Streaming Television

At least the Russians understood.

The 32 channels of free-to-air satellite services previously reticulated from UC around computer research networks the world over are no longer leaving the campus. Messages of support and encouragement have reached us from around Australia, the US, Canada, and Europe, including one message from Russia expressing their sadness at the lost opportunities the streams offered them in language teaching.

Why is it useful anyway?

These services are valuable at least for the following reasons, not just because we can (or could) stream 32 channels of live television around the world on reesearch networks.

1. Language teaching is in crisis because their methods are too costly: we have the opportunity using the streaming services to provide media rich environments that when combined with focused academic support will make language learning more relevant, efficient and cost-effective.
2. In Journalism, we provide exposure to the methods that the next generation of journalists will be using, not burdening them with the techniques of the past.
3. In New Media, the technologies we are pioneering will, and do, provide effective alternative distribution opportunities, creating new distribution models and new industries for the content generation (Generation Content, like Generation X).
4. In teaching we empower teachers to take the experiences of children out of the classroom and across the planet.
5. For our overseas students we provide access to at least some form of window back home.
6. Media Analysts can in an afternoon compare opinions from more than a dozen sources on world events.
7. Lawyers have huge opportunities in rights management and regulation control.

It's about change, outward focus, engagement beyond the borders of our campus, our local community, our country.

Once we have the streams running here (which we still do), getting them to Puerto Rico and Moscow (and all points between on Research Networks) is trivial technically and doesn't "cost" anyone anything.

Take-Down Notice

The University responds to an approach from an outside organisation to remove materials from a Divisional website that infringe their rights.

Last week a well-known international online auction site wrote to the University claiming a University website was using its copyrighted materials inappropriately and fraudulently. It turned out that a student had, as a part of an assignment, created a parody of the site and hosted it on the server provided for the purpose of hosting student work.

We were informed of the notice on Thursday morning, 24 May 2007. After checking the existence of the site, TSU helpdesk immediately blocked access to the site from the Internet, and also removed the student’s access to the materials. Their lecturer was informed of the removal, and contacted the student to explain the situation. ICT Services pointed out that the student had breached the University’s Network Access Policy by using copyright material without authority and by misrepresenting the auction site.

Section 4.1 of the Network Access Policy states that:

4.1 Conditions of Use

The Internet service is provided for staff and students in undertaking their duties and studies related to the operations and mission of the University. Staff and students need to remember that use of the University's Internet and Intranet facilities and services is a privilege and not a right. They should be aware also that use of the Internet by the University is governed by a number of laws including copyright, defamation, misrepresentation, Fair Trading legislation and the Trade Practices Act, Telecommunications Regulations, Privacy Act, various criminal laws regarding fraud and obscenity, as well as a number of private codes regarding "netiquette" and the AVCC Policy on Allowed Access to the Internet. The University will take appropriate action upon becoming aware of any illegal use of the University's services and facilities.

The lecturer concerned replied that the student’s site was a purely innocent redesign of a page from the organisation, and undertook to explain to the student the importance of not breaching trademark or copyright in their work. It was quite a surprise that the notice appeared within days of the student’s site going live, an indication of the rigour with which the auction site polices its rights. Access to the student’s workspace was restored, minus the material that was the source of the complaint.

While the severity of the breach was low, it raises the issue for us of providing students (and staff) with access to the infrastructure that allows them easily to publish materials online. Heads of Schools should ensure staff and through them students understand the University’s Network Access Policy and abide by it. Through the ceportfolio service, all students enrolled in units in the Division have access to the same facility that allowed this breach to occur.

The incident also highlights the processes that are in place for rights owners to protect their property: in this case, the organization concerned identified the breach, and wrote to the University with a statement of their concerns. The University considered the concerns through established channels, and acted immediately to satisfy the complaint.

AARNet Concern at Streaming Television

Nervousness at the possibility of rights infringements threatens streaming televison off-campus.

