The level of expertise that is exhibited on this list is truly amazing. I know enough of what is discussed to know I need to ask for help. I have an idea for a low bandwidth, high quality simulated picturephone. It would operate over phone lines, the Internet or LAN. The data encoding scheme I envision has other interesting uses. The expertise needed is hardware, software, management, finance and marketing. The first product would be a prototype. The proof of concept demo I've assembled is underwhelming to all but the zealous. I would like to use as much off the shelf hardware and software as possible and put it all together with custom h/w and s/w components. To start off I need (aside from a brain a heart and courage) expertise in these areas: Frame grabber and processing Multi-tasking Aldus Photoshop or similar Modem synchronization database Quick and dirty, it works like this: Video frames are grabbed and normalized and compared to a library of a person's face. The closest match is delected and just the ID number of the face is sent along with the audio. On the other end the ID corresponding face is looked up and displayed in synch with the audio. So there is a compare engine and a playback engine and some glue. The simulated video is only as good as the library. The eye will correct for a lot of system imperfections. I really want to see this working. I will gladly consider open sourcing at least parts of it. This has nothing to do with my employer, the U.S. Air Force Please consider wrestling with this project. I'd welcome less than part time or even just a friend basis. Roland Roland Bockhorst HQ-AFCA/ITLC Standards Implementation Branch Technical Architectures Division 203 W. Losey St. Room 1065 Scott AFB, IL 62225 DSN 576-3488 Commercial 618/256-3488 Home 618/239-6180
