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The Super Hi-vision camera

After years of being mothballed Television Centre's TC0 burst back to life with a bang today as R&D brought together one of the biggest experimental broadcasts in years.Ìý asked us to help them demonstrate a selection of the latest broadcast technologies that will be available for the 2012 games, so we have brought in the NHK Super Hi Vision system, stereoscopic 3D, a couple of our own 3D projects, and 6music were using their own rig (plus a few cheekily sited Flips) to capture content for their website.Ìý At the height of activity this morning, when our own 'making of' crew, plus were on set, there were probably in excess of 25 cameras trained on the band!

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is a prototype developed by ´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development to discover and track the most shared ´óÏó´«Ã½ webpages on Twitter. An overview of the project has already covered in our previous post.

Today we're publishing the full source code of this system under the GNU GPLv3 licence on github at .

This post will discuss the technical architecture of the system, how we approached various problems, and our technical learnings from building the system.

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is the main annualÌýconference on digital preservation issues and technology.Ìý It ran , and included a session: three minute contributions.ÌýÌý Here's mine:

I'm not planning to actually perform two miracles in three minutes.ÌýÌý I may not even perform one.Ìý But two things that we take for granted have qualities that, to me, are something like miracles.

The first is the digital object.Ìý Our conference has the title "7th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects" so we should know what they are.

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We're back in the swing of things after various distractions and holidays etc. On Monday, Chris N works onÌýthe marker tracking code running on Android mobile, but it's not completed yet. He getsÌý upÌýand running on our interim server in the R&D network.Ìý

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We're very excited to hear that the installation created by our researchers has been shortlisted for the at the in Barcelona on the 13/15th of October.Ìý Plans are underway to set up the installation at NEM, along with other R&D demos showcasing some of our computer vision and sound technology.

For those of you who can't make it to the gallery, I've put together a couple of short films which give more of an insight into this installation.

Firstly we have a straight feed of the video output of the system when a music track is used as the input. As you can see, the visualisation automatically incorporates bits of footage captured into the system by the cameras.

We also filmed various random bits of footage while the project was going on, which I've cut together into a short behind the scenes video. Since this work was done in addition to the day job, it gives a pretty good idea of the intense atmosphere the team was working in during the development process.

The installation is still available to play with until this coming Sunday (26th September) at 28 Redchurch Street, London, E2 7DP from 11am-5pm. For extra fun I suggest you bring along music to play at it, although for the melodic, singing is also an option...

Chris Pike has been leading a team of our trainees and young researchers building an exciting installation for this weekend's Anti Design Festival- here's the story of how the project's gone in hs own words- images by team members:

Several months ago, Brandon Butterworth, our chief scientist, snuck in at the start of a meeting of ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D trainees to propose a little extra-curricular project. He'd been chatting with Neville Brody, the influential designer and head of Research Studios, who recently redesigned bbc.co.uk's . Neville was organising a design festival to be held in East London in September and was keen to get us involved. And Brandon thought "What a great opportunity to put the skills of our younger engineers to the test and allow our technology to be applied in new creative ways." And what we failed to think was "If we commit to this we're not going to have any free evenings or weekends for months on end." So we foolishly jumped at the challenge.

The event is the which opens tomorrow in East London's Redchurch area. Our team of 11 R&D volunteers have collaborated with to produce an interactive work that is installed at Londonnewcastle project space for the duration of the festival. This piece is called , in reference to the chaotic creative technique popularised by William Burroughs and later David Bowie. It aims to be a living beast that sits in the 'salon' area of the gallery, providing a performance space and responding to everything it sees and hears within.

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Jon McKinnell calibrates the imagery for the installation. Photo by Rod Hodgson

Dave and Ryszard of CL&M have constructed a stage and furniture for the room in their raw aesthetic style, into which they have build a 10 speaker sound system. Around this we have built a system that generates an archive of audio-visual content, containing submissions from ADF's contributing artists and footage captured automatically during the festival events. Clips are pulled from this archive, cut-up and chaotically pasted into a three-dimensional ambisonic soundscape and onto a pulsating projected sphere.