Thirty-two of the 46 digital television services streaming around the University campus are currently available across the AARNet3 next generation research network linking education and research institutions across Australia. Due to interconnections between AARNet3 and other research networks around the world, the services can be received in North America and Europe.

AARNet has recently written to the University asking for information on the legal standing of these services. We are providing the services under fair use for research and education provisions of the Copyright Act, and under the AVCC Screenrights Agreement with CAL.

At the moment the services going outside the campus are on the basis of an engineering trial: does the multicast technology that we use to reticulate the signals actually work as it should? For a number of reasons until recently the services have been unreliable and erratic, which has lead to a number of changes to network configurations, firmware in electronic equipment that manages traffic flow on these next-generation research networks being rewritten and upgraded, and more recently questions of the circumstances under which such services could be delivered in a more reliable way.

To date work on getting the streams to work reliably across the research networks has been done by engineers in AARNet, Internet2 and institutions across the various networks. The pioneering work done here is being recognised, and people everywhere are coming up with ideas of how they might use such services, should they be available on a reliable and accessible basis.

We are now discussing opportunities for teaching, learning and research using the technology in partnership with collaborators across Australia and beyond.

AUDF Grant Success

Grant success for the TSU.

The Apple University Development Fund (AUDF) is administered by the Apple University Consortium (AUC). Each year the AUC calls for projects to be funded (modestly) from AUDF.

One of the requirements of the VVR (see above) is to convert the television signals from the format in which they stream live around the network to one that takes less space to store and can be manipulated (edited and so on) for teaching, learning and research purposes.

This “transcoding” takes a fair amount of computing power and is usually handled by expensive servers. Our Service Delivery Manager has developed an idea for a farm of cheap desktop computers to be used to do the transcoding: a Redundant Array of Inexpensive Transcoders, or RAIT.

AUC has given us a server, three computers, access to technical advice and support for our Service Delivery Manager to attend the upcoming Consortium Conference to talk about his work.

VVR - Virtual Video Recorder

The future of off-air recordings.

In 2002 the Division applied to DEST’s Infrastructure Fund to support a National Institute for Language Learning, NILL. The successful application funded, among other things, the reticulation of analogue and digital television around the University, and it was always intended to complete the service with an online video recording system that complied with the licensing regime the University operates under allowing fair dealing with off-air recorded materials.

The project has been sitting there for a number of years waiting for the resources to become available to complete it. Early in 2006 a prototype VVR or Virtual Video Recorder was demonstrated that created quite a bit on interest (especially at the ANU), but other priorities intervened and the project was put on hold. Recently in his spare time, our Service Delivery Manager has tweaked the prototype somewhat and the system is in a quasi-operational state where a registered user can request a recording be made from any of the 46 digital services currently being reticulated around the computer network, and have the recording “emailed” to you when it is done.

One feature of the system is that if you forget to request a recording until after the program has started, it might still be possible to send you the whole program if someone else did request it.

Streaming Television

Shuttle’s down, streaming back up.

After an interruption over the summer break due to problems with NASA’s border router, the UCTV International Services are back on air (much to the relief of our clients across Europe, North America and Australia). It appears that a misconfigured system somewhere in the US was rebroadcasting our program guide list (called Session Announcement Protocol, or SAP, Announcements) in such a way as to deny NASA Internet access by overwhelming its border router. Our thanks go to all the engineers on both sides of the Pacific who worked on solving the problem, especially the UC Berkeley engineer who identified the errant box (which wasn’t on their network) and organised for it to be shut down.

Projects for 2007

Looking ahead at the activities to occupy our time over the coming year.

With the demise of the IT Infrastructure Fund (the IT Loan), the move to leasing rather than purchasing of computers, and the general budget situation, the Technical Services Unit won’t be purchasing a lot of new equipment in 2007. This will give us the opportunity to commission or finalise a number of services and consolidate our role as a provider of specialised IT and Media services for the Division with the equipment and infrastructure we have available to us from the refresh of our services over the last few years.

