My Past, Present, and Future

Hard life does not equal reason for failure, but reason for determination. Even though it may seem with so much bad you are bound to fail, with all of my bad I'm bound to succeed. I have been through a lot in life, just as every single mother but I still have what it takes for my future success. Do you have what it takes for a brighter future? The first reason I believe hard times give you determination, is because I had a hard childhood growing up. Beginning with my father abusing my mother and he was never around, a mother who was struggling to figure out who she was and what she wanted in life, and how to take care of a teenager with so many bad experiences. My father was murdered in front of me and passed in my arms when I was seven years old. My only father figures I had left were my brothers who for their own reasons couldn’t be around much. I turned to alcohol at a young age thinking it would make my life better. I felt as if I was alone. I didn’t know I had people that would be there for me. All I knew was my immediate family and my friends, which were not good influences. My mother had turned to alcohol as well and I was always home alone or with my uncle John. I never wanted to go to school; however, my uncle encouraged me to do so. I continued to attend school and did the best I thought I could. I got into skating thanks to my uncle and that is how I got rid of my stress if I had it. Uncle John always took me and my friends to the skating rink to enjoy time, just as a young child should. It made things better for me for awhile I had my father figure back again, but still needed my mom. I was lost and had no guidance; so much had happened to me at such a young age and that affected my life because I believe no matter what happens you can’t erase your bad memories. My beliefs are stated by Sigmund Freud, he said â€Å"The world as we know it is stored in our conscious mind† (Witt & Mossler, 2010, Ch. 2, Pg. 2). Additionally, at age fifteen I was involved in a car accident that everyone including myself thought it ended my life. I was pronounced dead on scene yet revived. I was hospitalized for over a week and had to go though therapy to learn how to walk again. My brain wasn’t coordinating with my legs. I broke five ribs, my lung collapsed, crushed my heel, burned my back, my scalp was avulsed, broken nose, and in general shaken up. I woke up to a paramedic by my side coaching me through my breathing and having faith in my ability to overcome anything. It just so happened with me living in a small town that paramedic was my best friend’s father, Gene Deck. That’s when I got my mom back, and to this day she is always there for me and is my best friend. During that time I had also lost my brother who meant the world to me. He was my role model and was everything to me. I would wait for him every day on the porch to arrive from work. He had been though a lot himself and had went to prison for a few years. He got out of prison and started his life over working in the oil fields, I still remember his smell. It was that time of year for our family reunion, we went camping every year. I remember waking up to his face at five in the morning and him asking me to go on the boat with him to check the trout lines, me at my age was upset about being woke up that early. I pulled the blankets over my head and said â€Å"go away and leave me alone bubba†. Those were my last words to him, which is why I strongly believe you should make sure your words to your loved ones are that from the heart. He had gone out on the boat and it had a hole in it, my brother didn’t know how to swim. They found him late that night after searching all day at the bottom of the river tangled in seaweed. With all those experiences, I knew what I wanted to do as an adult, save lives. So I took it upon myself to try and get my life together and do what was right. I had several inspirations for saving lives, from my life being saved to maybe I could have saved my brothers. I had so much encouragement in my heart now to move forward with my career choice in the future. For now, it was time to focus on finishing high school and being a good daughter so that my mom wouldn’t have to go through anymore pain. I focused on school and promised myself no matter what happened in life I would return the favor given to me from the man upstairs, with a second chance given to me I would help saving lives. It is thanks to God that I am alive today, and for the rest of my life I will thank him every day. I may not be one of those people who go to church every day, but I do know my life is held in the hands of a man that I owe my life to. At age seventeen I ended up being getting in another relationship that I thought would last forever and we decided to have a child. I ended up having too many medical problems and had to drop out of school. I was determined to keep my promise. I set out to get my G. E. D and started running with the Emergency Medical Service in my town as a rider. I then became part of the EMS family as a driver. They paid to put me through school to become an Emergency Medical Technician. I decided that wasn’t enough and started school with a technical school to become a National Registered Certified Medical Assistant. My first born son gave me more inspiration to better myself in life. He was the reason of my existence and the reason I to this day work very hard at everything I do to succeed in life. I named him after my brother that had passed, Keith. I now have four beautiful boys, still have my two certifications, and now attending college working towards a degree. Every day I remember lucky I am to be here and how much I have to be thankful for in life. My fiance Sean is another one of my inspirations. He stays on my case constantly about school and making sure I do what is right. I have everything I need in life to be inspired and achieve my life term goals. I believe that you need three things in life to achieve your goals, a belief system, persistence, and patience. Several things can happen to you in life. It’s a matter of how you overcome what has happened and how you move forward. Although, you may want to just give up and feel you have been through enough in life and you don’t want to put yourself through any more. You need to reconsider, because that is just your way of â€Å"justifying your thoughts or behavior†, called rationalization which is a type of defense mechanism from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory (Witt & Mossler, 2010, Ch. 2, Pg. 2). Make sure you stay focused on your goal or goals and what lies ahead of you. Always look toward the future and never look back, you will always remember but let it be a lesson learned in life, and the strength you need to move forward. There is nothing better in life than looking back on all you have been through, and then looking at what you have to this day. The best thing is looking at what lies ahead of you and your future of success! Indeed, while some may say a bad past can get the best of you, it’s important to stay focused and determined. I will continue to move forward with my education and become successful. Just remember one thing; you are in control of your life, your attitude, and your actions. You can’t change your past, but, you can change your future!

