CCIRN Working Group On Digital Video Committee Meeting Minutes October 12, 1999 Agenda: Welcome to Meeting Participants. Introductions Discussions of Areas of Particular Interest to Attendees List of Areas of Common Interest I. Meeting Attendees Philippe.galvez@cern.ch Philippe Galvez Kita@jp.apan.net Yasuichi Kitamura Chon@cosmos.kaist.ac.kr Kilnam Chon Antonioe@servidor.unam.mx Antonio Gonzalez Eva@servidor.unam.mx Eva Lopez Ebslee@ntu.edu.sg Francis Lee j.ribeirofilho@nc-rj.rnp.br Jose Ribeiro-Filho Park@nclab.hanyang.ac.kr Yong-Jin Park Konishi@kddlabs.co.jp Kazunori Konishi Markus@acsys.anu.edu.au Markus Buchhorn Egon.verharen@surfnet.nl Egon Verharen Meynell@terena.nl Kevin Meynell Cavalli@terena.nl Valentino Cavalli j-mambretti@nwu.edu Joe Mambretti (Chair) jim-chen@icair.org Jim Chen goto@info.waseda.ac.jp Shigeki Goto mbeck@cs.utk.edu Micah Beck Not In Attendence: yhchoi@snu.ac.kr Yanghee Choi marshall@canarie.ca Peter Marshall II. Proceedings 1. Opening The CCIRN Working Group on Digital Video was established in recognition of the importance of Digital Video as an international Internet application, and in recognition of the major benefits possible through international coordination and cooperation, in multiple areas including research and testbed deployment, technology evaluation, and production services. The mission of the working group is to pursue common goals that will accelerate progress toward high-quality digital video services for the greater Internet community. 2. Minutes Review Because this was the first meeting of the Group, there were no previous minutes. 3. Participant Reports All participants reported common areas of interest in capabilities that would allow provision of high-quality digital video services to the international Internet community. Although digital video has been widely identified as an important technology, it is a challenge to utilize effectively on the Internet, particularly over international links because of the high cost of bandwidth but also because of the need for effective QoS implementations. The primary services required are digital video on-demand, video conferencing, and live transmission. Specific types of DV applications noted included distance education, transmission of special events, access to media archives, and interactivity with remote scientific instrumentation, such as those used for microscopy. Technology considerations for this group include supporting technologies such as multicast, DiffServ/QoS, and effective instrumentation for measurements. Other considerations included selection of specific encoding formats for applications, such as MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, and MPEG7, and transport protocols such as H.323. HDTV considerations were also noted as an emerging area of importance, as well as VR applications such as those that are CAVE based. Other topics important to this Group include new capabilities for managing digital video assets including indexing, metadata, access control, maintaining media archives, digital libraries, replication services, application signaling, new types of architectures, and intellectual property rights. The Group strongly indicated that persistent digital video testbeds are important to achieving enhanced digital video services for the Internet, especially with regard to examining new technologies, techniques and protocols. Multicast was noted as a particularly important support technology for digital video, but implementation problems remain, and this is another area for potential collaborative efforts. It was noted that there is an emerging protocol, Small Group Multicast (SGM - also called list-of-receiver multicast and connectionless multicast) that may address some multicast issues especially for the international community. Multicast was developed essentially for large scale broadcast to many thousands for receivers. For small groups of ten or less, SGM provides a less complex, "light-weight" solution. In addition, SGM can be deployed in servers and does not depend on multicast code in routers, which is an important consideration for the diverse international community. It was also noted that some attention would have to be paid to many areas of the world where connectivity primary is based on low-band links. For example, for many areas Mbone-based solutions may be much more appropriate than MPEG1. Finally, it was noted that STAR TAP was a particularly valuable resource for the international DV community. 4. Organizational Issues Some of those at this meeting were attending on behalf of their organizations and may provide for other representation for subsequent specific activities, such as testbed projects. The CCIRN Committee has recommended that Working Groups should have contacts from each continent "if possible." This Group will attempt some form of outreach to provide for representation for additional continents. Coordination and cooperation between this Group and existing digital video groups, e.g., APAN's television group, TERANA's digital video group, and the I2 DV initiative, was recommended. It was noted that the Global Internet Digital Video network project, as part of the iGRID effort, was launched at SC'98, and may form the basis of some future collaborative activities. 5. Internet Society The INET2000 form may provide a major opportunity to demonstrate international digital video capabilities. 6. Future Meeting Schedule The Group determined that they would meet at appropriate forums, for example, during the INET conferences, but would try to conduct business as much as possible via email because not all members will be able to attend all forums. 7. Summary of Action Items 1) Develop Group communications methods 2) Explore opportunities for testbeds 3) Conduct joint experiments 4) Conduct joint demonstrations 5) Explore concepts of cooperative international digital video services as prototypes