Current projects of special note are:

iChatAV

After the success of the trial with Aichi Shukutoku University (ASU) in Nagoya, Japan last year, we will be putting in a permanent facility to support video chat between students here and elsewhere. The facility will be available through the Curriculum Resources Centre in Building 5.

BigVideo — Networked Video Editing Storage Solution

During Semester 1 2007 we expect to implement a networked storage solution for video editing in 9B23. Journalism students will be able to capture their original video material to the store where it can be accessed from any of the 8 workstations in the area. Students will be able to start their editing on one workstation, then return later to any of the workstations and continue their work. Once completed, their stories will be available from the store to the Television Control Room on the A floor in Building 9, where the stories can be played live into the news programs they produce as a part of their Unit.

Media Production Facilities refresh

The media production areas on the A Floor in Building 9 are being rebuilt in an effort to overcome a number of operational issues that have emerged with the facilities over the last few years. The facilities were looking a little tired, messy and outdated, so the refresh is smartening them up visually as well as technically to provide a better and more reliable experience for the users, and a more attractive facility to showcase the Division’s resources.

2006 in review

The last twelve months have been a challenging time for the Technical Services Unit: after many years of relative stability in staffing, over the last eighteen months we have lost a number of staff with between them over 100 years of experience with the University.

The transition of common services like the network, web hosting, wireless networking, staff home directories and shared network drives, helpdesk software, and soon email to ICT Services has not been easy, with TSU staff having to deal with changing responsibilities while at the same time keeping the services going. It is still unclear how much responsibility members of the TSU will continue to have to look after common services even when the services are migrated to ICT Services: a year after IELTS and ASP moved out of the Division the TSU is still required to look after many of the IT services needed to support the ongoing operations of the units.

There have, however, been many successful activities and projects undertaken during the year that often go unnoticed in the day-to-day activities of the Division. Some major highlights this year include:

Printing and photocopying in the Division

In 2006 half of the Division’s photocopiers, and desktop and large-format printer were replaced. All of the desktop printers supported by the Division will have been replaced with new printers by Semester 1, 2007. All the Division-provided photocopiers have been replaced with multifunction devices that print, copy and sometimes fax and scan. By the start of Semester 1, 2007, all the remaining large-format printers will have been replaced with multifunction devices as well: providing double the number of stations for photocopying than before, and much more efficient printing (less that one-third the cost per impression for prints than the machines they replaced).

Media production areas refit

This year saw the start of the refit of the media production areas in Building 9. The refit is designed to overcome increasing maintenance and operational problems that have arisen after years of just keeping the studios and production areas going with short-term fixes and repairs, rather than taking a good hard look at facilities as a whole and eliminating the underlying causes of the ongoing problems. The project to refit the areas is well underway, and is expected to be completed in mid 2007, depending on the requirements to keep using the facilities for teaching during semester.

Wireless access

Over the last few months the Division’s pioneering wireless networking has been taken over by ICT Services. Staff and students can now access the University network through the UCWiFi network from an expanded number of areas around the Division, using the University’s standard UCanConnect service.

Wireless networking is now available in the CRC, CLRC, ILTC, Building 5 Seminar Room, COnference Room and PG Room in Building 9, the Microteaching Rooms, and the Art Room in Building 5.

Server refresh

Many of the servers used in the Division to provide network storage, backup, printer services, enterprise systems and so on came up for replacement in 2006. With the move to centralise common services, rather than replace the systems being retired the Division took the opportunity to focus on better providing for the Division’s specialist needs to support teaching, learning and research.

With the responsibility for staff network storage going to ICT Services, we have focused on developing specialised network storage for the large demands of audio and video editing with the BigVideo Networked Video Editing Storage Solution, initially servicing the Journalism workstations and the Television Control Room.