Mae West and How the Production Code Affected Her Career

â€Å"Virtue has its own reward, but has no sale at the box office†.   Those are the words of the famous movie actress named Mae West.   She was known for her sassy and sexy behavior on and off screen. Mary Jane West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York.   Her parents were involved in prize fighting and vaudeville.   Mae worked on the stage and was in vaudeville from the time when she was five years of age.   She was so into the entertainment world that she never really focused on education.  Ã‚   She studied dance as a child and when she was 14 years old, she was billed as â€Å"The Baby Vamp†. The year was 1926 and she was definitely shocking to most people during that time period.  Ã‚   Though the critics reportedly hated the show, the ticket sales were good.   The theater was raided and Ms. West was arrested along with the rest of the cast. While incarcerated on Roosevelt Island, she was allowed to wear her silk underwear instead of the scratchy prison issue.   The warden reportedly took her to dinner every night. She served eight days, with two days off for good behavior.   The media attention only managed to enhance her case. Her next play was racy in content as well.   It was entitled â€Å"The Drag† and was about homosexuality alluding to the work of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs.   It also was a box office success, but it had to be played in New Jersey because it had been banned from Broadway. Mae caught the attention of Hollywood and was given her first small movie role working with George Raft in â€Å"Night after Night†.   The film debuted in 1932 and even though her performance was a minor part in the movie, she was able to display enough of her quick wit that made her famous. At first she was unhappy with her small role in â€Å"Night After Night†, but was satisfied when she was allowed to rewrite her scenes.   In West’s first scene, a hatcheck girl exclaimed, â€Å"Goodness, what lovely diamonds†. Mae responded with her quick and racy wit by saying, â€Å"Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie†. Upon her arrival in Hollywood, she moved into an apartment not far from the studio on Melrose.  Ã‚  Ã‚   She maintained a residence there at Ravenswood, even though she owned a beach house and a ranch in the San Fernando Valley. The public fell in love with the first woman to make racy comments on film.   She became a box office smash with the film breaking attendance records. Her second film was based on her earlier and popular play that was written by West entitled â€Å"She Done Him Wrong† starring Cary Grant.   The film was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Picture. Her third film, entitled â€Å"I’m No Angel† also displayed her quick racy wit and she was paired with Cary Grant once again.   It was a financial success.   This film, along with â€Å"She Done Him Wrong† were projects that saved Paramount from bankruptcy.   They were highly criticized by some because of the content and the guidelines found in the Motion Picture Production Code. The Production Code (also known as the Hays Code) was a set of guidelines that movies created between the years of 1930 and 1968 were governed by. The name â€Å"Hays Office† is definitely recognized as being synonymous with Hollywood’s self –censorship body even though its namesake ceased to be involved in the daily operations prior to the period of its most remembered conflicts with filmmakers.   Will H. Hays was the first president of MPPDA.   He was installed as the leader because studio heads were looking for a man with a background in the federal government to assure the nation that Hollywood films would not corrupt the country’s citizens. During the period that the Production Code existed, the enforcement was the responsibility of Jason Joy (1930-1932), James Wingate (1932-1934), Joseph Breen who was the chief censor for the longest period of time between the years of 1934 – 1954.  Ã‚   Geoffrey Shurlock then took his place from 1954-1968. Eric Johnston replaced Will Hays as head administrator in 1945 and remained in this office until his death in 1963.   Jack Valenti took his place in 1966. By then the organization had become the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).   Each of these three men served more in the role of ambassador, lobbyist and   as salesmen for the movie industry and not so much as a â€Å"shaper of content†. The Production Code was developed because the owners of major Hollywood studios were attempting to avoid a national government-run censorship operation. They also wanted to assure the concerned civic leaders that Hollywood would deliver only wholesome movies eliminating the need for further editing that could possible be required by the state and local censorship boards.   These type boards sprang up during the decade preceding the Code. The Studio Relations Committee was organized by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) in 1930.   This committee was given the responsibility for the administration of industry self-censorship.  Ã‚   The Studio Relations Committee was reconstituted as the Production Code Administration in 1934.   It was more effective at this time. This organization felt â€Å"if motion pictures present stories that will affect lives for the better, they can become the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind†.  Ã‚   They recognized their responsibility to the public and because of this trust and also because in their views, entertainment and art were the most important influences in the life of a nation. During the rapid transition from silent to talking pictures they realized the necessity of creating some type of guidelines that should be in place.   Even though motion pictures were considered primarily as entertainment, they also felt that film could be directly responsible for spiritual or moral progress. As a result of these codes, May began to use double talk so that a person could take a word or phrase anyway they wished.   She also developed her works this way as a method to get her work past the censors; and it worked. She really felt she had a vested interest because it was her written work that was being scrutinized.   West had already written and performed these plays on stage and now they were being exposed to a whole new audience in film. Mae West was the largest box office draw in the United States at the time.   The frank sexuality and seamy settings of her films caught the attention of the moralists. On July 1, 1934, the censorship of the Production Code began to be seriously and meticulously enforced.  Ã‚   Mae’s scripts began to be heavily edited.   Her answer was to increase the number of double entendres in her films.   Her expectation was that the censors would delete the obvious lines and overlook the subtle ones. Her next film was â€Å"Belle of the Nineties† which was made in 1934 and it was another hit.  Ã‚   The movie was originally titled â€Å"It Ain’t No Sin†, but the title was changed due to the censor’s objection.   By 1936, after filming â€Å"Klondike Annie† and â€Å"Go West Young Man† she was, at that time, the highest paid woman in the United States. After the 1937 film, â€Å"Everyday’s a Holiday†, she didn’t make another film until she starred with W. C. Fields in another Mae West written movie entitled â€Å"My Little Chickadee† in 1940. It was a well-known fact that Ms. West had ill feelings toward Fields because his ways were too crude even for her.   She didn’t get along with Fields at all.   She would not tolerate his drinking and since they were both accustomed to working with supporting players and not co-stars conflict ensued. â€Å"My Little Chickadee† was a box office success and was more successful than all other W. C. Fields’ movies.   It is said that the only way Fields and West could be in the same scene together was to film them separately; and then splice the film together. Universal was so delighted with the success of the film and offered West two more movies to star with Fields.   She refused citing the difficulty of working with Fields. Her film â€Å"The Heat’s On† which was filmed in 1943, was her last film for a bit.   Mae decided to take a break from the movie industry because the censors were getting stricter.   It was harder to create her movies, even with the double talk to get past the stricter codes. It was general practice in films of the 1930’s and 1940’s to skirt the issue of sex and hide violence behind foreground or within shadows.   In addition, they never really treated serious subjects that were dealt with in the best-regarded novels of that era. In so many instances, the Production Code Administration had their way against the wishes of filmmakers.   They scuttled, weakened or diluted several scenes proposed by writers and directors of Hollywood film projects from 1934 to 1968. When the Code went into effect all movies from the major studios were required to show an approved MPPDA logo. There were three general principles: 1.No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.   Hence the sympathy of the audience should never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin. 2.Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented, and 3.Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed, nor shall sympathy be created for its violation. In addition there was another section that was entitled Crimes Against the Law.   There were several crimes listed that should never be presented in such a way as to throw sympathy with the crime as against law and justice, or to inspire others with a desire for imitation. Some of the crimes included Murder, Theft, Arson, and the use of firearms were to be restricted to the essentials. Also, methods of smuggling could not be presented and illegal drug traffic was never to be presented. The use of liquor in American life, when not required by the plot or should be shown in proper context, otherwise it could not be shown. Ms. West was known for her racy lines and sexy innuendo so there were a few portions mentioned throughout this code that Mae had to alter her movies for compliance.  Ã‚   There was a complete section of the code dedicated to sex. According to the code, the sanctity of the institution of marriage and home had to be upheld.   Pictures could not infer that low forms of sexual relationships are accepted or a common thing.  Ã‚   For example, the issue of adultery sometimes could be considered necessary to the plot, however it could not be explicitly treated, or justified, or presented in a positive light. The code even had guidelines of â€Å"Scenes of Passion†.  Ã‚   They could not be introduced if they weren’t essential to the plot.   In addition, excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures could not be shown. In general passion had to be treated so that these scenes could not stimulate the lower and baser element.   Mae West oozed sensuality.   This category no doubt was stifling to many of Mae’s intentions on film. Even before she had matured, the slinky, then dark haired Mae was performing a lascivious â€Å"shimmy† dance in 1913 and was photographed for a song sheet for the song â€Å"Everybody Shimmies Now†. Her famous walk was said to have originated in her early years as a stage actress.   West had special eight-inch platforms attached to her shoes to increase her height and enhance her stage presence. Mae’s leave from film back to plays proved to be successful.   When censors began to let up, she returned to film work in 1970 in Myra Breckinridge.  Ã‚   She appeared in the role as Leticia Van Allen, which was a small role.   The film failed miserably at the box-office but still was a racy film due to the sex change theme. West regarded talking about sex as a basic human rights issue.   She was also an early advocate of gay and transgender rights.   She was reported as telling policemen who were raiding a gay bar, â€Å"Don’t you know you’re hitting a woman in a man’s body†. This was definitely a daring statement since she spoke it in a time period when homosexuality was not accepted. Her last film was in 1978 called Sextette which was a film that was based on the successful play West wrote back in 1926.   This film could have been a silent movie but instead fifty years later was developed.   Even in the late seventies, the times where not liberal enough to accept the original title, â€Å"Sex† as they called it Sextette instead. Allowances had to be made for a few things, such as her wig and slightly bizarre makeup and her slow movement from time to time but she obviously had taken care of herself and is able to show herself off in a series of beautiful gowns. The film is set up so she can consistently deliver the one-liners that made her famous. There was something different about Mae West, beginning with her appearance.   It set her apart from the other actresses of the day.   Mae has been described as a rather large billowing superblonde that talked through her nostrils.   In addition it has been said that she was a Gay Nineties gal that was plunked down in the Flapper Age. According to Simon Louvish, the author of her biography entitled â€Å"Mae West: It Ain’t No Sin†, it wasn’t the Production Code that affected her career but rather â€Å" her inability to relate to anyone in any intimately persuasive way – that so quickly destroyed her screen career†. The character that she created was completely of her on devise.   Somehow this Brooklyn born woman who was sketchily educated at best made herself into a playwright as she would scribble her one-liners and develop primitive narratives around them. The Code may have been able to tone down some of the personality of Mae West but she was a woman who would not be silenced.   Her somewhat mannish ways in her blunt innuendo that continually spoke of the unmentionable sexual needs of a female. Ms. West’s remarks were quick and veiled suggestion.   They were not dirty and often playfully remarked dripping with sensual undertones. Historians, however, suggest that her movie career declined so quickly because of the Production Code and their rather strict guidelines. Mae West is unique in the history of   â€Å"sex stars† in the movies because she was somehow able to play both the role of a sex goddess and simultaneously parody that same role.   In addition, she was one of the first women to consistently write the movies she starred in. In addition to her screen and stage career, Ms. West also could be heard on the radio.   On December 12, 1937, she appeared on two separate sketches on Edger Bergen’s radio show that shocked both the listening and NBC executives.   She appeared as herself, and was flirting heavily with Charlie McCarthy, Bergen’s dummy, speaking with her usual brand of sexy wit and risque sexual references. She appeared even more risque in a sketch earlier in the show that was written by Arch Oboler.   This sketch starred West and Don Ameche as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.   The conversation between the two was considered so risque and bordered on being blasphemous.   She was banned from being featured, or even mentioned on the NBC network.   Mae West didn’t appear on radio for another 31 years. She also starred in her own Las Vegas stage show.   She would sing and was surrounded by handsome body builders while she performed on stage.   Many celebrities attended West’s shows including Judy Garland, Ethel Merman, Louis Armstrong, Liberace, and Jayne Mansfield.   Jayne met and later married one of West’s muscle men, Mickey Hargitay.   Mr. Hargitay was fired for that action. Billy Wilder offered West the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.   She refused and pronounced herself offended at being asked to play a â€Å"has-been† similar to the responses he received from Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo and Pola Negri.   Ultimately, Gloria Swanson was cast in the role, which became immortal on celluloid. In 1958, West appeared at the Academy Awards and performed the song â€Å"Baby, It’s Cold Outside† playfully with Rock Hudson. In 1959, her autobiography was published by Prentice-Hall entitled, â€Å"Goodness Had Nothing to Do With It†. West made some rare appearances on television where viewers reported astonishment at her youthful appearance and energy.   In order to appeal to younger generations, she recorded two rock and roll albums which were received with financial success mainly due to her single â€Å"Treat Him Right† on the â€Å"Way Out West† album. Near the end of her life, she was known for maintaining her surprisingly youthful appearance.   West continued to surround herself with virile men for the rest of her life, employing companions, bodyguards and chauffeurs. In the late summer of 1980, she suffered a stroke at her apartment and fell out of her bed.   She rallied after being rushed to the hospital but suffered another stroke in November.   She was sent home but her prognosis wasn’t good.   She died in her apartment on North Rossmore Avenue in Hollywood at the age of 87. Mae West will forever be remembered as the sexy vamp notorious for sexy   her one-liners. REFERENCES Bynum, Matt. (2006) The Motion Picture Production Code of 1930 (Hays Code). http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html Received on December 12, 2006 Jackson, Denny. (1998). Mae West – The Actress Who Was Way Ahead of Her Time! http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/2440/west.html Received on December 12, 2006 Schickel, Richard. International Herald Tribune. (2006) Mae West. New York City.               

Final Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Final - Research Paper Example The necessity to create and develop new and cleaner supply of energy is both an imperative of environmental conservation and economics. The urgency of creating and developing new energy supply is urgent due to the damage wrought by the excessive carbon emission of the traditional sources of energy that caused irreversible climate change and other irreversible damage to the environment (Kelly, 2008). One alternative that is seriously considered is nuclear power. Just like any other source of power, nuclear power has its benefits and disadvantages. One of the most popular argument for the preferential use of nuclear power as an alternative source of energy is that it does not produce pollutants and thus can mitigate the effect of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emission especially carbon dioxide. It also makes energy supplies more secure as the diversification of energy source will lessen the dependency on fuel imports. It is also a cheap source of energy as one single nuclea r power plant can produce tremendous amount of electricity. There are however concerns about the use of nuclear power as an alternative source of energy. Foremost to these concerns is the possibility of a nuclear meltdown just like what happened to Chernobyl and Fukushima Daiichi in Japan. Next is the issue of the disposal of radioactive waste which can prove to be deadly when a living thing is exposed, that includes humans, animals and plants. The Chernobyl disaster demonstrated how devastating a nuclear meltdown is that the nearby town of Pripyat in Ukraine still remained uninhabited today after the 1986 disaster and made it a reason why nuclear technology should not be used. The present reality however compels a serious consideration of an alternative source of energy. At present, other sources of energy are already depleted because they are non renewable and needs to be abandoned because they pollute the environment (Armaroli, & Balzani, 2011). Nuclear power provides an excellen t alternative because it does not release any pollutants to the atmosphere. Unlike the traditional fossil fuel which converts itself into carbon dioxide during its conversion into electrical energy, nuclear power does not emit carbon dioxide because it is not being burned to create electrical energy (Clemmit, 2010). Energy is created in a chemical process which decomposition takes place exothermally that heats up a water to create a steam that would consequently propel the connecting turbine to create electrical energy from a stored chemical energy. This technology was already available since 1600s and may have been first used as a weapon to bomb the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second World War (Graetz, 2011) but it was only in 1957 that it was first used as a source of energy when the first nuclear power plant was constructed at Pennsylvania when a uranium atom was discovered that could be split to produce sub-atomic particles of high energy content (Kelley, 2008). The nuclear power as a source of energy also proved to be efficient because it only requires a very small amount of raw materials to produce a large quantity of energy (Cavallaro, 2010). Raiput even estimated that it a single nuclear plant could supply energy for an entire country for a long time (2006). It is also cost efficient because it requires minimal cost in its maintenance that could last up to sixty years (the regular

