Doug Williams

Proceedings of the SMC Conferences, Jul 11, 2012

It is common to learn to play an orchestral musical instrument through one-to-one lessons with an... more It is common to learn to play an orchestral musical instrument through one-to-one lessons with an experienced tutor. For musicians who choose to study performance at an undergraduate level and beyond, their tutor is an important part of their professional musical development. For many musicians, travel is part of their professional lives due to touring, auditioning and teaching, often overseas. This makes temporary separation of students from their tutor inevitable. A solution used by some conservatoires is teaching via video conferencing, however the challenges of using video conference for interaction and collaborative work are well documented. The Remote Music Tuition prototype was designed to enhance music tuition via video conference by providing multiple views of the student. This paper describes the system, documents observations from initial tests of the prototype and makes recommendations for future developments and further testing.

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Distributed Theatre: Connecting (with) Remote Audiences

htmlabstractIn September 2014, Miracle Theatre performed “the Tempest” simultaneously at two diff... more htmlabstractIn September 2014, Miracle Theatre performed “the Tempest” simultaneously at two different locations to two separate audiences. Both audiences were linked together using an advanced video system, where several cameras captured the play. This is just one example of the radical shift in performing arts, where small theatre companies can use the Internet and a range of digital tools for reaching a wider remote audience. During the last years, we have explored how tele-presence has an effect on the performing arts, on the artists, and on the audiences. This position paper describes our journey, posing a number of questions.

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Faces in the clouds: long-duration, multi-user, cloud-assisted video conferencing

IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, 2017

Multiuser video conferencing is a ubiquitous technology. Increasingly end-hosts in a conference a... more Multiuser video conferencing is a ubiquitous technology. Increasingly end-hosts in a conference are assisted by cloud-based servers that improve the quality of experience for end users. This paper evaluates the impact of strategies for placement of such servers on user experience and deployment cost. We consider scenarios based upon the Amazon EC2 infrastructure as well as future scenarios in which cloud instances can be located at a larger number of possible sites across the planet. We compare a number of possible strategies for choosing which cloud locations should host services and how traffic should route through them. Our study is driven by real data to create demand scenarios with realistic geographical user distributions and diurnal behaviour. We conclude that on the EC2 infrastructure a well chosen static selection of servers performs well but as more cloud locations are available a dynamic choice of servers becomes important.

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A Distributed Theatre Experiment with Shakespeare

Proceedings of the 23rd ACM international conference on Multimedia, 2015

This paper reports on an experimental production of The Tempest that was developed in collaborati... more This paper reports on an experimental production of The Tempest that was developed in collaboration with Miracle Theatre Company realised as a distributed performance from two separate stages through a dynamically configured telepresence system. The production allowed an exploration of the way a range of technologies, including consumer grade broadband, cameras and projection technologies could affect the development and delivery of live theatre by regional touring company. The architecture of the communication platform used to deliver the performance is introduced as are two novel software tools that are used to describe and control the way the play should be captured and represented. The experimental production was thoroughly evaluated and the feedback from audience and theatre professionals is presented in some detail. A considered observation of the process and the way it differs from film, TV and theatre suggest that distributed theatre can be treated as a new genre of storytelling.

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ShapeShifted television: a new form of storytelling for broadband

3rd European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP 2006). Part of the 2nd Multimedia Conference 2006, 2006

Different forms of story telling have been developed to suit different distribution media: cinema... more Different forms of story telling have been developed to suit different distribution media: cinema has feature films, the printing press has novels, but what new story form is proposed for broadband? Currently, information and entertainment is distributed over broadband networks via forms borrowed from other media. This paper introduces story forms specifically created for broadband distribution and a software kit that supports their production.

