Electrosonic Visits the HPL
This last Friday, the Lab had the pleasure of being personally introduced to some of the good folks at Electrosonic Systems and their 2D/3D encoder the VN-Matrix. The VN is an unassuming little black box that claims to be one of the world's fastest encoder and decoders, with only a 35ms latency for encoding/decoding 2D images. Our firsthand look proved an interesting window into the world of bandwidth-intelligent high-resolution imaging technology.
From Left: Chris Nelson of Electrosonic, HSL and Karl Johnson in front of the Lab's VN_Matrix Test Bed.
Showing us the VN at the Lab were Karl Johnson, General Manager of Networked Imaging Products and Chris Nelson, Regional Business Manager - Mid Atlantic @ Electrosonic. To give you a bit of background on Electrosonic, the company specializes in large screen image processing, media networks and show control, and outsourced facilities management and equipment maintenance. These applications comes together in the form of large video walls for clients that range from Military Command and Control, Museum and Visitor Centers, Theme Park and Attractions all the way to the world of TV and Broadcasting.
The VN-Matrix product fits snugly into their lineup, allowing the company's video wall applications to replicate and render ultra-high resolution images across the globe. The box is capable of encoding and decoding detailed 2D imagery at the WUXGA (1920x1200) resolution or full HD video (1920x1200) with accompanying audio, all in real time. Some of the advantages the VN-Matrix claims over its competition are the way it handles errors. Using a proprietary codec, the VN is able to achieve 35ms latency through the box with limited pixel disruption that will not carry over into additional frames, like MPEG2 and H.264 encoding can do. The VN will also transmit the keyboard strokes and mouse gestures of the remote party across with the images they are sending, making this product a solution for the collaborative 2D space.
NOTE: All images come from a Washington University Paper that discusses the effect of bit errors on compressed systems like the VNMatrix. We have removed the MPEG4/H.264 error reproduction previously shown but Mr. Johnson would like to add that, "The effect of packet loss and bit errors on H.264 video streams is more severe than MPEG-2 because it has more efficient compression and a higher percentage of information represents I-frames. When I-frame data is corrupted it has a more catastrophic effect on the visible results."
The obvious appeal of the VN to the world of telepresence is the machine's ability to stream complex 'pixel-perfect' 2D images across vast distances to accompany any telepresence deployment. Such precise distance image rendering may seem a touch excessive for routine office documents but between disparate engineering departments reliant on CAD drawings, the VN/telepresence combo could vastly improve intra-company collaboration. Some of the example applications shown to us include Boeing's collaboration on real-time CAD drawings, a BT global operations center, Lockheed flight simulators, and the ability for the military to share real-time targeting information over standard T1 lines. But how did the device work in a real world environment?
We put the VNMatrix into the new HPL Test Bed to see how it worked. Our lab recently turned up a 4.5MBps / 3 T-1 line super-high QoS test network from visual collaboration Inter-networking provider MASERGY which runs alongside the Lab's existing Verizon FiOS connection. As part of the Lab's expansion program, we are looking to hire a test engineer to help professionalize out testing methodology. For this demonstration, Electrosonic provided us with a LAN network solution.
In the test bed, the VN-Matrix encoder/decoder system was tasked with transmitting a simulated satellite's global position relative to the earth across a wired gigabit Ethernet connection (setup in much the same way the above diagram illustrates minus the WAN). It worked very well with the crisp, pixel perfect images Electrosonic promised. We also witnessed the system successfully transmit a 720p HD video signal across the same platform with only an almost imperceptible lag between the two screens. Although the test was done on an in-house network, the remote display rendered by the VN was very impressive in both its quality and speed. We would have liked to simulate various network conditions for the VN, which wasn't an option on this go round, but we still believe the VN-Matrix is worthy of a look from anyone with high resolution imaging needs.
