Web-cast
Webcasting of Cardiac Surgery
| Web-cast is becoming popular day by day because of its low cost and the growing use of the Internet. CRCS has been experimenting with various types of web casting events for the past few years to make it easy to use and the most frequent medium of communication. With hands on experience in web casting various events live over the Internet, we have learned and mastered the technology. |
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CRCS started exploring the area of web casting in 1997 in the International Conference on Cognitive Systems (ICCS’97). We used Real-technologies on multicast mode for this experiment. Although the number of simultaneous viewers was not much, we got a direction to further explore the technology. The next web-cast was done during the CII-AGM. The event was viewed by a large number of people from across the world. We used Real-technologies for the web-cast. Also, for the viewers behind the firewall, a CGI program using Computer Eye hardware captured a still image after every 10 seconds, a panel of experts typed the speech as it progressed, and then both the speech and picture were embedded on a page. During the Second International Symposium on Cardiovascular Surgery and Cardiology in the 2000's (organised by the Escorts Heart Institute and Research Center), CRCS was involved in the live telecast of a Heart Surgery on the Internet in Asia. It was for the first time when not only the conference proceedings, but also the actual cardiac surgeries were transmitted live over the Internet. This experiment proved to be a grand success and, according to The Hindustan Times, generated around 50,000 hits over the 3 days of the conference. The most interesting part of the telecast was that the equipment (hardware and software) used to facilitate the web-cast was nothing out of the ordinary. It involved three computers and, needless to say support from VSNL. One computer (the Encoder) was equipped with a Video Grabbing Card, and was running a video encoder program. This was situated at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi (the conference venue). On the other end, (at VSNL), there were two more computers which were connected to the India Habitat Centre by a 64 Kbps link. The first computer at VSNL (the Web Server) was attached to the VSNL backbone. This catered to all the users who visited the site and contained all the documents (HTMLs) and supporting links. The second computer at VSNL (the Video Server) sent streaming audio and video from a video file to all the users requesting for it. This file was continuously being updated. The video from cameras installed in EHIRC operation theatres was transmitted to India Habitat Centre over a dedicated link. This video was digitised and encoded by the Encoder and sent as streaming video to the Video Server, where it was stored as a file. The Web Server provided the link to this file whenever it received a request by any of the visitors to the site. The digital video was compressed and sent in a streaming form (i.e. in a series of frames). This ensured the watching of video by even those users who had a lower bandwidth (low speed modems). In January 2001, CRCS facilitated the organization of the NIIT Annual Day simultaneously at 16 locations across the world through web-cast. It was for the first time that we did a multi-station web-cast. The event was divided into two sessions. The first session was designed for the NIIT corporate team to simultaneously communicate with all the regions. The second session was designed for local events in each region. The Annual Day web-cast was organised using the Microsoft multimedia technology. Two servers were set up directly on the VSNL backbone and a bandwidth of 100 mbps was used. These servers were used to web-cast the video received from the Delhi-Corp on the Left projection Server and from the other regions on the Right Projection Server. They were administered using the Windows Media Server. Though we faced problems like difference in time zones, 30 sec. delay in multicasting video to different locations, bandwidth etc. the event was acknowledged as a great success. This project reflects the efforts of CRCS in the area of Internet technology. |
| For more details contact: Ravi Bisht |