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Marketing 100 - Research Paper Example The Cupuacu Butter is a natural moisturizer that assists in creating lustrous, radiant as well as hydrated hairs. Blue Algae has been proven to be one of the ingredients effective in strengthening the hair shaft. In addition to this wild orchids help in adding moisture to the hairs, keeps hair healthy and shiny. The product is completely eco-friendly and has been effective and suitable for all hair types. The main benefits that the users of the product receive when buying the product is that the hydrating shampoo is rich in lather that assist in cleansing the scalp as well as the hairs. It also assist in purifying, protecting and eliminating the dirt, oil as well as the styling residue that tends to damage the hair and makes the hair look dull and dry. In addition to this the users of the product can also keep their hair color longer since the color-treated hair is re-hydrated and revitalized (David Babaii for Wildaid 2011). ... The current price of David Babaii for Wildaid Hydrating shampoo is AUD $22.95 for 400 ml while the RRP of the product has been $23.50. Therefore, the customers of the product can save 2%. It has been evident that the company quite frequently offers its products at discount rate. From the name itself it has been evident that the company strives to support the beauty of the nature since it donates ten percent of all profits to the ‘Wildaid’. Wildaid is the global wildlife conservation organization (Discount Vitamin Express 2011). The close competitors of the company are Abba, Alchemy, Art of Shaving and Head Organics. It has been apparent that most of the shampoos are formulated along with certified ‘organic ingredients’ that assist in gently cleansing the hair and the scalp. The Seven Wonders have also proved to be a close competitor for David Babaii hydrating shampoo. Matrix Biolage HydraTherapie Hydrating Shampoo is also one of the close competitors of the product. It is evident that the company uses competitive pricing strategies. Consumers can easily purchase the product online and compare the prices of these shampoos with other shampoos and make their purchase related decision. Moreover, the competitors are offering the product at the same price with the same quantity which makes it difficult to set price for the David Babaii shampoo. From this it can be revealed that the prices of the product tend to remain competitive in case of greater threat of substitute products from other brands. Therefore, in light of the stiff competition faced by the company it would be better for it to keep the prices affordable for all the classes of the society. 1.3 Current Distribution

Effects of quantitative easing on food prices Research Paper - 1

Effects of quantitative easing on food prices - Research Paper Example Instead of that food prices now depend on global demand and supply. Dependence on global market leads to speculation which makes food price volatile. Volatility is a characteristic of the market but irresponsible monitory policies generate the market more volatile and drive prices up. Generally weather, speculation and a number of other faults would have been considered as responsible but here monetary policy and quantitative easing (QE) or printing new money are the main reasons. This policy can be done by the central bank only because everyone accepts this money as a payment. People use this money to buy government and corporate bonds, equity and houses. In addition central bank sometimes lowers the interest rate on new bonds and loans and this will make additional pressure on money market. It encourages greater spending. On the other hand bank can also improve their position and show their interest in money lending (Fry). Effects: There is also a negative impact. Firstly, the prin ting of new money raises the purchasing power of the consumer and the demand of products increase. For that people demand more money but the central bank fails to supply that amount of money. This leads to inflation in economy. Then to control the situation central bank decides to increase interest rate on both credit and deposit. For that central bank loss money on its purchase and suggest the government to impose higher tax rate on goods and services. Secondly, creating and spending money lowers the value of currency and it causes inflation or hyper inflation. This exploits the purchasing power due to instable price level. Last of all, QE demolishes the confidence of an economy. Thus we can say that QE is counterproductive for an economy and central bank cannot impose QE anyhow (The Financial Times Lexicon). According to some economist QE is not main responsible for rising of food prices. Poor people have to understand that they should maintain their food habits basis on supply of those goods in world market. If there is seen a shortage of that good people should adjust their food habit according to the situation. This can make a stable situation in the food market which directly affects the prices of foods (Lagi et al). Gradual increase of basic food prices has severe impacts on huge population across the world. There is a lack of confusion about the factors which are responsible for this situation. The main cause of price increase of food is investor speculation. In recent years it is clearly seen that the supply and demand are not consistent with the actual price dynamics. The exploitation of food prices in 2007-08 and 2010-11 were mainly happened due to the investor speculation (Lagi et al). Along with that the consumption of ethanol is another reason. The excessive consumption of ethanol in US gave a huge negative impact in the global market. It increased the price of ethanol sharply. More over these adverse results are not only seen in the commodity ma rket but also seen in the asset market. It increased the expected returns from equities and bonds. Though some economists have claimed speculators cannot affect the food market directly. According to them food prices are set up through the market mechanism and deregulation of the price system. Price system is generally controlled by the practitioners of the market. Therefore, there is a huge chance of making disingenuous price system. They generally set the price level with respect to their profit maximization

Global Leader Carlos Slim Helu - Telecom Research Paper

Global Leader Carlos Slim Helu - Telecom - Research Paper Example How did such a young boy with no substantial wealth become the richest person in the whole world? Business men intend to be sharp and ruthless which he was but what made him so special that he remained the world’s richest person for three years even with the likes of Bill Gates breathing down his necks? Here we will try to analyze his approach to business and his worth ethics and strategies that have driven his tremendous success (forbes, n.p.). From an early age Carlos Slim showed exceptional ability in business related matters so his father who was an entrepreneur himself groomed him from an early stage. His father had fled Lebanon along with his brothers to make a living in Mexico and he survived the competitive streets while making a name in business. Carlos Slim was also raised to be in the same mould of competitive behavior and as time showed that appeared to be his main attribute in achieving success. At the tender age of 12, he was handed his father’s real estat e business which he co handed and did extraordinary work but his thoughts were focused on other things so he gained an engineering degree and became a stockbroker and worked his magic in the stock business for some while with huge profits so much that by the age of 26, his net worth was forty million dollars. But due to his nature, he never wanted to be in the stock business for good rather he wanted to become a real business man with permanent interests in the leading industries of the world. His phenomenal rise by trading stocks and later in all the leading businesses that he started commanding benefited from his outrageous talent of organizing and mastery of discrete mathematics. His level in the mastery of numbers and linear programming (even though it had tedious application back in the 1960s) was considered unparalleled and unique. It enabled him to understand the worth and the potential of several fields that were not so profitable in the early days of their conception like t he now trillion dollar industries of telecom, tobacco and oil. After doing considerable research and numerical study, he decided to buy the second largest tobacco company Cigatem in Mexico back in 1981 which made Marlboro brand of cigarettes (Rubin, 99). With expansion and modernization, he transformed the company into huge profits which he used to buy into more companies and gain control. Until now, Slim wasn’t in the elite circle of businessmen but from now onwards he began the real climb towards success. In 1982, the oil prices went downhill due to the expansion of the Middle East oil well business which affected the Mexican economy so the businesses began to tumble and he took advantage of the situation and made ridiculously good bargains. He also invested in the Mexican businesses in USA like Hershey Corporation and Reynolds Aluminum and earned mighty profits. He also invested in the Mexican financial services. He was a true ruthless businessman and from now onwards he s tarted making total monopolies and drove competitors away with relative ease. His monopoly of the communication industry is also evident of this fact with Telmex and Movil his primary concerns nowadays which he purchased dirt cheap and helped transform them into the largest telecom operators in the region just because of the insight he possessed. In the later part of eighties, he purchased more large companies that had major futures in Aluminum, copper and chemicals and expanded his business.

CRANBERY SUPPLEMENTS AS PROPHYLACTIC TREATMENT Assignment

CRANBERY SUPPLEMENTS AS PROPHYLACTIC TREATMENT - Assignment Example From the above parameters it may be anticipated that if cranberry supplements are really useful then the frequency of urinary tract infection will decrease, the symptoms of UTI like polyuria and hematuria will decrease, the diagnostic results will show normal count (5000-9000 cu mm) of WBC and reduced levels of C - reactive protein. The further anticipated outcome will be the reduction in the frequency of antibiotics prescribed or there will also be a reduced need to escalate the dosage and class of an antibiotic. This means that though infection may occur but it does not require the intervention with an antibiotic and the innate immunity of the body can take care of the situation. Further decreased need to escalate the dosage and class of an antibiotic also implicate that chances of antibiotic resistance would not be high, if cranberry supplements are administered (Lane and Takhar,2011) (Wang, Fang and Chen, 2012) The protocol will be evaluated with the help of statistical tests of significance and in this regard the â€Å"chi square test† will be performed. First of all stratified random sampling would be done to specify the sample sizes and the limits. Seven groups will be formed with the women in the age range of 18 to 67 years. These groups are 18-28 years, 29-38 years, 39—48 years, 49-58 years, 59-68 year, 69-78 years and 79-88 years. Data will be collected from the urologists who classify that these women are patients of recurrent urinary tract infections. Patients below and above the specified age range will not be included in the study. Further newly diagnosed patients of UTI will also be not included in the study. After selection of samples the patients in each group will be separated as the experimental arm and control arm. The patients of the experimental arm will only be administered cranberry supplements and the patients of control arm will receive placebo treatment. However as the study will

Eassy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 5

Eassy - Essay Example Put differently, incidences of sexual and high-risk drinking behaviors have been in the time immemorial become preeminently prevalent particularly among sorority and fraternity members as opposed to other students in the campuses. In opposition to doing away with Greek life henceforth, only smaller colleges have resorted to doing away with sorority; a concept whose eligibility is in questionable doubt. This paper, therefore, explains the misunderstandings and misconceptions surrounding fraternities and sororities ban in colleges. Doing away with Greek life completely becomes a complex attribute towards the limitations of college student’s freedoms and rights. Therefore, can Greek life be done away with completely? Or are there potentially unintended or intended consequence engulfed in between the ban of Greek life in colleges? Various small liberal arts college campuses have actually made the move of mitigating Greek life in their institutions. Larger colleges, on the other hand, have contradictorily failed to reject Greek life; fraternities and sororities are powerful social life determinants of these organizations. Banning fraternities and sororities in colleges is, therefore, complex in nature because of cultural diversity in this institutions and their primary concern as institutions in relation to socialization processes. Banning fraternities in colleges and its impossibilities: There is cordially the risk that if colleges crap off fraternities, then this vice will form an own house outside campuses. Fraternities and sororities are still evident in campuses, and have gained strong roots in the modern campuses more than the olden exhibition of fraternities and sororities (Lee & William 121). Exhibiting sororities currently, as a way of social life, is rhetorical thus needs no answer from anybody. Actually, the rhetorical and assumption nature of fraternities and sororities is evident in the higher education systems such as the

Case study-scientific glass Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

-scientific glass - Case Study Example Similarly, the alternative of accuracy and reliability of the managers’ records should be investigated (Cannella and Ciancimino 21).The alternatives can be evaluated by for example physically counterchecking the inventory and the recorded figures. If they indicate similarity, then the records can be relied upon. Otherwise, the managers should be trained on how to keep updated records. In 2009, the cost of goods sold according to the balance sheet was $38.9 million while the inventory stood at $8.7 million. Dividing $38.9 with $8.7, the answer is 4.47 which represent the inventory turnover. Months of inventory is then obtained by dividing 365 by 4.47 is equal to 81.66. In order to get the days of inventory based on months, 81.66 is divided by days which equals to 2.7. The ratio of inventory against sales is obtained by dividing total inventory in 2009 by total sales which stood at 86.3 million which is equal to 0.1. If SG increases the sales by 20 percent in 2010 thus getting total sales of $103.86, and keeps the inventory coverage the same, the forecasted inventory in for the company would be 1.04 while that of North America which contributes 50.9% 4.44/8.72*100 of the whole inventory would be 0.53. One of the policies that the company focuses at adopting is eliminating trunk stock. In order to ensure that the customers’ demands were effectively met by the company, the sales people are allowed to check up a maximum of $10,000 in their cars as well as homes. However, after some deliberation, Beane deemed it fit to remove the trunk shots. Even if this would be apart of the solution to the inventory problem, some managers were hesitant to apply the policy. The maximum amount of inventory that would be saved would stand at $320,000 that is gotten by multiplying 32 salespersons by 10,000. By emulating the policy change, I estimate that the company