Large storage requires even larger backup, so a larger-capacity backup system has been installed to accommodate the new demands. Server rooms in Building 9 and Building 20 have been connected with high-speed network connections to allow large files to be moved quickly and efficiently from server to server depending on where the files need to be available. For example, video files edited on the B Floor of Building 9 are included in television programs produced on the A Floor, then served though the streaming server in Building 20, after being suitably prepared, for delivery through NowUC.

Network switches

It would be wonderful to report that network switches throughout the Division are up to the University’s standard, but not yet. The good news is that Building 5 and Building 1 are now upgraded, and there is a program in place to complete the replacement of the Division’s last remaining legacy switches in Building 9 and Building 20 with current technology in 2007. The plan at the moment is to have the replacement program completed by July, 2007.

ASU iChat

Probably the highlight of the year was the successful completion of four video chat sessions between Japanese language students studying at UC with English language students studying at the Aichi Shukutoku University (ASU) in Nagoya, Japan. Live video chats gave students the opportunity to converse with native speakers of the languages they were learning with an immediacy not usually available without international travel. Plans are underway to make the service a permanent feature in the Division from Semester 1, 2007.

UCTV

…and of course UCTV. In 2006, with the support of the University’s Network Management Team, AARNet and international supporters from research networks across Europe and North America, the satellite services being received through the dishes on the top of Building 20 now travel around the world (sometimes back to their country of origin!) in full digital quality via the next-generation research networks that connect Universities and research institutions. Hopefully in 2007 the services will get to Building 9!

Streaming Television

Some changes have been made to the streaming IP television system.

A few weeks ago Al Jazeera (in English: see http://english.aljazeera.net/) became available as a free-to-air television service on a satellite from which other services are being received in the Division.

The service is now running as one of the digital streaming services (check the Session Announcements list under UCTV International in VLC). All the services listed under UCTV International are being received across Europe, North America and Australia on research networks. We are looking at replacing one of the existing services on the analogue RF campus network with Al Jazeera if we can find a suitable candidate for replacement. [Update 1 December 2006: Al Jazeera is now on Channel 25 of RF Network]

See http://uctv.canberra.edu.au/ for more information on the services available and how to connect. On 27 November 2006 The Canberra Times also ran an item on the possibility of funding an expanded service.

UCTV Services now available on AARNet3

Now available around the globe!

On 12 September 2006 22 of the international free-to-air satellite television services being received on Building 20 were switched from GrangeNet (the Government funded high performance research network that closes this year) to AARNet3 (The next generation of the AARNet network: see http://www.aarnet.edu.au/Content.aspx?p=19). AARNet3 was launched in Canberra on 15 September 2006.

Only the international services received from satellites are included in the package, since the local free-to-air services that are reticulated around the campus network as well should not be distributed beyond the local area for regulatory reasons. Discussions are continuing with a number of experts to confirm previous advice on the legality of what we are doing.

With appropriate configurations at the various nodes where the internet traffic is routed, services can now be viewed live in Universities and research institutions connected to AARNet3 from Brisbane to Perth, many points in-between, and beyond.

There is no charge for the traffic because AARNet does not charge for ‘on-net’ (AARNet) traffic.

UCTV channel availability (theoretically…)

[source: http://www.aarnet.edu.au/engineering/aarnet3/]

UCTV Update

Digital television on a desktop near you (if not your own!)

Twenty one live free-to-air digital television channels are now reliably being transmitted from Building 20 around the University network, 13 of them to GrangeNet. It is possible that the GrangeNet channels can be received via experimental networks in Europe and the US (but still not reliably in Building 9!).

As an additional service from the Technical Services Unit, video pieces developed in media, journalism and other units can now be transmitted as a separate service along with the live television services. Any video placed in a particular network folder developed by the TSU for the purpose will be added to a loop of other such pieces and transmitted continuously. When the service becomes operational (when there are videos to play!), it will automatically appear in the Service Announcements list in the VLC player used to receive the existing services.