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Custom speaker enclosures as well as screens are assembled for the installation. Photo by Becky Gregory-Clarke

We have also generated four connected interactive digital pieces, which are mounted on the walls of the salon. They all use cameras and microphones to observe the activity in the space. Each one allows visitors to mess about with the selected clips from the archive. Their movements and sounds are connected to the main projection and sound system. This allows everyone in the room to collaborate to manipulate a set of archive clips to produce a new dynamic form.

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Once the kit is installed, the lights are dropped and the code trialled in it's new installation.Photo by Becky Gregory-Clarke

This project hasn't been done at the expense of our proper ´óÏó´«Ã½ engineering research, we've still been doing our day jobs. But once we clock out we've been diving straight into the world of ADF. Many an evening and weekend has been spent camped out in Centre House meeting rooms, surrounded by speakers and displays, stressing over specifications, bickering about coding style, and panicking about the immense amount of work that still needs doing. We've been kept going by an almost constant supply of falafel and the knowledge that it will all be worth it when it's finished.

In the last two weeks our evenings have been spent in and out of Redchurch St, drilling, hanging, wiring and tweaking. It's been amazing to see it all come together with the rest of the festival and even more amazing to see it actually work. There have been times when it seemed easier just to pack our bags and leave, but I'm glad we persevered.

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The gallery install has been preceded by weeks of intensive development in the labs. Photo by Max Leonard

We are proud of what we have achieved and would like to invite you to visit the Anti Design Festival which runs from 18th-26th September. The piece will be exhibited at 28 Redchurch St, London, E2 7DP from 11am-5pm.

Huge thanks and congratulations to everyone inolved in the R&D team:

Chris Baume
Robert Dawes
Rebecca Gregory-Clarke
Thomas Heritage
Roderick Hodgson
Max Leonard
David Lewis
Jonathan McKinnell
Martin Nicholson
Chris Pike
Alia Sheikh

Also to Charlesworth, Lewandowski & Mann for what has been a great collaboration.

There are lots of other events going on as part of ADF. More information can be found at:

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Sam, Chris B and Duncan formed the Prototyping team at an internal hackday on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Homepage. They quickly dashed off an XMPP PubSub-based widget of real-time football scores, commentary and video highlights. It looks very impressive and got lots of plaudits on the day.

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Rupert Brun has written a great post on the Internet Blog outlining the XHQ experiment with the Proms.Ìý He has very kindly agreed to give us on the R&D blog a more detailed technical overview of his team's work, for those of us with a liking for the techy stuff!

This post explains the signal path used to deliver the 320Kb/s AAC internet stream of Radio 3 for the final week of the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms. For background information about the experimental extra high quality feed, you may wish to read the entry on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Internet Blog and to listen to the audio, visit the web page hosting the experiment here.

The Radio 3 Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, available this year in Extra High Quality. Image CC Steve Bowbrick

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The signal from the microphones at the Royal Albert Hall is converted on the stage to 48ks/s 24bit audio and sent to the outside broadcast vehicle over fibre. Each microphone has appropriate equalisation and time alignment applied and the sound is mixed down to stereo for broadcast on Radio 3.

Still at 24 bit 48ks/s the stereo audio is fed over an "E1" 2Mb/s circuit to London Broadcasting House and passes through the main audio router to the Radio 3 Continuity Studio. Here it is unfortunately necessary to sample rate convert the audio to 44.1ks/s. The reasons for this are largely historic. When Radio 3 moved from analogue tape to digital production, the majority of the audio was stored on CD - either CD(R) for ´óÏó´«Ã½ recordings or commercial CDs. Due to limitations in faster-than-real-time sample rate conversion at the time, this in turn meant that the computer playout system used to hold audio for transmission had to operate at 44.1ks/s. so that CDs could be "ripped" into it. None the less, the playout system does work with uncompressed BWAV files rather than MP2 as was normal at the time. The same system is still in use today and it has so far not been possible to convert the system (and all the content within it) to 48ks/s. London Broadcasting House is a multi-media site and in preparation for the arrival of TV news we have set our core audio router to operate at 48ks/s.Ìý This means that for the immediate future radio works in a mixed economy of sample rates. By operating the studios and playout system at 44.1ks/s the number of conversions is minimised. For the live ´óÏó´«Ã½ Proms concerts there would be fewer conversions if we switched the Radio 3 continuity suite to 48ks/s but for the majority of the time this would not be the best configuration and it is not the sort of change that can be made on a regular basis - certainly not whilst the studio is on air. Once we have a new playout system (planned for 2012) it is hoped that it will be possible to operate at 48ks/s end to end, although archive content and commercial CDs will obviously need to be converted from 44.1ks/s for broadcast.