Immanuel Kant - Ethics Essay Example for Free

Immanuel Kant Ethics Essay Immanuel Kant was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia in 1724. He attended the Collegium Fridiricianum at eight years old where he was taught classicism. Then he went to the University of Konigsberg where he spent his career focusing on philosophy, mathematics, and physics. When his is father past away, Kant left the university and earned his living as a private tutor. In 1755 he returned to the University to receive his doctorate in 1756. Immanuel Kant remained at the University teaching for 15 years. He received his tenure at the University in 1770, where he stayed for the next 27 years. In 1792 he was barred from teaching or writing on religious subjects do to his unorthodox approach in his teaching by King Fredrick William II. He returned to teaching after the king had passed away five years later. In his retirement he published a summary of his views on religion. Immanuel Kant passed away in 1804. Immanuel Kant was widely known for his categorical imperative theory. Categorical imperative is how one determines one’s duty, what principles are proper, and which are not. Doing one’s duty for the sake of duty itself is better than simply acting in agreement with one’s duty. Telling the truth in order to benefit yourself is acting in accordance with duty and not acting for the sake of duty. The categorical imperative states, â€Å"Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will it should become universal law(Keele, 2008). † Maxim in this sentence is the moral part of your action. Categorical imperative tells us it is immoral to make an exception of our self. Just like my mother would say treat and act as you would want others to treat and act towards you. In the news I view an article about â€Å"School knife attack poses ethical dilemma for daily. † In this article they talk about the Worcester New identifying a schoolboy as a suspect. The news published the boy’s name and picture on Facebook putting the boy’s life at risk. After the boy was found the news took down the boy’s picture at once. Everyone was perplexed by this situation asking why they put picture up and then took it down. According to the Worcester News, the situation change, where they were trying to find the boy to stop him from hurting himself or others and then to protecting the child. Would the newspapers actions have been ethical according to Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative? First let’s take a look at the reasons why they did it. The newspaper stated they put his picture up to protect him and other, then took down to protect him. I believe they were acting in the best of society myself by putting the information up. According to Immanuel Kant’s theory they were acting in accordance with their duty. They had a duty to let the public know what was going on to protect other students and teachers If they didn’t act with such speed would the boy have been found so soon? I think not! This boy could have went on a killing spree and if the Worcester News didn’t report it they would not have been acting in the best of society and would not have been doing their duty. But then to take down the information I feel is unethical. They don’t take down any information when it comes to any other person involved in a crime. Immanuel Kant stated that it is immoral to make an exception of yourself. The Worcester News should hold to the same standards as any other crime they report. I understand that they are trying to protect the boy, but if you are going to report any other crime and not take it down this should happen in the same way. In conclusion, based on my research I feel that Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative theory is important to our society today. It holds everyone to the same standards! He has help to maintain a set of standards for our society that requires everyone to be treated the same. The study of ethics is important in today’s business and government world because it sets standard for all to abide. From John Locke’s right theory to Kohlberg’s moral development stages. They all 1 / 2 set standards in which business need to stay within. If there were no standards there would be more scandals in the news than there is. References Britannica. (2014). Immanuel Kant. Retrieved from http://www. philosophypages. com/ph/kant. htm. Keele, Lisa. (2008, The Categorical Imperative of Immanuel Kant. Retrieved from https://www. suite. io/lisa-keele/ypd2fk. Linfold, Paul. (2014, September 28). School Knife Attack Poses Ethical Dilemma For Daily. Retrieved from http://www. holdthefrontpage. co. uk/2014/news/school-knife-attack-poses-ethical- dilemma-for-daily/ POWERED BY TCPDF (WWW. TCPDF. ORG).

Investment Banking Interview Essay Example for Free

Investment Banking Interview Essay Standard Questions: 1. Walk me through the highlights of your resume. What is your story, walk through the decisions you have made, and how that relates to your current interest in Investment Banking.. 2. Why investment banking? Why our bank? 3. How do you value a company? 4. To what extent have you created and used financial models before? Discuss your excel modeling skills. 5. Why did you choose McCombs? 6. What other firms are you interviewing with and why? Are you interviewing with consulting firms also? What career opportunities are you exploring other than I-Banking? 7. What were your grades in college? What were your grades for the first semester at McCombs? What was your GMAT score? 8. What qualities would you consider most important for a career in I-Banking? What are your greatest strengths? What are your weaknesses? 9. What do you understand the responsibilities of an associate/summer associate to be? 10. Describe a current event in the market (i.e., LTCM at the end of 1998)? 11. What questions do you have for me? Always have at least two questions prepared per bank. Resume-and personality questions: †¢ Why should I take you instead of someone from Wharton? †¢ Why should I pick you over the other qualified candidates at McCombs? †¢ What made you choose your undergraduate institution? Why did you pursue a major in _____? †¢ What was your favorite class at McCombs so far? Why? †¢ What classes are you currently taking to get ready for the summer? †¢ What are your 5-10 year long term career plans? †¢ What are your proudest accomplishments? What is your most challenging professional experience? †¢ Are you a leader or a follower? Give me an example where you were successful in both roles? †¢ What do you do to relax? †¢ Tell me a joke. †¢ Who has influenced you the most, besides family members? †¢ Say you are at a meeting with a client and your MD is giving a presentation. You suddenly notice a mistake in some of the calculations, which you have prepared. Do you mention it? When? What do you say? †¢ What is one skill that you think is most relevant to Banking? †¢ You seem to like marketing, why are you interested in finance? †¢ What is one word that describes you best? †¢ How would your groupmates describe you? How would you characterize yourself in the group dynamic? If I spoke with your groupmates, what would they say you needed to improve? †¢ Highlight your quantitative accomplishments. †¢ Describe an ethical decision you had to make? †¢ What do you read? Whats your favorite book? †¢ As an associate, what tasks would you like to spend most of your time doing? What percent of each day do you see yourself spending on those tasks? †¢ What is in a pitch book? †¢ What’s been your greatest challenge since beginning McCombs? Greatest accomplishment? †¢ Describe a time you failed, why did you fail, what did you learn? †¢ Describe a time you had to work with someone you didn’t like, or with a difficult person. Finance questions: †¢ What is a LBO? Why lever up a firm? †¢ What makes an attractive LBO? †¢ From a Private Equity firm’s perspective and from a modeling perspective: What are the 3 inputs that matter for an LBO Model? o Answer: Leverage Ratio, Equity Contribution, Estimated Returns, †¢ Why might a company choose to issue debt vs. equity? †¢ What could a company do with excess cash on the balance sheet? †¢ How would you calculate a firms WACC? What would you use it for? †¢ What does Beta mean? Where would you find a firms Beta? How and why would you unlever a Beta? †¢ What is the CAPM? †¢ How do you calculate the firm value for the following firm? †¢ What would greater impact a firms valuation, a 10% reduction in revenues or 1% reduction in discount rate? †¢ What major factors affect the yield on a corporate bond? †¢ How would you evaluate the creditworthiness of manufacturer with three factories in different locations throughout the US? †¢ Company A trades at a P/E of 20. Company B trades at a P/E of 10. Both are considering acquiring Company C, which trades at a P/E of 15. For which of the two acquiring companies would the deal be dilutive. For which would it be accretive? Explain why for each. †¢ Suppose you are buying a new fixed asset part cash and part debt. Talk through how it affects all the financial statements. Financial market questions: †¢ Where is the market going? Bond, equity and foreign exchange? Where do you think interest rates will be in the next 12 months? †¢ What happened in the markets in the past three months? †¢ Do you read the Wall Street Journal everyday? Whats on the front page today? †¢ What industry do you follow and what numbers do you look at to determine if a firm is doing well in the industry. Accounting questions: †¢ What are deferred taxes? How do they arise? †¢ What is working capital? How would you calculate it? †¢ What is EBITDA? Why is it so widely used as a proxy for Operating CF in the financial sector? †¢ Say you knew a companys net income. How would you figure out its cash flows? †¢ Walk me through the 3 major financial statements o What are the major line items of a Cash Flow Statement. o What is the difference between the balance sheet and the income statement? †¢ What is goodwill? How does it affect net income? †¢ A firm is using LIFO, and the COGS start decreasing. What are effects on I/S, BS and CFS? †¢ What is the difference between Purchase and Pooling accounting? Under what circumstances would you use one or the other? Questions on Investment Banks: †¢ Do you understand the lifestyle issues associated with this proffesion? Why dont you have an problem with these issues? †¢ What is your greatest concern about investment banking? †¢ Why I-Banking vs. Consulting? Sales Trading? Research? Finance in Industry? †¢ How does your past career qualify you for a position in investment banking? Why are you not going back to prior career? †¢ What do you hope to accomplish over the summer? †¢ What department do you want to work for inside I-banking and why? †¢ Who is in the bulge bracket? †¢ Rank firms on Wall Street and where do we fit? Who is our competition (in the major categories)? What differentiates our firm? What are our firms strengths? Weaknesses? †¢ If you were the CEO of our firm, what major changes would you implement? †¢ Describe a typical day of an investment banking associate? Technical Questions: †¢ What makes a proposed acquisition accretive? †¢ Suppose a proposed acquisition is accretive, how would you make it less accretive? †¢ What are the main factors in determining if a deal will be accretive or dilutive? †¢ Walk me through how the purchase of equipment effects the 3 statements. †¢ Walk me through the effects on the 3 statements given that a firm has to retroactively change the method of depreciation for last year’s financial statements. Previously, the firm’s fixed assets carrying value was $100M, with no salvage value, an estimated useful life of 10 years, and straight line depreciation. The salvage value has been determined to be $50M, but the useful life of the asset and method of depreciation has not changed. o Effect on Cash? Cash Flow Statement? †¢ What is the different factors to consider when choosing between Enterprise Value and Equity Value Comps? †¢ When you are trying to scale down the number of firms in your selected Comp universe, what would you look at to decide which Comps to include and which to pull out of the Comp universe? †¢ What types of discounts/premiums would you apply after determining valuation based on a Comp valuation? Why?