Recently a student from the Ressies asked if they could access the streams there: the answer is currently no, but the request was forwarded to PVC Research and Information Management. He has undertaken to see if the University can in fact make it work: it requires some updating to the network infrastructure and some work on network access policy, but he and the Deputy Vice Chancellor are hoping to be able to make it work.

IPTV Success

Potentially among the largest broadcasters in the world??

Satellite television services received at the University of Canberra can now be seen throughout Australia on GrangeNet, and even internationally on broadband research networks. A very special thanks is due to the members of the Network Management Team for their pivotal role in making this happen.

[See UC Monitor Online article]

IPTV to GrangeNet

The future of television, on your desktop computer now at UC and soon across GrangeNet.

GrangeNet (GRid And Next GEneration NETwork) is the experimental high performance computer network funded by Government to support grid and advanced communication services for research and education across Australia [http://www.grangenet.net/index.html].

The television channels that we are currently reticulating around our local UC computer network can be made available across the GrangeNet network simply by reconfiguring some of the settings on the program streams and the switches and routers through which the signals pass: with the right configuration someone at UWA in Perth could be watching one of the satellite services being received on campus here in Building 20, at no cost (GrangeNet is free of traffic charges).

GrangeNet’s bandwidth is such that the 120-150Mb/s of satellite television services will hardly have any impact on other services running on their links, which runs at speeds of up to 10Gb/s between nodes.

For legal reasons we would only provide free-to-air satellite services that originate outside Australia on GrangeNet: no local terrestrial services nor ABC Asia Pacific or network feeds will be included until the legality of providing these services can be determined.

The services would be provided on a purely experimental basis with no guarantees of reliability or availability to see what issues may arise when providing television over IP networks. Since GrangeNet’s funding ceases at the end of this year it is unlikely that services will be available after then unless AARNET takes them on.

It would cost us nothing to provide the streams except for some small amount of time doing some reconfiguration of the streams and liaising with ICT Services’ Network Management Team to ensure the traffic is available on the link to GrangeNet. Once outside the University border any configuration issues will be handled by GrangeNet staff.

iChat with ASU

Video chat has been restored: to a small part of the Division at least.

The Division has successfully negotiated an arrangement that allows the computers in the CLRC to be used by students on campus here at UC learning Japanese to video chat with Japanese students from Aichi Shukutoku University (ASU) in Japan. We were able to negotiate this arrangement because the computers in the CLRC are all Macintosh computers that are not subject to the same malware attacks as Windows PCs, so there is a much reduced risk of the computers being compromised and threatening others on the UC network.

ANU demonstration of prototype netPVR

Progress on the development of our network video recording service was demonstrated to the Australian National University recently.

On Tuesday, 14 March 2006, Service Delivery Manager gave a demonstration to the Australian National University of the prototype network personal video recorder (netPVR) that we are developing. The ANU has contributed funds and resources to the project. We demonstrated how the system could take requests over the web, schedule recordings, record, transcode and prepare programs for streaming, and email the requester the final product (just a pointer to the program stored on a server really, but fairly impressive when the program plays in the recipients email program). He also went through the work flow for an academic to show how the system could be used to take sections of recorded programs, combine them and deliver them through a Learning Management System (like WebCT).

Response to the demonstration was critical acclaim: the audience of about 25 engaged with us on a number of issues (copyright, metadata, program guides and so on).

In a related development, after months of mystery trying to work out why the streaming video programs would work fine off campus on broadband services if stored on an ANU server, but not when stored on the UC server, Network Services at UC unblocked UDP services for the UC server on Friday, 17 March 2006. Programs recorded and transcoded on the UC system can now be viewed (with proper authorisation) on broadband connections off-campus. Try the tests at home (broadband connection required) at http://uctv.canberra.edu.au/tv-tests.

