Our IBM group was part of a project called "HDTV Broadcast Technology" (70NANB5H1174).
This was funded under the Advanced Technology Program (ATP) of the
US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Other participants
included Sarnoff, Comark, MCI, Philips, Sun, Thomson, and NJN Television.
The digital television (DTV) project set out to create a
network infrastructure for collaborating on content
creation and for providing new DTV services, such
as Web access. The basic architecture consists of a number of
parts as shown below.
The central high-speed ATM network carries MPEG-2 compressed HDTV as well as digital packets and intercom traffic. Devices communicate using the CORBA-based Digital Studio Command and Control (DS-CC) protocol. This interaction is mediated by the Studio Resource Manager (SRM) which provides uniform access to content and production resources located on the network. Its directory service helps find video servers, monitors, etc. and determine their capabilities. Users can then reserve equipment and network resources for immediate use, or for a future time. It is the responsibility of the SRM to establish and maintain the appropriate network connections. 
The part of the studio we have been most involved is the Content Manager subsystem. The intent of the studio was to provide integrated support from "ingest" to production. Incoming video programs are first stored on a number of Media Servers. The Annotation Stations can then analyze these programs and automatically produce directories and indices which are stored on the Library Server (running IBM's DB2 with Extenders). The Browse Stations then use the indices to allow searching and browsing of studio's video content. Searches can be based on keywords, face count, camera motion, and shot length, among others. Finally, candidate video play lists can be assembled via the Non-linear Editor (NLE) into a storyboard for preview or final production. |
| Contact: Norman Haas | Last updated: 6/10/02 | ||
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