H.264 Video Streaming System on Embedded Platform

H.264 Video Streaming System on Embedded Platform ABSTRACT The adoption of technological products like digital television and video conferencing has made video streaming an active research area. This report presents the integration of a video streamer module into a baseline H.264/AVC encoder running a TMSDM6446EVM embedded platform. The main objective of this project is to achieve real-time streaming of the baseline H.264/AVC video over a local area network (LAN) which is a part of the surveillance video system. The encoding of baseline H.264/AVC and the hardware components of the platform are first discussed. Various streaming protocols are studied in order to implement the video streamer on the DM6446 board. The multi-threaded application encoder program is used to encode raw video frames into H.264/AVC format onto a file. For the video streaming, open source Live555 MediaServer was used to stream video data to a remote VLC client over LAN. Initially, file streaming was implemented from PC to PC. Upon successfully implementation on PC, the video streamer was ported to the board. The steps involved in porting the Live555 application were also described in the report. Both unicast and multicast file streaming were implemented in the video streamer. Due to the problems of file streaming, the live streaming approach was adopted. Several methodologies were discussed in integrating the video streamer and the encoder program. Modification was made both the encoder program and the Live555 application to achieve live streaming of H.264/AVC video. Results of both file and live streaming will be shown in this report. The implemented video streamer module will be used as a base module of the video surveillance system. Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1. Background Significant breakthroughs have been made over the last few years in the area of digital video compression technologies. As such applications making use of these technologies have also become prevalent and continue to be of active research topics today. For example, digital television and video conferencing are some of the applications that are now commonly encountered in our daily lives. One application of interest here is to make use of the technologies to implement a video camera surveillance system which can enhance the security of consumers business and home environment. In typical surveillance systems, the captured video is sent over a cable networks to be monitored and stored at remote stations. As the captured raw video contains large amount of data, it will be of advantage to first compress the data by using a compression technique before it is transferred over the network. One such compression technique that is suitable for this type of application is the H.264 coding standard. H.264 coding is better than the other coding technique for video streaming as it is more robust to data losses and coding efficiency, which are important factors when streaming is performed over a shared Local Area Network. As there is an increasing acceptance of H.264 coding and the availability of high computing power embedded systems, digital video surveillance system based on H.264 on embedded platform is hence a feasible and a potentially more cost-effective system. Implementing a H.264 video streaming system on an embedded platform is a logical extension of video surveillance systems which are still typical implemented using high computing power stations (e.g. PC). In a embedded version, a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) forms the core of the embedded system and executes the intensive signal processing algorithm. Current embedded systems typical also include network features which enable the implementation of data streaming applications. To facilitate data streaming, a number of network protocol standards have also being defined, and are currently used for digital video applications. 1.2. Objective and Scope The objective of this final year project is to implement a video surveillance system based on the H.264 coding standard running on an embedded platform. Such a system contains extensive scopes of functionalities and would require extensive amount of development time if implemented from scratch. Hence this project is to focus on the data streaming aspect of a video surveillance system. After some initial investigation and experimentation, it is decided to confine the main scope of the project to developing a live streaming H.264 based video system running on a DM6446 EVM development platform. The breakdown of the work to be progressive performed are then identified as follows: 1. Familiarization of open source live555 streaming media server Due to the complexity of implementing the various standard protocols needed for multimedia streaming, the live555 media server program is used as a base to implement the streaming of the H.264.based video data. 2. Streaming of stored H.264 file over the network The live555 is then modified to support streaming of raw encoded H.264 file from the DM6446 EVM board over the network. Knowledge of H.264 coding standard is necessary in order to parse the file stream before streaming over the network. 3. Modifying a demo version of an encoder program and integrating it together with live555 to achieve live streaming The demo encoder was modified to send encoded video data to the Live555 program which would do the necessary packetization to be streamed over the network. Since data is passed from one process to another, various inter-process communication techniques were studied and used in this project. 1.3. Resources The resources used for this project are as follows: 1. DM6446 (DaVinciâ„ ¢) Evaluation Module 2. SWANN C500 Professional CCTV Camera Solution 400 TV Lines CCD Color Camera 3. LCD Display 4. IR Remote Control 5. TI Davinci demo version of MontaVista Linux Pro v4.0 6. A Personal Workstation with Centos v5.0 7. VLC player v.0.9.8a as client 8. Open source live555 program (downloaded from www.live555.com) The system setup of this project is shown below: 1.4. Report Organization This report consists of 7 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the motivation behind embedded video streaming system and defines the scope of the project. Chapter 2 illustrates the video literature review of the H.264/AVC video coding technique and the various streaming protocols which are to be implemented in the project. Chapter 3 explains the hardware literature review of the platform being used in the project. The architecture, memory management, inter-process communication and the software tools are also discussed in this chapter. Chapter 4 explains the execution of the encoder program of the DM6446EVM board. The interaction of the various threads in this multi-threaded application is also discussed to fully understand the encoder program. Chapter 5 gives an overview of the Live555 MediaServer which is used as a base to implement the video streamer module on the board. Adding support to unicast and multicast streaming, porting of live555 to the board and receiving video stream on remote VCL client are explained in this chapter. Chapter 6 explains the limitations of file streaming and moving towards live streaming system. Various integration methodologies and modification to both encoder program and live555 program are shown as well. Chapters 7 summarize the implementation results of file and live streaming, analysis the performance of these results. Chapter 8 gives the conclusion by stating the current limitation and problems, scope for future implementation. Chapter 2: Video Literature Review 2.1. H.264/AVC Video Codec Overview H.264 is the most advanced and latest video coding technique. Although there are many video coding schemes like H.26x and MPEG, H.264/AVC made many improvements and tools for coding efficiency and error resiliency. This chapter briefly will discuss the network aspect of the video coding technique. It will also cover error resiliency needed for transmission of video data over the network. For a more detailed explanation of the H.264/AVC, refer to appendix A. 2.1.1. Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) The aim of the NAL is to ensure that the data coming from the VCL layer is â€Å"network worthy† so that the data can be used for numerous systems. NAL facilitates the mapping of H.264/AVC VCL data for different transport layers such as: * RTP/IP real-time streaming over wired and wireless mediums * Different storage file formats such as MP4, MMS, AVI and etc. The concepts of NAL and error robustness techniques of the H.264/AVC will be discussed in the following parts of the report. NAL Units The encoded data from the VCL are packed into NAL units. A NAL unit represents a packet which makes up of a certain number of bytes. The first byte of the NAL unit is called the header byte which indicates the data type of the NAL unit. The remaining bytes make up the payload data of the NAL unit. The NAL unit structure allows provision for different transport systems namely packet-oriented and bit stream-oriented. To cater for bit stream-oriented transport systems like MPEG-2, the NAL units are organized into byte stream format. These units are prefixed by a specific start code prefix of three bytes which is namely 0x000001. The start code prefix indicates and the start of each NAL units and hence defining the boundaries of the units. For packet-oriented transport systems, the encoded video data are transported via packets defined by transport protocols. Hence, the boundaries of the NAL units are known without having to include start code prefix byte. The details of packetization of NAL units will be discussed in later sections of the report. NAL units are further categorized into two types: * VCL unit: comprises of encoded video data  · Non-VCL unit: comprises of additional information like parameter sets which is the important header information. Also contains supplementary enhancement information (SEI) which contains the timing information and other data which increases the usability of the decoded video signal. Access units A group of NAL units which adhere to a certain form is called a access unit. When one access unit is decoded, one decoded picture is formed. In the table 1 below, the functions of the NAL units derived from the access units are explained. Data/Error robustness techniques H.264/AVC has several techniques to mitigate error/data loss which is an essential quality when it comes to streaming applications. The techniques are as follows:  · Parameter sets: contains information that is being applied to large number of VCL NAL units. It comprises of two kinds of parameter sets: Sequence Parameter set (SPS) : Information pertaining to sequence of encoded picture Picture Parameter Set (PPS) : Information pertaining to one or more individual pictures The above mentioned parameters hardly changes and hence it need not be transmitted repeatedly and saves overhead. The parameter sets can be sent â€Å"in-band† which is carried in the same channel as the VCL NAL units. It can also be sent â€Å"out-of-band† using reliable transport protocol. Therefore, it enhances the resiliency towards data and error loss.  · Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) FMO maps the macroblocks to different slice groups. In the event of any slice group loss, missing data is masked up by interpolating from the other slice groups.  · Redundancy Slices (RS) Redundant representation of the picture can be stored in the redundant slices. If the loss of the original slice occurs, the decoder can make use of the redundant slices to recover the original slice. These techniques introduced in the H.264/AVC makes the codec more robust and resilient towards data and error loss. 2.1.2. Profiles and Levels A profile of a codec is defined as the set of features identified to meet a certain specifications of intended applications For the H.264/AVC codec, it is defined as a set of features identified to generate a conforming bit stream. A level is imposes restrictions on some key parameters of the bit stream. In H.264/AVC, there are three profiles namely: Baseline, Main and Extended. 5 shows the relationship between these profiles. The Baseline profile is most likely to be used by network cameras and encoders as it requires limited computing resources. It is quite ideal to make use of this profile to support real-time streaming applications in a embedded platform. 2.2. Overview of Video Streaming In previous systems, accessing video data across network exploit the ‘download and play approach. In this approach, the client had to wait until the whole video data is downloaded to the media player before play out begins. To combat the long initial play out delay, the concept of streaming was introduced. Streaming allows the client to play out the earlier part of the video data whilst still transferring the remaining part of the video data. The major advantage of the streaming concept is that the video data need not be stored in the clients computer as compared to the traditional ‘download and play approach. This reduces the long initial play out delay experienced by the client. Streaming adopts the traditional client/server model. The client connects to the listening server and request for video data. The server sends video data over to the client for play out of video data. 2.2.1. Types of Streaming There are three different types of streaming video data. They are pre-recorded/ file streaming, live/real-time streaming and interactive streaming. * Pre-recorded/live streaming: The encoded video is stored into a file and the system streams the file over the network. A major overhead is that there is a long initial play out delay (10-15s) experienced by the client. * Live/real-time streaming: The encoded video is streamed over the network directly without being stored into a file. The initial play out delay reduces. Consideration must be taken to ensure that play out rate does not exceed sending rate which may result in jerky the picture. On the other hand, if the sending rate is too slow, the packets arriving at the client may be dropped, causing in a freezing the picture. The timing requirement for the end-to-end delay is more stringent in this scenario. * Interactive streaming: Like live streaming, the video is streamed directly over the network. It responds to users control input such as rewind, pause, stop, play and forward the particular video stream. The system should respond in accordance to those inputs by the user. In this project, both pre-recorded and live streaming are implemented. Some functionality of interactive streaming controls like stop and play are also part of the system. 