The signal passes through the continuity suite mixing desk, to allow the broadcast to be faded up at the appropriate time to become part of Radio 3's output. The mixing desk output feeds a "Transmission Router" which is used to send the studio broadcasting Radio 3 at any given time to the Radio 3 transmitters. This involves a second sample rate conversion, back to 48ks/s. The transmission router feeds a number of transmission chains such as FM, DAB and DTV (terrestrial and satellite). For Radio 3 we do not use transmission processing for any digital platform, so the feed to the DAB coders is the same as that to the digital television platforms and the internet. For other radio networks, transmission processing is used and it is matched to the platform. We use the digital television feed for the internet because we believe the processing used is the most appropriate - the bit rates and intended listening environments are similar. Ideally we would use separate transmission chains and processing for the internet but the small audience size does not yet justify the cost of this.

The audio is then fed to a small router which feeds the sound cards of our Coyopa system. Coyopa codes (with one exception) all network radio audio for the internet, including live streaming and on demand. The exception is the production of podcasts, which usually require a separate editorial version of the programme so the files for podcasts are created using the desktop production tools used to edit them.

Coyopa has two halves for resilience, each with about 60 servers. It creates audio streams for each of our network radio stations in a number of formats. For each radio station there are both national and international streams because we don't have the rights to make all of our content available outside the UK and have to give international listeners a restricted service at times. Coyopa also records all of our output according the broadcast schedule (in essence the ) and uses these recordings to create the "on demand" files for programmes.

The sound cards in the servers carry out the third and final sample rate conversion to 44.1ks/s because the domestic codecs used to replay the audio in listeners' computers don't support a wide range of bit rates at 48ks/s. The sound cards are also used to provide some protection limiting and gain adjustment in order that the codecs are fed at the correct level. We feed the codecs with a peak level of -4dBFS because the codecs themselves can generate overshoots and if we fed them with a 0dBFS signal, clipping would occur. The codecs use the Fraunhofer encoder which outputs AAC-LC. The audio streams from both halves of the Coyopa system are then sent to a third party for distribution over the internet. The iPlayer just provides a link which points to the appropriate stream. The 320ks/s experimental feed uses exactly the same audio and codecs as the normal 192ks/s feed; the only difference is that the codec is set to deliver a higher bit rate.

ÌýRupert Brun is Head of Technology for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Audio and Music

• Listen to Radio 3's Extra High Quality Proms audio on the Radio 3 web site during live broadcasts of The Proms until 11 September 2010. On the same page you'll find a link to a survey about the experiment. Please take a minute to complete it once you've tried the Extra High Quality experience.
• Help us spread the word about Extra Quality Audio for the Proms by tweeting about the experiment using the hashtag .
• Read Rupert's FAQ for answers to the big questions about PromsXHQ.
• Read this blog post by Radio 3 Interactive Editor Gabriel Gilson on the Radio 3 blog for some additional context.

The Exhibiton halls at IBC showcase the latest technologies from around the world in the fields of broadcast engineering, production and distribution, and increasingly from mobile and internet streaming media.Ìý ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D will have stands around the massive exhibition halls demonstrating some of our latest projects, showing our work in collaborative and independant projects.Ìý For us this is a crucial opportunity to promote our developments to the wider industry.

