
UltraGrid - A High Definition Collaboratory

   Copyright (c) 2001-2004 University of Southern California 
   Copyright (c) 2003-2004 University of Glasgow
   Copyright (c) 2005-2012 CESNET z.s.p.o.
   All rights reserved.

   This software is distributed under license, see the file COPYRIGHT for
   full terms and conditions.


About UltraGrid
   UltraGrid from Laboratory of Advanced Networking Technologies (ANTLab) is 
   a software implementation of high-quality low-latency video and audio
   transmissions using commodity PC and Mac hardware. Supported resolutions
   range through HD (1920x1080) up to 4K (4096x2160). The high-quality is
   achieved either by using uncompressed streams or streams with very low
   compression ratio. End-to-end transmission latency (i.e., all the way from
   the camera to the display) is about 100ms, but it varies based on camera
   and capture cards being used. UltraGrid was originally a research project
   used to demonstrate the possibilities of 10Gbps networks and to study
   multi-point data distribution in such environments. Recent advances in the
   field of GPU-accelerated low-latency codecs extend its usability also to
   Gigabit networks. UltraGrid is supported on PCs with Linux operating system
   and Macs with MacOS X. The software is open-source distributed under
   BSD license, i.e., we're interested in both research/academic and commercial
   applications. Nowadays, main application areas are collaborative
   environments, medical, cinematography and broadcasting applications, as well
   as various educational activities.

   It is a fork of the original UltraGrid developed by Colin Perkins, Ladan
   Gharai, et al..

   Our work is supported by CESNET research intent "Optical Network of National
   Research and Its New Applications" (MŠM 6383917201) and partially also by
   Masaryk University research intent "Parallel and Distributed Systems"
   (MŠM 0021622419). 

   The contents of this directory are as follows:

   	COPYRIGHT	Full license terms and conditions
   	INSTALL		Installation instructions
	NEWS		Change log and modification history
	README		This file
	REPORTING-BUGS	Recommendations for reporting bugs
	bin/		Compiled binaries
	src/		Source code for the UltraGrid system
	test/ 		Source code and binaries for test routines
	Makefile.in	Build script
	acconfig.h	"	"
	config.guess	"	"
	config.sub	"	"
	configure	"	"
	configure.ac	"	"
	install-sh	"	"


Hardware and Software Requirements

    Recommended Hardware Setup:
        64-bit CPU with at least 2 cores
            Tested version: 2x 2-core Opteron CPUs,64-bit Ubuntu (both latest and LTS), Fedora, Debian and openSUSE 
        OpenGL3 - compatible card
            Proprietary drivers strongly recommended
            DXT compression on GPU is tested with OpenGL 3.3
            JPEG2000 compression requires NVidia GPU, GT 580 or higher
                JPEG2000 compression is not yet supported 
        For uncompressed 1.5Gbps streams (either sending or receiving), 10GbE network interface card is needed
            we test with PCIe Myrinet 10GbE 
        For SDI send/receive capabilities, DVS, DeckLink or Linsys Quad card is required
            Linsys module in UG supports only capturing 

        Grabbing card should be located on a separate PCI bus from network card if possible.

    Required Software Preliminaries
        You will need this software (in brackets are optional features for which you'll need it):

            X.Org and ATI/NVidia proprietary drivers (receiver - OpenGL/SDL display, sender - RTDXT compression)
            SDL (SDL display)
            OpenGL (RTDXT sender or OpenGL display on receiver)
            GLEW library (DXT sender)
            DVS SDK/Blackmagic drivers/Quad drivers 

            devel packages need to be installed as well 
        
        DVS SDK or VideomasterHD from Deltacast needs to be obtained separately
        because it cannot be distributed with UltraGrid (license). Please refer
        our wiki for further information (https://www.sitola.cz/igrid/index.php/UltraGrid)

Using the UltraGrid System

   The file INSTALL gives instructions for building the UltraGrid system. 
   Once the system has been built, the "uv" binary will be present. This
   can be invoked as follows:

   	uv -d <display_device> -m <mtu> hostname	(on the receiver)
	uv -t <capture_device> -m <mtu> hostname        (on the sender)

   The <display_device> is one of the list viewed with '-d help'.

   The <capture_device> is one of the list viewed with '-t help'. Name
   of capture device usually follows with configuration of video mode,
   video input etc. All options can be interactivelly shown.

   The <mtu> specifies the maximum transfer unit of the network path from
   sender to receiver (the default MTU is 1500 octets, suitable for use on
   standard Ethernets). This parameter allows the application to make use
   of networks with larger MTU, for example gigabit Ethernet using jumbo
   frames. 