2.2.2. Video Streaming System modules Video Source The intent of the video source is to capture the raw video sequence. The CCTV camera is used as the video source in this project. Most cameras are of analogue inputs and these inputs are connected to the encoding station via video connections. This project makes use of only one video source due to the limitation of the video connections on the encoding station. The raw video sequence is then passed onto the encoding station. Encoding Station The aim of the encoding station digitized and encodes the raw video sequence into the desired format. In the actual system, the encoding is done by the DM6446 board into the H.264/AVC format. Since the hardware encoding is CPU intensive, this forms the bottleneck of the whole streaming system. The H.264 video is passed onto the video streamer server module of the system. Video Streaming and WebServer The role of the video streaming server is to packetize the H.264/AVC to be streamed over the network. It serves the requests from individual clients. It needs to support the total bandwidth requirements of the particular video stream requested by clients. WebServer offers a URL link which connects to the video streaming server. For this project, the video streaming server module is embedded inside DM6446 board and it is serves every individual clients requests. Video Player The video player acts a client connecting to and requesting video data from the video streaming server. Once the video data is received, the video player buffers the data for a while and then begins play out of data. The video player used for this project is the VideoLAN (VLC) Player. It has the relevant H.264/AVC codec so that it can decode and play the H264/AVC video data. 2.2.3. Unicast VS Multicast There are two key delivery techniques employed by streaming media distribution. Unicast transmission is the sending of data to one particular network destination host over a packet switched network. It establishes two way point-to-point connection between client and server. The client communicates directly with the server via this connection. The drawback is that every connection receives a separate video stream which uses up network bandwidth rapidly. Multicast transmission is the sending of only one copy of data via the network so that many clients can receive simultaneously. In video streaming, it is more cost effective to send single copy of video data over the network so as to conserve the network bandwidth. Since multicast is not connection oriented, the clients cannot control the streams that they can receive. In this project, unicast transmission is used to stream encoded video over the network. The client connects directly to the DM6446 board where it gets the encoded video data. The project can easily be extended to multicast transmission. 2.3. Streaming Protocols When streaming video content over a network, a number of network protocols are used. These protocols are well defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (IS) and documented in Request for Comments (RFC) documents. These standards are adopted by many developers today. In this project, the same standards are also employed in order to successfully stream H.264/AVC content over a simple Local Area Network (LAN). The following sections will discuss about the various protocols that are studied in the course of this project. 2.3.1. Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) The most commonly used application layer protocol is RTSP. RTSP acts a control protocol to media streaming servers. It establishes connection between two end points of the system and control media sessions. Clients issue VCR-like commands like play and pause to facilitate the control of real-time playback of media streams from the servers. However, this protocol is not involved in the transport of the media stream over the network. For this project, RTSP version 1.0 is used. RTSP States Like the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), it contains several methods. They are OPTIONS, DESCRIBE, SETUP, PLAY, PAUSE, RECORD and TEARDOWN. These commands are sent by using the RTSP URL. The default port number used in this protocol is 554. An example of such as URL is: rtsp://  · OPTIONS: An OPTIONS request returns the types of request that the server will accept. An example of the request is: OPTIONS rtsp://155.69.148.136:554/test.264 RTSP/1.0 CSeq: 1rn User-agent: VLC media Player The CSeq parameter keeps track of the number of request send to the server and it is incremented every time a new request is issued. The User-agent refers to the client making the request. * DESCRIBE: This method gets the presentation or the media object identified in the request URL from the server. An example of such a request: DESCRIBE rtsp://155.69.148.138:554/test.264 RTSP/1.0 CSeq: 2rn Accept: application/sdprn User agent: VLC media Player The Accept header is used to describe the formats understood by the client. All the initialization of the media resource must be present in the DESCRIBE method that it describes.  · SETUP: This method will specify the mode of transport mechanism to be used for the media stream. A typical example is: SETUP rtsp://155.69.148.138:554/test.264 RTSP/1.0 CSeq: 3rn Transport: RTP/AVP; unicast; client_port = 1200-1201 User agent: VLC media Player The Transport header specifies the transport mechanism to be used. In this case, real-time transport protocol is used in a unicast manner. The relevant client port number is also reflected and it is selected randomly by the server. Since RTSP is a stateful protocol, a session is created upon successful acknowledgement to this method.  · PLAY: This method request the server to start sending the data via the transport mechanism stated in the SETUP method. The URL is the same as the other methods except for: Session: 6 Range: npt= 0.000- rn The Session header specifies the unique session id. This is important as server may establish various sessions and this keep tracks of them. The Range header positions play time to the beginning and plays till the end of the range. * PAUSE: This method informs the server to pause sending of the media stream. Once the PAUSE request is sent, the range header will capture the position at which the media stream is paused. When a PLAY request is sent again, the client will resume playing from the current position of the media stream as specified in the range header. RSTP Status Codes Whenever the client sends a request message to the server, the server forms a equivalent response message to be sent to the client. The response codes are similar to HTTP as they are both in ASCII text. They are as follows: 200: OK 301: Redirection 405: Method Not Allowed 451: Parameter Not Understood 454: Session Not Found 457: Invalid Range 461: Unsupported Transport 462: Destination Unreachable These are some of the RTSP status codes. There are many others but the codes mentioned above are of importance in the context of this project. 2.3.2. Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) RTP is a defined packet structure which is used for transporting media stream over the network. It is a transport layer protocol but developers view it as a application layer protocol stack. This protocol facilitates jitter compensation and detection of incorrect sequence arrival of data which is common for transmission over IP network. For the transmission of media data over the network, it is important that packets arrive in a timely manner as it is loss tolerant but not delay tolerant. Due to the high latency of Transmission Control Protocol in establishing connections, RTP is often built on top of the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). RTP also supports multicast transmission of data. RTP is also a stateful protocol as a session is established before data can be packed into the RTP packet and sent over the network. The session contains the IP address of the destination and port number of the RTP which is usually an even number. The following section will explain about the packet structure of RTP which is used for transmission. RTP Packet Structure The below shows a RTP packet header which is appended in front of the media data.s The minimum size of the RTP header is 12 bytes.. Optional extension information may be present after the header information. The fields of the header are:  · V: (2 bits) to indicate the version number of the protocol. Version used in this project is 2.  · P (Padding): (1 bit) to indicate if there padding which can be used for encryption algorithm  · X (Extension): (1 bit) to indicate if there is extension information between header and payload data.  · CC (CSRC Count) : (4 bits) indicates the number of CSRC identifiers  · M (Marker): (1 bit) used by application to indicate data has specific relevance in the perspective of the application. The setting for M bit marks the end of video data in this project  · PT (Payload Type): (7 bits) to indicate the type of payload data carried by the packet. H.264 is used for this project  · Sequence number: (16 bits) incremented by one for every RTP packet. It is used to detect packet loss and out of sequence packet arrival. Based on this information, application can take appropriate action to correct them.  · Time Stamp: (32 bits) receivers use this information to play samples at correct intervals of time. Each stream has independent time stamps.  · SSRC: (32 bits) it unique identifies source of the stream.  · CSRC: sources of a stream from different sources are enumerated according to its source IDs. This project does not involve the use of Extension field in the packet header and hence will not be explained in this report. Once this header information is appended to the payload data, the packet is sent over the network to the client to be played. The table below summarizes the payload types of RTP and highlighted region is of interest in this project. Table 2: Payload Types of RTP Packets 2.3.3. RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) RTCP is a sister protocol which is used in conjunction with the RTP. It provides out-of-band statistical and control information to the RTP session. This provides certain Quality of Service (QoS) for transmission of video data over the network. The primary functions of the RTCP are: * To gather statistical information about the quality aspect of the media stream during a RTP session. This data is sent to the session media source and its participants. The source can exploit this information for adaptive media encoding and detect transmission errors. * It provides canonical end point identifiers (CNAME) to all its session participants. It allows unique identification of end points across different application instances and serves as a third party monitoring tool. * It also sends RTCP reports to all its session participants. By doing so, the traffic bandwidth increases proportionally. In order to avoid congestion, RTCP has bandwidth management techniques to only use 5% of the total session bandwidth. RTCP statistical data is sent odd numbered ports. For instance, if RTP port number is 196, then RTCP will use the 197 as its port number. There is no default port number assigned to RTCP. RTCP Message Types RTCP sends several types of packets different from RTP packets. They are sender report, receiver report, source description and bye.  · Sender Report (SR): Sent periodically by senders to report the transmission and reception statistics of RTP packets sent in a period of time. It also includes the senders SSRC and senders packet count information. The timestamp of the RTP packet is also sent to allow the receiver to synchronize the RTP packets. The bandwidth required for SR is 25% of RTCP bandwidth.  · Receiver Report (RR): It reports the QoS to other receivers and senders. Information like highest sequence number received, inter arrival jitter of RTP packets and fraction of packets loss further explains the QoS of the transmitted media streams. The bandwidth required for RR is 75% of the RTCP bandwidth.  · Source Description (SDES): Sends the CNAME to its session participants. Additional information like name, address of the owner of the source can also be sent.  · End of Participation (BYE): The source sends a BYE message to indicate that it is shutting down the stream. It serves as an announcement that a particular end point is leaving the conference. Further RTCP Consideration This protocol is important to ensure that QoS standards are achieved. The acceptable frequencies of these reports are less than one minute. In major application, the frequency may increase as RTCP bandwidth control mechanism. Then, the statistical reporting on the quality of the media stream becomes inaccurate. Since there are no long delays introduced between the reports in this project, the RTCP is adopted to incorporate a certain level of QoS on streaming H.264/AVC video over embedded platform. 2.3.4. Session Description Protocol (SDP) The Session Description Protocol is a standard to describe streaming media initialization parameters. These initializations describe the sessions for session announcement, session invitation and parameter negotiation. This protocol can be used together with RTSP. In the previous sections of this chapter, SDP is used in the DESCRIBE state of RTSP to get sessions media initialization parameters. SDP is scalable to include different media types and formats. SDP Syntax The session is described by attribute/value pairs. The syntax of SDP are summarized in the below. In this project, the use of SDP is important in streaming as the client is VLC Media Player. If the streaming is done via RTSP, then VLC expects a sdp description from the server in order to setup the session and facilitate the playback of the streaming media. Chapter 3: Hardware Literature Review 3.1. Introduction to Texas Instrument DM6446EVM DavinciTM The development of this project based on the DM6446EVM board. It is necessary to understand the hardware and software aspects of this board. The DM6446 board has a ARM processor operating at a clock speed up to 300MHz and a C64x Digital Signal Processor operating at a clock speed of up to 600MHz. 3.1.1. Key Features of DM6446 The key features that are shown in the above are: * 1 video port which supports composite of S video * 4 video DAC outputs: component, RGB, composite * 256 MB of DDR2 DRAM * UART, Media Card interface (SD, xD, SM, MS ,MMC Cards) * 16 MB of non-volatile Flash Memory, 64 MB NAND Flash, 4 MB SRAM * USB2 interface * 10/100 MBS Ethernet interface * Configurable boot load options * IR Remote Interface, real time clock via MSP430 3.1.2. DM6446EVM Architecture The architecture of the DM6446 board is organized into several subsystems. By knowing the architecture of the DM6446, the developer can then design and built his application module on the boards underlining architecture. The shows that DM6446 has three subsystems which are connected to the underlying hardware peripherals. This provides a decoupled architecture which allows the developers to implement his applications on a particular subsystem without having to modify the other subsystems. Some of subsystems are discussed in the next sections. ARM Subsystem The ARM subsystem is responsible for the master control of the DM6446 board. It handles the system-level initializations, configurations, user interface, connectivity functions and control of DSP subsystems. The ARM has a larger program memory space and better context switching capabilities and hence it is more suited to handle complex and multi tasks of the system. DSP Subsystem The DSP subsystem is mainly the encoding the raw captured video frames into the desired format. It performs several number crunching operations in order to achieve the desired compression technique. It works together with the Video Imaging Coprocessor to compress the video frames. Video Imaging Coprocessor (VICP) The VICP is a signal processing library which contains various software algorithms that execute on VICP hardware accelerator. It helps the DSP by taking over computation of varied intensive tasks. Since