Welcome to the  AVATS (was  SUMOVER) Project UCL Media tools site

Table of Contents

  1. Robust Audio Tool (RAT)
  2. Videoconferencing Tool (VIC)
  3. Common Multimedia Library
  4. Downloads
  5. Developer information
  6. IPv6 Frequently Asked Questions
  7. Media tools wish list

News

Aug '09 We have now transitioned to this new Trac/Svn server, running on a Xen5.5 Centos 5.3 virtual machine with more power, space and flexibility. This server now supports over twenty projects.

Aug '09 Revised and uploaded our  UNIX Manual page renderer for Trac 0.11 and 0.9 - see it in use for the RAT manual page.

Jun '09 Work continues on that started by the Google Summer of Code - congestion control to vic. This code is now functioning and provides a basis for unicast media congestion control.

Jan '09 The AVATS project continues into the new year - thanks to careful balancing of the budgets. We are working on transitioning the this Trac/SVN server to new Xen based box with more power and flexibility. Also we will upgrade the installation in the process - providing new functionalities.

Nov '08 Work continues on that started by the Google Summer of Code - congestion control to vic. Bug fixes and testing are being developed.

18 Aug '08 Google Summer of Code project comes to a close - there has been some good work done on the project to add congestion control to vic. Whilst the code is available from SVN the student has committed to doing further work on the code before making a general release.

18 July '08 Tools released as part of  PAG 1.0 Release

16 July '08 Tools released as part of  AG3.2beta1

25 May '08: Beta releases of [VicH264 VIC-1.4.0beta] - with IOCOM's IG2 H.264 standard and non-standard stream decode functionality.

22 Apr '08: Google Summer of Code - The project had one student accepted to do work on Congestion Control related work on the tools.

16 Mar '08: AVATS project ideas selected for inclusion in  Google's Summer of Code - mentored by OMII-UK.  Advice for students.

1 Jan '08: New  AVATS project starts - funded by  OMII-UK

Older news items maybe found on the OldNews page.

About

This is the Code Management System, from the  AVATS and  SUMOVER Projects, for the Media tools (aka MBone tools) based on  Trac. The UCL media tools have been widely used since their origins in the early nineties; providing vehicles for pioneering work in multimedia research, and as a powerful media agents, for example, within Advanced Collaborative Environments, most notably in  AccessGrid and  VRVS. The main tools provide for audio, with the  RAT tool, video, using  VIC, and text, using  NTE. Both  RAT and  NTE originated within  UCL Computer Science, whilst  VIC originated in  Berkeley, though UCL has since maintained an updated version.

The project continues to use the  sumover-tech email list for general discussion and help, whilst for developer oriented interest check the  sumover-dev email list. Feel free to join in!

The new  OMII-UK  AVATS project follows on from the  JISC  SUMOVER project to continue to keep the core tools ( RAT and  VIC) up to date, as well as the common library they depend on. The project has begun to foster links between interested parties such as  Argonne National Laboratories,  VRVS and  IOCOM. The main goal is to provide a good basis for their continued evolution.

As with all Wiki sites, this website are editable - However to control wiki-spam we have disabled anonymous editing of all pages - people can email the project to request an account. This means that anyone with an account can modify the contents of these pages simply by using their web-browser. We would particularly encourage external developers to add their comments and share their experiences, bugs and feature wishlist to this site. Simply click on the "Edit this page" link at the bottom of the page you want to edit. WikiFormatting will give you a detailed description of available Wiki formatting commands.

If you have used the MBone tools in the past, you are probably aware of the  UCL CVS repository, which supported all our development until today. We are now using  Subversion for source code management pusposes and, if you are a user or a developer, you will need to use the  Subversion system to check out the latest MBone tools code. At the moment, we have successfully imported and began development via  Subversion for  RAT,  VIC, the common multimedia library, and our local versions of Tcl/Tk (you can currently browse our  subversion repository on-line for each of these modules via the following links:  rat,  vic,  common,  tcl-8.0,  tk-8.0. Source browsing via Trac is available for all modules). The remaining modules can only be accessed via the  standard CVS method.

You can visit  the original UCL MBone tools website to learn more about the MBone tools and download past sources and binaries.

The AVATS Team
Peter Kirstein
Piers O'Hanlon

Starting Points

Other links for Trac and Subversion management

For a complete list of local wiki pages, see TitleIndex.