Avantgardeimages

Systemstoresandtransmitsfilmsinultrahighdefinition EVANILDODASILVEIRA|Edition193March2012 http://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/en/2012/06/15/avantgardeimages/

JANEDEALMEIDA/MACKENZIEUNIVERSITY

EstereoEnsaiosfilmshowninSanDiego,UnitedStates

A computer system developed at the Federal University of Paraba (UFPB) has placed Brazil among the countries at theforefront ofdigital film technology. NamedFogo Player, the systemcanstore,transmitandcontrolfilmviewingsinultrahighdefinition,inthe4K3D format,that is, with images whoseresolution ismore than 8 millionpixels perframe or16 million if weconsider the threedimensionaleffectthat duplicatesthetransmission.The4K systemis fourtimes more powerful than the existingTVs FullHD(high definition).Thefirst international demonstration of the system took place in December, when a 15minute documentary wastransmittedfromthecapitalcityofJooPessoa(StateofParaiba)tothe CineGrid InternationalWorkshop2011,aninternationaldigitalfilmtechnologymeetingheld attheUniversityofCaliforniainSanDiego(UCSD),intheUnitedStates. TheFogo PlayersystemistheresultofaprojectthatbeganinearlyMay2011.Thisproject was funded and coordinated by the National Teaching and Research Network (RNP), responsible for Brazils academic internet. It included the production of the film shownin San Diego. The film was made by the Work Group for the Creation of Visual Content, coordinatedby professor JanedeAlmeida ofMackenzieUniversity.Thedocumentary, the title of which is EstereoEnsaios, shows ocean and aerial views of the city of Rio de Janeiro,youngsters playingsocceronthesoccergroundattheTavaresBastoscommunity intheneighborhoodofCatete,andshotsofrehearsalsbytheMangueirasambaschool. What makes this short feature film special is the fact thatthe imageswere filmedbytwo

Red Epic cameras to produce the 3D effect. These cameras are the most advanced equipment of this kind and are identical to the ones used by movie director James Cameronin the film Avatar2. Theimages wefilmedhave 5.120 x 2.700 (or13.824.000) pixelsperframeor5KaFullHDTVhas1.920x1.080(2.073.600),Janeexplains.Each frame is equivalent to a photographic shot of traditionally filmed movies. No existing equipmentis abletoprojectimages withthisresolutionasa result,wehadto downgrade theirresolutionto4.096x2.304(9.437.184)pixels,or4Kpframe. Thereismore.ThevideopreparedbyJaneandhergroupwasthefirsttousestereoscopic (3D) technology. This is why, eventhoughitis a super high definitionfilm,becauseitwas filmed in 4K, it has more than 20 million pixels perframe, says Jane. In otherwords,in terms of pixels it isactually anultrahighdefinition(UHD)or8Kfilm.Keith Collea,fromthe United States, was thefilmcamera operator. He hadworkedwithCamerononAvatarand Titanic. Once the film wasready, thenextchallenge wasto decide howtostore it, transmitit, and show it. This is whenthe teamfromtheDigital Video ApplicationsLaboratory (LAVID) of the Federal University of Paraba (UFBP) stepped in. This lab is headed by professor GuidoLemos, who had collaboratedonthedevelopmentoftheDigitalTVsysteminBrazil, especially on the interactive subsystemreferredto asGinga.Ourfirststepwastomakea survey of thestate ofthe artand techniquesin thefieldofdigitalmovies,explainsLemos. Then, webegan todevelopa solutionwith a focus onmaintainingthequalityaccordingto standards that would be acceptable to film professionals, and at the same time be less expensivethanavailableones.
JANEDEALMEIDA/MACKENZIEUNIVERSITY

4K3DcamerafilminginRiodeJaneiro Equipment to store, transmit and show UHD films already exists, such as the kind manufacturedbyJapansNHK.Theproblemisthatthisequipmentisveryexpensiveandis

not available commercially. To solve this issue, Lemos decided to resort to cloud computing. In this system, computer services of major internetproviderssuch as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft areavailable. Thus, there was no needto build andmanage their owndataprocessingcentersortoresorttothedatacentersatbigcompanies. Lemos created hisown cloud fortheProject.Lemoscloudwasbasedonvirtualmachines andused theidlecapacityofLAVIDs30computers.Infact,weusedatechnologywehad developed in partnership with the Distributed Systems Laboratory (LSD) of the Federal University of Campina Grande (UFCG). This technology isreferredto asJitCloud(justin time clouds),he explains.The ideais touse amortizedresources, that is,resourcesthat had been purchased for other purposes, and assemblethejustin time cloudsto process the ultra highresolutionfilms.Thiscloudbasedsolutionforthemanipulation ofUHD videos isaninnovationthatwecameupwith. According to Lemos, the film,which takesupmorethanthreeterabytes(3Tb)ofcomputer memory, isdivided into slices and storedintheJitCloud.ThenweuseanotherJitCloud to prepare the videofor viewing. Finally, inorder forthefilmtobeshownonthenetwork,the slices were downloaded from the JitCloud, synchronized, and passed on to the Fogo Player system. The last step is the final composition and synchronization of the slices, after which the images are delivered to the 4K projectors for viewing, says Lemos. To demonstrate thatthesystemworks,the teamfromLAVIDtransmittedtheshortfeaturefilm EstereoEnsaios to the event in San Diego. To this end, the team relied on the RNPs optical fiber network, that created a specific Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) for the transmission of the film, using the infra structureofthe Global Lambda Integrated Facility (Glif),aninternationalorganizationthatfacilitatestheintegrationofopticfibernetworks. According to Leandro Ciuffo, managerof RNPs communities andadvanced applications department, theconfigurationofaVLANbetweenLAVIDandtheUCSDcreatedanetwork asifbothinstitutionswereonthesamelocalnetwork.Thetransmissiontookplaceatarate of 900 megabits per second(Mbps).This allowsdata packagestoflow veryquicklyfrom oneendtotheotherendoftheconnectionandthelossrateislower,Ciuffoexplains.