hardware implementation of number cru H.264 Video Streaming System on Embedded Platform H.264 Video Streaming System on Embedded Platform ABSTRACT The adoption of technological products like digital television and video conferencing has made video streaming an active research area. This report presents the integration of a video streamer module into a baseline H.264/AVC encoder running a TMSDM6446EVM embedded platform. The main objective of this project is to achieve real-time streaming of the baseline H.264/AVC video over a local area network (LAN) which is a part of the surveillance video system. The encoding of baseline H.264/AVC and the hardware components of the platform are first discussed. Various streaming protocols are studied in order to implement the video streamer on the DM6446 board. The multi-threaded application encoder program is used to encode raw video frames into H.264/AVC format onto a file. For the video streaming, open source Live555 MediaServer was used to stream video data to a remote VLC client over LAN. Initially, file streaming was implemented from PC to PC. Upon successfully implementation on PC, the video streamer was ported to the board. The steps involved in porting the Live555 application were also described in the report. Both unicast and multicast file streaming were implemented in the video streamer. Due to the problems of file streaming, the live streaming approach was adopted. Several methodologies were discussed in integrating the video streamer and the encoder program. Modification was made both the encoder program and the Live555 application to achieve live streaming of H.264/AVC video. Results of both file and live streaming will be shown in this report. The implemented video streamer module will be used as a base module of the video surveillance system. Chapter 1: Introduction 1.1. Background Significant breakthroughs have been made over the last few years in the area of digital video compression technologies. As such applications making use of these technologies have also become prevalent and continue to be of active research topics today. For example, digital television and video conferencing are some of the applications that are now commonly encountered in our daily lives. One application of interest here is to make use of the technologies to implement a video camera surveillance system which can enhance the security of consumers business and home environment. In typical surveillance systems, the captured video is sent over a cable networks to be monitored and stored at remote stations. As the captured raw video contains large amount of data, it will be of advantage to first compress the data by using a compression technique before it is transferred over the network. One such compression technique that is suitable for this type of application is the H.264 coding standard. H.264 coding is better than the other coding technique for video streaming as it is more robust to data losses and coding efficiency, which are important factors when streaming is performed over a shared Local Area Network. As there is an increasing acceptance of H.264 coding and the availability of high computing power embedded systems, digital video surveillance system based on H.264 on embedded platform is hence a feasible and a potentially more cost-effective system. Implementing a H.264 video streaming system on an embedded platform is a logical extension of video surveillance systems which are still typical implemented using high computing power stations (e.g. PC). In a embedded version, a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) forms the core of the embedded system and executes the intensive signal processing algorithm. Current embedded systems typical also include network features which enable the implementation of data streaming applications. To facilitate data streaming, a number of network protocol standards have also being defined, and are currently used for digital video applications. 1.2. Objective and Scope The objective of this final year project is to implement a video surveillance system based on the H.264 coding standard running on an embedded platform. Such a system contains extensive scopes of functionalities and would require extensive amount of development time if implemented from scratch. Hence this project is to focus on the data streaming aspect of a video surveillance system. After some initial investigation and experimentation, it is decided to confine the main scope of the project to developing a live streaming H.264 based video system running on a DM6446 EVM development platform. The breakdown of the work to be progressive performed are then identified as follows: 1. Familiarization of open source live555 streaming media server Due to the complexity of implementing the various standard protocols needed for multimedia streaming, the live555 media server program is used as a base to implement the streaming of the H.264.based video data. 2. Streaming of stored H.264 file over the network The live555 is then modified to support streaming of raw encoded H.264 file from the DM6446 EVM board over the network. Knowledge of H.264 coding standard is necessary in order to parse the file stream before streaming over the network. 3. Modifying a demo version of an encoder program and integrating it together with live555 to achieve live streaming The demo encoder was modified to send encoded video data to the Live555 program which would do the necessary packetization to be streamed over the network. Since data is passed from one process to another, various inter-process communication techniques were studied and used in this project. 1.3. Resources The resources used for this project are as follows: 1. DM6446 (DaVinciâ„ ¢) Evaluation Module 2. SWANN C500 Professional CCTV Camera Solution 400 TV Lines CCD Color Camera 3. LCD Display 4. IR Remote Control 5. TI Davinci demo version of MontaVista Linux Pro v4.0 6. A Personal Workstation with Centos v5.0 7. VLC player v.0.9.8a as client 8. Open source live555 program (downloaded from www.live555.com) The system setup of this project is shown below: 1.4. Report Organization This report consists of 7 chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the motivation behind embedded video streaming system and defines the scope of the project. Chapter 2 illustrates the video literature review of the H.264/AVC video coding technique and the various streaming protocols which are to be implemented in the project. Chapter 3 explains the hardware literature review of the platform being used in the project. The architecture, memory management, inter-process communication and the software tools are also discussed in this chapter. Chapter 4 explains the execution of the encoder program of the DM6446EVM board. The interaction of the various threads in this multi-threaded application is also discussed to fully understand the encoder program. Chapter 5 gives an overview of the Live555 MediaServer which is used as a base to implement the video streamer module on the board. Adding support to unicast and multicast streaming, porting of live555 to the board and receiving video stream on remote VCL client are explained in this chapter. Chapter 6 explains the limitations of file streaming and moving towards live streaming system. Various integration methodologies and modification to both encoder program and live555 program are shown as well. Chapters 7 summarize the implementation results of file and live streaming, analysis the performance of these results. Chapter 8 gives the conclusion by stating the current limitation and problems, scope for future implementation. Chapter 2: Video Literature Review 2.1. H.264/AVC Video Codec Overview H.264 is the most advanced and latest video coding technique. Although there are many video coding schemes like H.26x and MPEG, H.264/AVC made many improvements and tools for coding efficiency and error resiliency. This chapter briefly will discuss the network aspect of the video coding technique. It will also cover error resiliency needed for transmission of video data over the network. For a more detailed explanation of the H.264/AVC, refer to appendix A. 2.1.1. Network Abstraction Layer (NAL) The aim of the NAL is to ensure that the data coming from the VCL layer is â€Å"network worthy† so that the data can be used for numerous systems. NAL facilitates the mapping of H.264/AVC VCL data for different transport layers such as: * RTP/IP real-time streaming over wired and wireless mediums * Different storage file formats such as MP4, MMS, AVI and etc. The concepts of NAL and error robustness techniques of the H.264/AVC will be discussed in the following parts of the report. NAL Units The encoded data from the VCL are packed into NAL units. A NAL unit represents a packet which makes up of a certain number of bytes. The first byte of the NAL unit is called the header byte which indicates the data type of the NAL unit. The remaining bytes make up the payload data of the NAL unit. The NAL unit structure allows provision for different transport systems namely packet-oriented and bit stream-oriented. To cater for bit stream-oriented transport systems like MPEG-2, the NAL units are organized into byte stream format. These units are prefixed by a specific start code prefix of three bytes which is namely 0x000001. The start code prefix indicates and the start of each NAL units and hence defining the boundaries of the units. For packet-oriented transport systems, the encoded video data are transported via packets defined by transport protocols. Hence, the boundaries of the NAL units are known without having to include start code prefix byte. The details of packetization of NAL units will be discussed in later sections of the report. NAL units are further categorized into two types: * VCL unit: comprises of encoded video data  · Non-VCL unit: comprises of additional information like parameter sets which is the important header information. Also contains supplementary enhancement information (SEI) which contains the timing information and other data which increases the usability of the decoded video signal. Access units A group of NAL units which adhere to a certain form is called a access unit. When one access unit is decoded, one decoded picture is formed. In the table 1 below, the functions of the NAL units derived from the access units are explained. Data/Error robustness techniques H.264/AVC has several techniques to mitigate error/data loss which is an essential quality when it comes to streaming applications. The techniques are as follows:  · Parameter sets: contains information that is being applied to large number of VCL NAL units. It comprises of two kinds of parameter sets: Sequence Parameter set (SPS) : Information pertaining to sequence of encoded picture Picture Parameter Set (PPS) : Information pertaining to one or more individual pictures The above mentioned parameters hardly changes and hence it need not be transmitted repeatedly and saves overhead. The parameter sets can be sent â€Å"in-band† which is carried in the same channel as the VCL NAL units. It can also be sent â€Å"out-of-band† using reliable transport protocol. Therefore, it enhances the resiliency towards data and error loss.  · Flexible Macroblock Ordering (FMO) FMO maps the macroblocks to different slice groups. In the event of any slice group loss, missing data is masked up by interpolating from the other slice groups.  · Redundancy Slices (RS) Redundant representation of the picture can be stored in the redundant slices. If the loss of the original slice occurs, the decoder can make use of the redundant slices to recover the original slice. These techniques introduced in the H.264/AVC makes the codec more robust and resilient towards data and error loss. 2.1.2. Profiles and Levels A profile of a codec is defined as the set of features identified to meet a certain specifications of intended applications For the H.264/AVC codec, it is defined as a set of features identified to generate a conforming bit stream. A level is imposes restrictions on some key parameters of the bit stream. In H.264/AVC, there are three profiles namely: Baseline, Main and Extended. 5 shows the relationship between these profiles. The Baseline profile is most likely to be used by network cameras and encoders as it requires limited computing resources. It is quite ideal to make use of this profile to support real-time streaming applications in a embedded platform. 2.2. Overview of Video Streaming In previous systems, accessing video data across network exploit the ‘download and play approach. In this approach, the client had to wait until the whole video data is downloaded to the media player before play out begins. To combat the long initial play out delay, the concept of streaming was introduced. Streaming allows the client to play out the earlier part of the video data whilst still transferring the remaining part of the video data. The major advantage of the streaming concept is that the video data need not be stored in the clients computer as compared to the traditional ‘download and play approach. This reduces the long initial play out delay experienced by the client. Streaming adopts the traditional client/server model. The client connects to the listening server and request for video data. The server sends video data over to the client for play out of video data. 2.2.1. Types of Streaming There are three different types of streaming video data. They are pre-recorded/ file streaming, live/real-time streaming and interactive streaming. * Pre-recorded/live streaming: The encoded video is stored into a file and the system streams the file over the network. A major overhead is that there is a long initial play out delay (10-15s) experienced by the client. * Live/real-time streaming: The encoded video is streamed over the network directly without being stored into a file. The initial play out delay reduces. Consideration must be taken to ensure that play out rate does not exceed sending rate which may result in jerky the picture. On the other hand, if the sending rate is too slow, the packets arriving at the client may be dropped, causing in a freezing the picture. The timing requirement for the end-to-end delay is more stringent in this scenario. * Interactive streaming: Like live streaming, the video is streamed directly over the network. It responds to users control input such as rewind, pause, stop, play and forward the particular video stream. The system should respond in accordance to those inputs by the user. In this project, both pre-recorded and live streaming are implemented. Some functionality of interactive streaming controls like stop and play are also part of the system. 