Multimedia Computing Project 3

Proposal due date: April 2nd (earlier is fine)

Project due date: April 11th

Index

• Overview
• Details
• Hints
• Hand In

Overview

You are to design, implement and evaluate a project of your choosing. The emphasis of the project can vary, from implementation of new code, to modification of existing code, to incorporation of other code, to measurement of existing programs. Whatever you choose, your projects will require a report and an evaluation, in addition to any code you develop.

Details

Proposal

You will submit a proposal to me roughly 1.5 weeks before your project is due. In the proposal, you will outline the work that will constitute your project. It should include:

1. An overview of the area your project is in.
2. A brief description of any major implementation tasks, tools to learn, systems to setup, etc.
3. A timeline for expected completion of major tasks.
4. A grading guide of where points should be allocated for your project based on amount of effort it will require (you will submit a revised version of this with your final report).
5. A summary of what you hope to learn.

Your proposal should be about 1-2 pages in length.

Project

The work itself can involve a wide variety of possibilities, including:

1. a large programming effort from scratch, such as you did already in your projects 1 and 2
2. modifications to an existing program, such as enhancements to your projects 1 and 2
3. running and evaluating existing multimedia technologies, such as toolkits or commercial products
4. extensive evaluations of previous projects, such as more detailed studies along the lines of project 1b and project 2b
5. a combination of any of the above, to a lesser extent

Any project should, of course, relate to topics relevant to the class.

Report

No matter what the implementation effort of your project, you must include a report. The focus of the report may vary, somewhat, but it will contain elements common to the evaluation summaries we have seen thus far in class, including:

• Introduction, indicating motivation, problem statement and hypotheses.
• Background, providing any details needed to understand your work.
• Design of experiments, providing details on measurement methods and independent variables chosen.
• Results and analysis.
• Summary, including conclusions you can draw from your analysis. For this project, you should include a brief description of what you learned above and beyond the scientific conclusions.
• An abstract, summarizing your report in 1 paragraph (you will write this last, but it should go first in the report).
• A grading guide of where points should be allocated for your project based on amount of effort it will require (an updated version of what appeared in your proposal).

Hints

There are many possible projects that are suitable. If in doubt, you can run ideas by me briefly via email before starting work on the proposal.

This project is not intended to be an extra large project. Roughly, it should be the same size in total effort as your other projects (1 and 2). So, don't bite off more than you can chew. Especially remember to allocate appropriate time and effort to any new technology you incorporate into your project that you need to learn.

Here is a list of some example topics for projects:

• Mini RLM - a previous project that implemented text-based video over receiver driven layered multicast.

• Enhancements to your Speak:

  • support multiple users in "party-call" using either unicast or multicast (or both)
  • implementation of repair techniques (FEC, interleaving, selective retransmission)
  • implemetation of buffering (QM or other)

• Empirical measurements of the system, the network or the quality of commercial streaming media. See the RealTracer work for an example.

• Enhancement or evaluation of multimedia networking research in NS. This can include simulated protocols, such as TFRC or RAP, router queue management techniques such as CBT or ABE, or multicast work such as RLM.

Hand In

You must turn in appropriate material so your project can be evaluated:

• Your report (see above).

• All source code used or developed in your project, including header files. Please include a Makefile, too, for building your code.

• A README file with any special instructions or platform requirements for running your application. Provide some examples, even, if that would help.

• A file named "group.txt" which contains the following:

      login_name1  last_name1, first_name1
      login_name2  last_name2, first_name2
  

Tar up (with gzip) your files, for example:

    mkdir proj2
    cp * proj2  /* copy all your files to submit to proj2 directory */
    tar -czf proj2.tgz proj2

You will use the online turnin program (/cs/bin/turnin) to submit your files:

1. Copy the proj3.tgz to your account on the CCC machines.

2. Run: /cs/bin/turnin submit cs525z proj3 proj3.tgz to submit your files.

Return to the Multimedia Networking Home Page

Send all project questions to the TA mailing list: cs525z_ta@cs.wpi.edu.