Comments on: Data Dump For YouTube Troopers

By: guest1

guest1 — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 02:28:12 +0000

The storage capacity of the Valiant Angel system is 16pb. The feeds are live and are commented on live with chat metadata in real time. This article fails to mention the low-res conversion feature of VA to allow the feeds to be uploaded to a low bandwith device to a soldier in the field with a PDA or something of that nature.

By: David al-Washingtoni

David al-Washingtoni — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 13:49:15 +0000

Unless you work closely with a Hollywood cinematographer, all the 1080p video you have ever seen is heavily compressed with losses that change the details, but still look decent most of the time. Changing the details is sometimes not good for surveillance.

I once worked with an image compression format called MrSID, which is great because it stores the image in successively higher resolution/quality, so you just stop reading it when you have the resolution/quality you need.

By: nraddin

nraddin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:35:48 +0000

There are lossless forms of compression, they don’t as good a ratio as other compressions but there are lots of good way to compress stuff without loosing any data at all. Much like zipping up a file makes it smaller but the file at the other end still works just fine, you can compress video. if you couldn’t compress video without loss you could never view a 1080p video (~500mbit per sec) because most HDDs can’t read data off the disk fast enough. A HD 1080p video renders around 24frames a sec or ~50million pixels a second, or a picture 7054x7054 with a color depth of 10bit (~ 1 billion colors).

By: nraddin

nraddin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:22:36 +0000

Just because numbers are kind of my thing. I think I should point out that a 90min HD movie has more data in it as a 1pixel per meter map of the all of Afghanistan. It’s around 25gigs in size uncompressed.

By: nraddin

nraddin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 19:13:36 +0000

That’s a great point HasBeen. The ability to only pull the data you need is key, looking a google earth for example you do not load all the data at once, just a very rough outline. Only once you start to zoom on that area does detailed data of that area even load. They did say something about Google Earth like interface, we can only hope that take that load last zooming technology with them.

By: HasBeen

HasBeen — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 14:57:15 +0000

Almost right. There actually are lossless compression algorithms for both video and for still photos. Problem is that their compression rate isn’t very good so there wouldn’t be much point in doing it.

Personally, I’d still use something high quality lossy compression for most of the data and allow the end-user to request lossless data for details of areas of concern. Some data is better than none and with some of the lossy compression methods you can get significant compression with virtually indiscernible loss of quality (to the naked eye). The biggest problem I see with that approach is that doing the high quality compression takes significant computer time so someone somewhere is going to have to have something more than your average PC to compress that data down to something manageable but still useful — and that will likely need to be in-theater.

FWIW

By: Mel

Mel — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:17:56 +0000

nraddin — compressed video isn’t good video. Compression brings loss of detail and detail is what they need. Thus large file sizes. You are right about the rest of your thoughts.

By: nraddin

nraddin — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:31:04 +0000

Really, they are just not figuring that out? And only 56k connection for this stuff to move? Really I get better than that on my portable satellite dish. Even public networks can be made pretty private with some encryption inside the packet.

The idea that they are just now after years of collecting data at huge rates asking how everyone else moves that data is just silly. Broadcasters have been doing this exact same thing for decades, often encrypting the data so that doesn’t even need to be added.

Beyond all that, the in ability to manage the video and pictures in a way that doesn’t require the shipping around of Petabytes of data a day is just sad.

I am not suggesting I have all the answers but it does seem like someone was asleep at the switch if I can come up with a half dozen ideas in a few minutes and don’t even work in the industry.

By: Grumpy

Grumpy — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 19:11:50 +0000

It is so nice, to reach out and touch someone.

By: HasBeen

HasBeen — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 17:23:43 +0000

I guess I’m missing where we give it to the enemy. I think you still have to have a SIPRNet account — and not everyone gets one.

But then, I may have missed relevant info?…

By: Marshall Tall Eagle

Marshall Tall Eagle — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 16:45:02 +0000

Sounds like a great system, but for the life of me I can not understand why we are feeding this info to our enemies. Loose lips sink ships policy must be a thing of the past. We need to stop giving out info to the enemy intelligence or the troops will pay the price on the ground.

God Bless Our Troops