2.2.2. Video Streaming System modules Video Source The intent of the video source is to capture the raw video sequence. The CCTV camera is used as the video source in this project. Most cameras are of analogue inputs and these inputs are connected to the encoding station via video connections. This project makes use of only one video source due to the limitation of the video connections on the encoding station. The raw video sequence is then passed onto the encoding station. Encoding Station The aim of the encoding station digitized and encodes the raw video sequence into the desired format. In the actual system, the encoding is done by the DM6446 board into the H.264/AVC format. Since the hardware encoding is CPU intensive, this forms the bottleneck of the whole streaming system. The H.264 video is passed onto the video streamer server module of the system. Video Streaming and WebServer The role of the video streaming server is to packetize the H.264/AVC to be streamed over the network. It serves the requests from individual clients. It needs to support the total bandwidth requirements of the particular video stream requested by clients. WebServer offers a URL link which connects to the video streaming server. For this project, the video streaming server module is embedded inside DM6446 board and it is serves every individual clients requests. Video Player The video player acts a client connecting to and requesting video data from the video streaming server. Once the video data is received, the video player buffers the data for a while and then begins play out of data. The video player used for this project is the VideoLAN (VLC) Player. It has the relevant H.264/AVC codec so that it can decode and play the H264/AVC video data. 2.2.3. Unicast VS Multicast There are two key delivery techniques employed by streaming media distribution. Unicast transmission is the sending of data to one particular network destination host over a packet switched network. It establishes two way point-to-point connection between client and server. The client communicates directly with the server via this connection. The drawback is that every connection receives a separate video stream which uses up network bandwidth rapidly. Multicast transmission is the sending of only one copy of data via the network so that many clients can receive simultaneously. In video streaming, it is more cost effective to send single copy of video data over the network so as to conserve the network bandwidth. Since multicast is not connection oriented, the clients cannot control the streams that they can receive. In this project, unicast transmission is used to stream encoded video over the network. The client connects directly to the DM6446 board where it gets the encoded video data. The project can easily be extended to multicast transmission. 2.3. Streaming Protocols When streaming video content over a network, a number of network protocols are used. These protocols are well defined by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Society (IS) and documented in Request for Comments (RFC) documents. These standards are adopted by many developers today. In this project, the same standards are also employed in order to successfully stream H.264/AVC content over a simple Local Area Network (LAN). The following sections will discuss about the various protocols that are studied in the course of this project. 2.3.1. Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) The most commonly used application layer protocol is RTSP. RTSP acts a control protocol to media streaming servers. It establishes connection between two end points of the system and control media sessions. Clients issue VCR-like commands like play and pause to facilitate the control of real-time playback of media streams from the servers. However, this protocol is not involved in the transport of the media stream over the network. For this project, RTSP version 1.0 is used. RTSP States Like the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP), it contains several methods. They are OPTIONS, DESCRIBE, SETUP, PLAY, PAUSE, RECORD and TEARDOWN. These commands are sent by using the RTSP URL. The default port number used in this protocol is 554. An example of such as URL is: rtsp://  · OPTIONS: An OPTIONS request returns the types of request that the server will accept. An example of the request is: OPTIONS rtsp://155.69.148.136:554/test.264 RTSP/1.0 CSeq: 1rn User-agent: VLC media Player The CSeq parameter keeps track of the number of request send to the server and it is incremented every time a new request is issued. The User-agent refers to the client making the request. * DESCRIBE: This method gets the presentation or the media object identified in the request URL from the server. An example of such a request: DESCRIBE rtsp://155.69.148.138:554/test.264 RTSP/1.0 CSeq: 2rn Accept: application/sdprn User agent: VLC media Player The Accept header is used to describe the formats understood by the client. All the initialization of the media resource must be present in the DESCRIBE method that it describes.  · SETUP: This method will specify the mode of transport mechanism to be used for the media stream. A typical example is: SETUP rtsp://155.69.148.138:554/test.264 RTSP/1.0 CSeq: 3rn Transport: RTP/AVP; unicast; client_port = 1200-1201 User agent: VLC media Player The Transport header specifies the transport mechanism to be used. In this case, real-time transport protocol is used in a unicast manner. The relevant client port number is also reflected and it is selected randomly by the server. Since RTSP is a stateful protocol, a session is created upon successful acknowledgement to this method.  · PLAY: This method request the server to start sending the data via the transport mechanism stated in the SETUP method. The URL is the same as the other methods except for: Session: 6 Range: npt= 0.000- rn The Session header specifies the unique session id. This is important as server may establish various sessions and this keep tracks of them. The Range header positions play time to the beginning and plays till the end of the range. * PAUSE: This method informs the server to pause sending of the media stream. Once the PAUSE request is sent, the range header will capture the position at which the media stream is paused. When a PLAY request is sent again, the client will resume playing from the current position of the media stream as specified in the range header. RSTP Status Codes Whenever the client sends a request message to the server, the server forms a equivalent response message to be sent to the client. The response codes are similar to HTTP as they are both in ASCII text. They are as follows: 200: OK 301: Redirection 405: Method Not Allowed 451: Parameter Not Understood 454: Session Not Found 457: Invalid Range 461: Unsupported Transport 462: Destination Unreachable These are some of the RTSP status codes. There are many others but the codes mentioned above are of importance in the context of this project. 2.3.2. Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) RTP is a defined packet structure which is used for transporting media stream over the network. It is a transport layer protocol but developers view it as a application layer protocol stack. This protocol facilitates jitter compensation and detection of incorrect sequence arrival of data which is common for transmission over IP network. For the transmission of media data over the network, it is important that packets arrive in a timely manner as it is loss tolerant but not delay tolerant. Due to the high latency of Transmission Control Protocol in establishing connections, RTP is often built on top of the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). RTP also supports multicast transmission of data. RTP is also a stateful protocol as a session is established before data can be packed into the RTP packet and sent over the network. The session contains the IP address of the destination and port number of the RTP which is usually an even number. The following section will explain about the packet structure of RTP which is used for transmission. RTP Packet Structure The below shows a RTP packet header which is appended in front of the media data.s The minimum size of the RTP header is 12 bytes.. Optional extension information may be present after the header information. The fields of the header are:  · V: (2 bits) to indicate the version number of the protocol. Version used in this project is 2.  · P (Padding): (1 bit) to indicate if there padding which can be used for encryption algorithm  · X (Extension): (1 bit) to indicate if there is extension information between header and payload data.  · CC (CSRC Count) : (4 bits) indicates the number of CSRC identifiers  · M (Marker): (1 bit) used by application to indicate data has specific relevance in the perspective of the application. The setting for M bit marks the end of video data in this project  · PT (Payload Type): (7 bits) to indicate the type of payload data carried by the packet. H.264 is used for this project  · Sequence number: (16 bits) incremented by one for every RTP packet. It is used to detect packet loss and out of sequence packet arrival. Based on this information, application can take appropriate action to correct them.  · Time Stamp: (32 bits) receivers use this information to play samples at correct intervals of time. Each stream has independent time stamps.  · SSRC: (32 bits) it unique identifies source of the stream.  · CSRC: sources of a stream from different sources are enumerated according to its source IDs. This project does not involve the use of Extension field in the packet header and hence will not be explained in this report. Once this header information is appended to the payload data, the packet is sent over the network to the client to be played. The table below summarizes the payload types of RTP and highlighted region is of interest in this project. Table 2: Payload Types of RTP Packets 2.3.3. RTP Control Protocol (RTCP) RTCP is a sister protocol which is used in conjunction with the RTP. It provides out-of-band statistical and control information to the RTP session. This provides certain Quality of Service (QoS) for transmission of video data over the network. The primary functions of the RTCP are: * To gather statistical information about the quality aspect of the media stream during a RTP session. This data is sent to the session media source and its participants. The source can exploit this information for adaptive media encoding and detect transmission errors. * It provides canonical end point identifiers (CNAME) to all its session participants. It allows unique identification of end points across different application instances and serves as a third party monitoring tool. * It also sends RTCP reports to all its session participants. By doing so, the traffic bandwidth increases proportionally. In order to avoid congestion, RTCP has bandwidth management techniques to only use 5% of the total session bandwidth. RTCP statistical data is sent odd numbered ports. For instance, if RTP port number is 196, then RTCP will use the 197 as its port number. There is no default port number assigned to RTCP. RTCP Message Types RTCP sends several types of packets different from RTP packets. They are sender report, receiver report, source description and bye.  · Sender Report (SR): Sent periodically by senders to report the transmission and reception statistics of RTP packets sent in a period of time. It also includes the senders SSRC and senders packet count information. The timestamp of the RTP packet is also sent to allow the receiver to synchronize the RTP packets. The bandwidth required for SR is 25% of RTCP bandwidth.  · Receiver Report (RR): It reports the QoS to other receivers and senders. Information like highest sequence number received, inter arrival jitter of RTP packets and fraction of packets loss further explains the QoS of the transmitted media streams. The bandwidth required for RR is 75% of the RTCP bandwidth.  · Source Description (SDES): Sends the CNAME to its session participants. Additional information like name, address of the owner of the source can also be sent.  · End of Participation (BYE): The source sends a BYE message to indicate that it is shutting down the stream. It serves as an announcement that a particular end point is leaving the conference. Further RTCP Consideration This protocol is important to ensure that QoS standards are achieved. The acceptable frequencies of these reports are less than one minute. In major application, the frequency may increase as RTCP bandwidth control mechanism. Then, the statistical reporting on the quality of the media stream becomes inaccurate. Since there are no long delays introduced between the reports in this project, the RTCP is adopted to incorporate a certain level of QoS on streaming H.264/AVC video over embedded platform. 2.3.4. Session Description Protocol (SDP) The Session Description Protocol is a standard to describe streaming media initialization parameters. These initializations describe the sessions for session announcement, session invitation and parameter negotiation. This protocol can be used together with RTSP. In the previous sections of this chapter, SDP is used in the DESCRIBE state of RTSP to get sessions media initialization parameters. SDP is scalable to include different media types and formats. SDP Syntax The session is described by attribute/value pairs. The syntax of SDP are summarized in the below. In this project, the use of SDP is important in streaming as the client is VLC Media Player. If the streaming is done via RTSP, then VLC expects a sdp description from the server in order to setup the session and facilitate the playback of the streaming media. Chapter 3: Hardware Literature Review 3.1. Introduction to Texas Instrument DM6446EVM DavinciTM The development of this project based on the DM6446EVM board. It is necessary to understand the hardware and software aspects of this board. The DM6446 board has a ARM processor operating at a clock speed up to 300MHz and a C64x Digital Signal Processor operating at a clock speed of up to 600MHz. 3.1.1. Key Features of DM6446 The key features that are shown in the above are: * 1 video port which supports composite of S video * 4 video DAC outputs: component, RGB, composite * 256 MB of DDR2 DRAM * UART, Media Card interface (SD, xD, SM, MS ,MMC Cards) * 16 MB of non-volatile Flash Memory, 64 MB NAND Flash, 4 MB SRAM * USB2 interface * 10/100 MBS Ethernet interface * Configurable boot load options * IR Remote Interface, real time clock via MSP430 3.1.2. DM6446EVM Architecture The architecture of the DM6446 board is organized into several subsystems. By knowing the architecture of the DM6446, the developer can then design and built his application module on the boards underlining architecture. The shows that DM6446 has three subsystems which are connected to the underlying hardware peripherals. This provides a decoupled architecture which allows the developers to implement his applications on a particular subsystem without having to modify the other subsystems. Some of subsystems are discussed in the next sections. ARM Subsystem The ARM subsystem is responsible for the master control of the DM6446 board. It handles the system-level initializations, configurations, user interface, connectivity functions and control of DSP subsystems. The ARM has a larger program memory space and better context switching capabilities and hence it is more suited to handle complex and multi tasks of the system. DSP Subsystem The DSP subsystem is mainly the encoding the raw captured video frames into the desired format. It performs several number crunching operations in order to achieve the desired compression technique. It works together with the Video Imaging Coprocessor to compress the video frames. Video Imaging Coprocessor (VICP) The VICP is a signal processing library which contains various software algorithms that execute on VICP hardware accelerator. It helps the DSP by taking over computation of varied intensive tasks. Since hardware implementation of number cru