate making a beowulf cluster of sat phones without actually saying the word? :P