2nd international workshop on socially-aware multimedia (SAM'13)

Proceedings of the 21st ACM international conference on Multimedia - MM '13, 2013

Multimedia social communication is becoming commonplace. Television is becoming smart and social;... more Multimedia social communication is becoming commonplace. Television is becoming smart and social; media sharing applications are transforming the way we converse and recall events and videoconferencing is a common application on our computers, phones, tablets and even televisions. The confluence of computer-mediated interaction, social networking, and multimedia content are radically reshaping social communications, bringing new challenges and opportunities. This workshop, in its second edition, provides an opportunity to explore socially-aware multimedia, in which the social dimension of mediated interactions between people are considered to be as important as the characteristics of the media content. Even though this social dimension is implicitly addressed in some current solutions, further research is needed to better understand what makes multimedia socially-aware.

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International workshop on socially-aware multimedia (SAM'12)

MM 2012 - Proceedings of the 20th ACM International Conference on Multimedia, 2012

Multimedia social communication is filtering into everyday use. Videoconferencing is appearing in... more Multimedia social communication is filtering into everyday use. Videoconferencing is appearing in the living room and beyond, television is becoming smart and social, and media sharing applications are transforming the way we converse and recall events. The confluence of computer-mediated interaction, social networking, and multimedia content are radically reshaping social communications, bringing new challenges and opportunities. This workshop provides an opportunity to explore socially-aware multimedia, in which the social dimension of mediated interactions between people are considered as important as the characteristics of the media content. Even though this social dimension is implicitly addressed in some current solutions, further research is needed to better understand what makes multimedia socially-aware. In other words, social interactivity needs to become a first class citizen of multimedia research.

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Video communication for networked communities: Challenges and opportunities

2012 16th International Conference on Intelligence in Next Generation Networks, 2012

ABSTRACT While advances in commercial video conferencing and social networking are driving more p... more ABSTRACT While advances in commercial video conferencing and social networking are driving more people to communicate using video, it is still difficult to achieve a sense of co-presence - that is to make the technology transparent to its users - when mediating ad hoc interactions between groups of people in different locations. This paper presents an ambitious plan to define and demonstrate a platform for group communication that allows participants to create a robust video communication session that is centred on a shared activity and to which participants can join or leave in an arbitrary manner using an arbitrary device specification on an arbitrary network. We describe two representative applications in which co-presence is not currently well supported. We then explain the key technical capabilities which we believe must be developed in order to build our platform, highlighting how they extend the state of the art in the dynamic control of video communication systems and the configuration of key components within the network. We conclude by explaining how our novel platform will be implemented and evaluated over the next 3 years.

ShapeShifted TVenabling multi-sequential narrative productions for delivery over broadband

The 2nd IET …, 2006

... DLWilliams 1 , MF Ursu 2 , JJ Cook 2 , V. Zsombori 2 , M. Engler 1 ... MyNewsandSportsMyWay: ... more

A User Centred Approach to Evaluating the Future Demand for Bandwidth from Consumers

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2013

This paper estimates bandwidth demand for consumers using a user-centred model including an exten... more This paper estimates bandwidth demand for consumers using a user-centred model including an extension of the persona concept to describe complete households. Peak demand is calculated by describing when different applications and services are used within each household during the day and by summing the concurrent demands for bandwidth from each concurrent application or service. The value of the peak demand calculation to capacity planning is discussed.

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Experiments with Distributed Theatre

IEEE MultiMedia, 2015

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Remote Music Tuition

by Doug Williams, Sam Duffy, and Jack Jansen

Proceedings of 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference, 2012

It is common to learn to play an orchestral musical instrument through one-to-one lessons with an... more It is common to learn to play an orchestral musical instrument through one-to-one lessons with an experienced tutor. For musicians who choose to study performance at an undergraduate level and beyond, their tutor is an important part of their professional musical development. For many musicians, travel is part of their professional lives due to touring, auditioning and teaching, often overseas. This makes temporary separation of students from their tutor inevitable. A solution used by some conservatoires is teaching via video conferencing, however the challenges of using video conference for interaction and collaborative work are well documented. The Remote Music Tuition prototype was designed to enhance music tuition via video conference by providing multiple views of the student. This paper describes the system, documents observations from initial tests of the prototype and makes recommendations for future developments and further testing.