We've listed the key stands where you'll find us below, and if you want to find the stands at the show- the should help.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development, MyMedia - Hall 3, MyMedia stand 3.D02.
The MyMedia EC-funded collaborative research project is exploring the use of intelligent recommender systems for audio/visual content. The project has developed a shared-source software framework which provides all the components required to build a state-of-the-art recommender system.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development, Engines - Hall 3, Engines stand 3.D05.
The ENGINES project (Enabling Next GeneratIon NEtworks for broadcast Services) aims at constituting a Task Force to support development of the Digital Video Broadcasting-Next Generation Handheld (DVB-NGH) standard. In addition ENGINES shall provide means for the verification and validation of advanced features of Digital Video Broadcasting - Second Generation Terrestrial (DVB-T2) standard and verification and validation for the coming DVB-NGH standard.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development, No Tube - Hall 3, No Tube stand 3.D08
NoTube is a European project exploring television's future in the ubiquitous Web. NoTube is developing a platform which will use a service oriented architecture to integrate already existing functionalities such as EPG as well as advanced functionalities such as broadcaster metadata mediation, TV and multimedia content adaptation, various delivery mechanisms, semantic user profiling and recommendation. This service oriented platform, based on the hybrid broadcast/broadband TV provides the viewer in addition to program recommendations, personalised EPG and advertising with personalized multimedia programmes and social TV (bookmarking and sharing TV programs with one's friends).

´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development, 3D4YOU - Hall 3, 3D4YOU stand 3.D11.
The 3D4YOU project is working to develop the key elements of a practical 3D television system, particularly, the definition of a 3D delivery format and guidelines for a 3D content creation process.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development, Ingex - Hall 5, ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D Ingex stand 5.A16
The Ingex system brings the huge advantages of tapeless production to multicamera programme making. Controlled from the production gallery, the system records all the studio feeds and stores them directly to disk.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development, Barrier Free Access - Hall 10, EBU stand 10
Theis showing accessibility projects from the ´óÏó´«Ã½, NHK and RAI under the banner Barrier Free Access.

Every September the broadcasting industry of Europe, and the rest of the world, convenes in Amsterdam at the RAI conference center for one of the most important technical conferences and exhibitions of the year.Ìý Running from the 9th to the 14th of September the will have about 1300 exhibiting companies, and roughly 45,000 attendees.Ìý For the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and especially a department like us, it's a critical event, where we show some of our latest work and just as importantly, get to see the developments of our peers across the world in lectures, presentations, and in the flesh on trade stands.

This year our engineers will be presenting a number of sessions in the conference, which we've listed below:


Thursday 9th September


Ìý14:30-16:00 in E105 - 107
Mike Armstrong Senior Engineer ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D presents a technical paper titled Enabling and Enriching Broadcast Services by combining IP and broadcast delivery"



16:30-18:00 in room E105 - 107
´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development technologist Yang Xiao taking part in a conference session designed to provide delegates with both a tutorial overview of how the latest network technologies are being implemented in both wireless and fibre/cable systems This is based on work from the which provides new tools for broadcasters utilising IP for their infrastructure. It is also the place to gather up to date information on how important considerations like efficient network planning and service monitoring of media streams are achieved in practice.
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Friday 10 September


15:00-16:30 in room E105 - 107
Bruce Weir ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D takes part in the second of a two-part forum session where the latest innovations emerging from the world's most prestigious media laboratories are laid bare.
Dr Weir wil be demonstrating the latest developments in the

Saturday 11th September


09:30-11:00 in E105 - 107
Phil Tudor lead research engineer, ´óÏó´«Ã½ R&D helps visitors get closer to the sharp end of content creation in part one of two sessions which cover the gamut of blue-sky production and post developments from mobile to Ultra HDTV.Ìý Phil will be outlining a number of key recent developments in the Ingex platform, and showcasing some recent implementations.

Sunday 12th September

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18:30 in The Auditorium
This year ´óÏó´«Ã½ Research & Development have been shortlisted for the IBC Innovation Award for its work on DVB-T2 for terrestrial HD / ´óÏó´«Ã½.


These days the ´óÏó´«Ã½ is very sensitive to the perception of value to license fee payers, and rightly so.Ìý To this end attendance at IBC is very tightly limited, and you can be certain that every single ´óÏó´«Ã½ staff member at the event this year is there with a crucial job to do.Ìý The engineering behind television, radio and online broadcasting is based on a fast moving global industry, and attendance at these events is essential for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ staff responsible for developing the infrastructure for the corporation.

A short week this week but there's a quite a bit to cram in; lots of documentation, proposal writing and scoping of fledgling projects.Tuesday is a bit of blur with stand-ups, budget and management meetings. Sean and Paul manage to squeeze in some time to work through some possible architecture ideas for a big data processing project and I finish the day over in W12 talking about issues other teams face managing development work in a Research environment.

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