NetPVR - Network Personal Video Recorder

Development continues on this service with some help from the ANU.

Scholarly Teaching Services at the Australian National University has contracted the Division to provide them with a netPVR: a system for requesting, recording and replaying television programs over the computer network.

The Division is developing such a system as a part of the implementation of the DEST Infrastructure grant that supported the National Institute of Language Learning (NILL).

A prototype is due to be demonstrated to the ANU in late January, 2006.

Reticulation of satellite and terrestrial television

Thirty-four channels and counting...

Digital reticulation of live television broadcasts from satellite and terrestrial services over the University’s computer network is moving ahead apace: at least on the backend. Twenty services are now being streamed live from Building 20, and depending on the state of the University’s network can be received across campus using VLC. VLC is free software for Macintosh or Windows that can be downloaded and installed by any user with administrative privileges on their computer.

Any relatively new computer on the campus network is now theoretically capable of seeing any of the twenty channels without needing any additional hardware: to hear the sound there needs to be some speakers on the computer, for the best sound external speakers will be needed.

Services are not available beyond the boundary of the University network for copyright and licensing reasons, as well as the need to manage network traffic to other institutions.

For details on how to “tune in” to the services using your desktop computer, see the instructions on the project’s website at http://uctv.canberra.edu.au/campus-channels.

Soon it will be possible to receive the current channel list automatically when VLC is launched. What is missing is a comprehensive program guide detailing what programs go to air when. There are significant issues with providing a comprehensive program guide: in Australia the information is not made available freely for anyone to use, internationally there is no single source of program data, and time zones and language make data for services on individual channels sometimes difficult to interpret even when it can be found.

We don’t have a way of automatically scheduling recording the live digital streams yet, or making them available for replay and editing: this is the next stage of the project. In the meantime, many people, especially Languages staff, can record, simply edit and use video recorded from the analogue network completed earlier this year.

More streaming media

Work on live and on-demand video streaming being done in the Division may be useful more widely.

Last week the contractor working on streaming media in the Division met with representatives from the ANU and AARNet to discuss live and on-demand streaming media. AARNet is a part of the ResearchChannel initiative, a University of Washington project that provides educational and research television programming to a wide section of the US community via nationwide satellite, cable and internet networks. The internet service is available internationally. AARNet aims to provide a similar service in Australia by enabling Australian science and education institutions to create, archive and transmit their own television material. The result being one (or more) full-time TV channels focused on promoting Australian research and education, particularly to the Asian markets.

It looks like the work being done here will be extremely useful to the ANU and to AARNet to make an Australia ResearchChannel viable.

Copyright and streaming video

Do we have the right to stream television around the campus network, and beyond?

Advice from campus copyright guru Greg Jones is that the streaming of off-air video and audio around the campus network live and on-demand comes under the fairly liberal conditions of the University’s Copyright Guide (http://www.canberra.edu.au/copyright/guide#heading7), so long as we restrict the streaming to the campus and educational institutions that also have an agreement with Screenrights.

Broadcast Flag is lowered

...before it was even raised!

Last year the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandated the introduction of a broadcast flag in digital television broadcasts that receivers and other devices dealing with digital video signals would have to read and obey (an item on the mandate was in the Technical Services Unit Report 20 August 2004). The idea was that producers and broadcasters could limit what consumers could do with digital television broadcasts: preventing the broadcasts for example from being recorded, or made into DVDs, or broadcast around IP networks (all of which we do here in the Division of Communication and Education, under existing provisions of the Copyright Act).

Last week a US appeals court struck down the regulation, concluding that the FCC didn’t have the authority to regulate ancillary devices like recorders.

While the FCC has no jurisdiction in Australia, under the Free Trade Agreement signed between the US and Australia last year, there would have been pressure on Australian broadcasters, manufacturers and distributors to mind the flag here as was to be required in the US.

See Court Nixes ‘Broadcast Flag’.