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User centric media in the future internet: trends and challenges

Abstract The evolution of the Internet is being leaded by two main threads, one driven by industr... more

Spatial distribution of UV-excited luminescence in Ge-doped fiber preforms

Optics Communications, 1993

The spatial distribution of the 240 nm absorption and its associated luminescence measured in a G... more The spatial distribution of the 240 nm absorption and its associated luminescence measured in a Ge-doped silica optical fibre preform are presented. The 400 nm luminescence was found to be maximum at the edges and near the centre of the core, while the absorption follows the Ge concentration in the core, implying that the luminescence is a nonlinear function of the Ge concentration. Quenching of the luminescence by either the effect or Ge concentration is proposed to explain this observation.

Photosensitive index changes in germania-doped silica glass fibers and waveguides

Recent developments in the photosensitivity of germania doped silica glass are reviewed. The caus... more Recent developments in the photosensitivity of germania doped silica glass are reviewed. The cause and nature of the absorption band centered near 240 nm are discussed and possible structures for this defect are reported together with a summary of the proposed mechanisms for the UV index change. Experimental techniques for assessing the refractive index change are listed and this leads to a consideration of the effects of non-ideal grating formation. Mechanisms for enhancing the photosensitivity of fibers and germania doped silica films are assessed using a systematic study of the photosensitivity of fibers fabricated under the different techniques. Finally some of the possible applications for photosensitivity are briefly discussed.

Fabrication of low-loss high-NA silica fibers for Raman amplification

UV spectroscopy of optical fibers and preforms

Ultraviolet loss spectra of optical fibers and preforms have been measured over the wavelength ra... more Ultraviolet loss spectra of optical fibers and preforms have been measured over the wavelength range from 200 nm to 600 nm. The observed spectra consist of a number of well-known absorption bands, most of which have been associated with germanosilicate related defects. We have found that the size of the absorption peaks in fibers is typically many orders of magnitude smaller than the corresponding absorption peaks in the preforms from which the fibers were drawn. In particular, the 240 nm absorption band, so evident in preform spectra, is very much weaker in the fiber's spectrum. Exposure of the fibers to broad-band uv radiation increases the size of the absorption peak at 325 nm, and also produces new bands at 380 nm and 305 nm, not previously ascribed to any defects. Fibers exposed to high power uv-laser radiation to form Bragg reflection gratings in the infrared, show the appearance of a previously unassigned band at 300 nm. Applying the Kramers-Kronig transformation to the measured changes in the absorption spectrum of the fiber between 200 nm and 600 nm, gives a calculated index change which is not sufficient to explain the observed refractive index change of approximately equals 10-4.

Photoconduction in germanium and phosphorus doped silica waveguides

Applied Physics Letters, 1993

Page 1. Photoconduction in germanium and phosphorus doped silica waveguides Raman Kashyap, Graeme... more

Photosensitive germanosilicate preforms and fibers

A detailed study of the ultraviolet loss spectra of germanosilicate preforms and fibers is report... more A detailed study of the ultraviolet loss spectra of germanosilicate preforms and fibers is reported. The fiber samples had peak losses of the order of 10 dB/cm, which was several orders of magnitude lower than in preform samples. All spectra could be described by a number of previously observed absorption bands, many of which had been associated with particular defects in germanosilicate glasses. The incorporation of phosphorous as a core codopant eliminated a loss band centered at 325 nm in as drawn fibers. The effect on the ultraviolet absorption spectra of increasing doses of irradiation from an ultraviolet fiber- coating curing-lamp source and also the change in fiber absorption before and after writing a 35% reflection grating are presented. The results are not consistent with the previously proposed model for photosensitivity based on the Kramers-Kronig mechanism.

Spectral, temporal, and spatial study of UV-induced luminescence in Ge-doped fiber preform

The luminescence of a Ge-doped fiber preform excited by 240 nm light was studied. Luminescence at... more The luminescence of a Ge-doped fiber preform excited by 240 nm light was studied. Luminescence at 290 nm, 400 nm, and 650 nm was observed, and lifetimes were measured, as well as the spatial profiles. For the first two components, the spatial profile is different from the index profile and the absorption profile, while the 650 nm luminescence follows the index profile. We also measured different lifetimes at different positions across the core.

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