   Further options follow UltraGrid command-line help (-h) or visit our wiki
   for further information (https://www.sitola.cz/igrid/index.php/Running_UltraGrid)

   As an example, if a user on host "ormal" wishes to send video captured
   using a DVS HDstation card at 60 frames per second to another user on
   host "curtis" with a display using the OpenGL driver, then the user on host
   "ormal" would run where 38 indicates video format (here 1080i@30fps) and
   2vuy tells it is an 8-bit YUV codec (also 10-bit is possible):

   	uv -t dvs:38:2vuy curtis

   while the user on "curtis" would run:

   	uv -d gl ormal

   The system requires access to UDP ports 5004 and 5005: you should open
   these ports on any firewall on the network path. High definition video
   formats require approximately 1 gigabit per second of network capacity.


Performance Tuning: Network

   To achieve optimum performance with high definition video, it may be
   necessary to tune your system's network parameters to more aggressive
   values than used by default.  

   A key factor affecting performance is the path MTU. It is unlikely that
   the system will sustain gigabit rates with the 1500 octet Ethernet MTU. 
   If using a gigabit Ethernet you may be able to improve performance by
   setting an 8192 octet MTU on the interface, provided all intermediate
   hops on the path from sender to receiver support the large MTU. 

   UltraGrid attempts to increase the UDP receive socket buffer from the
   default value (typically 64 kilobytes) to 4/6 megabytes. If successful,
   this will make the system more robust to scheduling variations and
   better able to accept bursty packet arrivals. UltraGrid will notify
   you if it cannot increase buffers. You should follow those instructions
   and set your system according to it.

   Interrupt processing load on the receiver host may be significant when
   running at high rates. Depending on your network interface hardware it
   may be possible to coalesce interrupts to reduce this load, although
   the settings to do this are highly driver dependent. On FreeBSD, the
   use of network device polling may also help performance: see the man
   page for "polling" in section 4 of the manual.

   In many cases, the performance of your network interface card may be
   limited by host bus performance (this is particularly an issue at high
   rates, for example when using HD format video).


Performance Tuning: Display devices

   If using a HW grabbing card (eg. DVS) as a display device, the
   key factor limiting performance is PCI bus contention. Ensure that
   the grabbing card is on a separate PCI bus to the network card --
   this typically requires a server class motherboard. On Linux, the
   PCI bus topology can be displayed using "lspci -tv", for example:

	[root@ormal root]# lspci -tv
	-+-[03]---06.0  Xilinx, Inc.: Unknown device d150
	 +-[01]-+-02.0-[02]--+-04.0  Adaptec 7899P
	 |      |            \-04.1  Adaptec 7899P
	 |      \-0e.0  3Com Corporation 3c985 1000BaseSX
	 \-[00]-+-00.0  ServerWorks CNB20HE
		+-00.1  ServerWorks CNB20HE
		+-00.2  ServerWorks: Unknown device 0006
		+-00.3  ServerWorks: Unknown device 0006
		+-04.0  Intel Corporation 82557 [Ethernet Pro 100]
		+-0e.0  ATI Technologies Inc Rage XL
		+-0f.0  ServerWorks OSB4
		\-0f.1  ServerWorks: Unknown device 0211
	[root@ormal root]# 

   showing an DVS card on PCI bus [03] (the card shows as a Xilinx
   device) and a gigabit Ethernet card on PCI bus [02] (the 3Com entry).

   For software display, you can use SDL or OpenGL display. Both are
   accelerated (Mac and Linux) if you have properly configured video
   drivers. On Linux, basic operability can be checked with following
   commands. If configured properly, both should display driver
   properties:
	[root@ormal root]# glxinfo
        <-- output omitted -->
   and for SDL (accelerated through XVideo:
	[root@ormal root]# xvinfo
        <-- output omitted -->

   If you intend to use some of DXT compressions, recommended driver
   is OpenGL, which can display it natively. When using other display
   drivers, decompression is still done throught OpenGL and then displayed
   with requested video driver.


Performance Tuning: Other Factors

   The UltraGrid system will attempt to enable POSIX real-time scheduling
   to improve performance. This behaviour is disabled by default now, because
   it can occupy the whole system when enabled, but it can be stil enabled by
   '--enable-rt' configure option. If you see the message:

	WARNING: Unable to set real-time scheduling

   when starting the application, this means that the operating system did
   not permit it to enable real-time scheduling. The application will run,
   but with reduced performance. The most likely reason for failure to set
   realtime scheduling is that the application has insufficient privilege:
   it should either be run by root, or be made setuid root. A similar
   message:

   	WARNING: System does not support real-time scheduling

   indicates that your operating system does not support POSIX real-time
   scheduling. The application will still run, but performance may be less
   than desired.


   You can find more operating system tweaks at this pages (Linux):
   https://www.sitola.cz/igrid/index.php/Setup_UltraGrid_%28Linux_source%29
   and for Mac:
   https://www.sitola.cz/igrid/index.php/Setup_UltraGrid_%28MacOS_X_source%29

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