ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

On April 18 2011, I gave a presentation on behalf of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ R&D at the launch of the office in Oxford, UK. The presentation is available as a.

Dr Adrian Woolard presenting at the opening of the W3C office in the UK. Copyright W3C

The presentation came from Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Ralph Rivera, Director of ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Future Media gave a stimulating talk about openness, innovation, internet and the Digital Public Space.

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My team at ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ R&D has been working on new techniques and applications of computer-based image processing for TV production for many years, and it is really rewarding to see some of this work recognised in the form of a in the β€˜Innovation’ category, for our contribution to the Piero sports graphics system.

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Piero allows producers and presenters to add salient information to a live image of sporting events, such as these distance and direction elements on a Rugby game.

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The work that led to the Piero system has is roots in the Prometheus project that started way back in 1999 (showing just how long it can take R&D work to reach fruition!).Μύ Prometheus was a project to look at ways of creating and delivering live 3D content – and that means real 3D models, not just stereoscopic views of a scene.

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A quote from Kat to start this week's weeknotes:

There's always a tricky line to tread with prototypes: what's worth building and what's not? How forgiving should your testers be? What's a sufficient proof of concept? How high fidelity should it be? Aim it too high and you risk over-determining the concept; aim it too low, and you risk obfuscating its purpose.

These questions have been asked by all of our different projects this week.

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It's been a sunny week in central London, but a busy one!

The next iterations of RadioTAG and Watch Later began on Monday. Having spent a few weeks developing the RadioTAG spec, Chris L and Sean are now putting it to the test by building a live radio tagging service that links timecode and radio station with user accounts, pulling in programme metadata along the way.

Watch Later is up and running for the team, and already I've watched a few more programmes I would otherwise have forgotten. We're now working on making it a more public prototype, with Duncan upgrading Solr and moving the API from Sinatra to Rails 3 in preparation.

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R&D Prototyping recently teamed up with Autumnwatch, a popular ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Nature programme, to test a live second screen concept called the TV Companion. It is a real-time web application that explores how second screens might enhance live factual TV shows with additional web content and external links.

The one-off live experiment ran during a single broadcast with three hundred viewers, which gave us lots of useful feedback. In November Tristan Ferne wrote a blog post that gives an overview of the project. In this post I look at the design considerations raised by the prototype. The following video demonstrates it in action.

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R&D do much of the development for the television distribution systems of the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ.Μύ For the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ HD service as carried on Freeview HD there have been some recent changes- Phil Layton explains:

The Freeview HD platform has always been specified to provide a 1080p25 capability.Μύ This is why STBs are mandated to have a 1080p50 output to enable seamless up-conversion to a mode which is guaranteed to be present in all display devices.Μύ A great deal of material is shot natively at 1080p25 and there are significant advantages in maintaining 1080p25 through to the viewer's display.Μύ Within a single programme interlaced may be used for moving credits, cross-fades and studio shots whereasΜύ progressive may be used for location shot material.

Up until now this capability has not been exploited and 1080p25 material was encoded using a 1080i25 encoding mode.Μύ But after a software upgrade on the 22nd/23rd March the HD encoder supporting ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ HD on Freeview HD has been set-up to automatically detect progressive material and change
encoding mode appropriately.ΜύΜύ The encoded bitstream can onlyΜύ change at each GOP boundary to ensure decoders maintain a consistent display. This means that each coded video sequence either contains interlaced or progressive pic_struct values within the bitstream.ΜύΜύ The transitions between interlaced and progressive modes are entirely dependent upon how a programme has been made.

Week 56 of our team's weeknotes, where Akua wrestles with a tomcat, Kat becomes addicted to one of our own prototypes, users own their data, Theo ponders and blends, a black box whirs, and things get fixed by being switched off and on again.

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