[Spice-devel] RFC: Media redirection for Spice remote computing solution, an event for FOSDEM'14, Virtualization dev room

[Fedor Lyakhov]

Hello Spice developers and users,

I'm going to apply for FOSDEM'14 Virtualization dev room with event
"Media Redirection for Spice remote computing solution" (deadline is
tomorrow...). The event would include a 20-minute lecture, 5-minute
demo of a prototype and 10-minute Q&A session.

Before I apply, I'd like to hear your comments on the proposed event
(and you're the main audience of it!). I'd appreciate any comments
about title, abstract, outline and the presentation drafts
(http://www.spice-space.org/wiki/images/b/b9/Fosdem2014-lyakhov-v2.pdf).
Hope that with your comments I can get this application better and get
it accepted.

Title: Media redirection for Spice remote computing solution
Subtitle: Optimizing media stream processing for media players and
VoIP clients in virtual desktop infrastructures

Abstract:
Handling of media streams is suboptimal in virtual desktop
infrastructures if it is done at virtual machines. Consider two main
use case:
* Playback of a media stream from remote server e.g. user watches Youtube
* IP telephony e.g. user makes a video call
In both cases media streams are not delivered to the user's device
directly but transcoded at the virtualization server. This results in
increased network load, server CPU load (less VM density), quality
loss of media streams. A solution for this problem, Media Redirection
for Red Hat Spice remote computing system is proposed
(www.spice-space.org/page/Features/MediaRedirection).

Solution concept introduces following components: Media Engine and
RPC-like service at user's device, Media Engine stubs and RPC-like
client at Guest OS. To integrate the solution with Spice, new Spice
APIs are proposed: API for establishing virtual channels and API for
overlay rendering.

A working Media Redirection prototype will be demonstrated using a
demo audio player, Apache Thrift as RPC system, GStreamer as Media
Engine.

The event will be interesting for remote computing system developers
and users (in particular, Red Hat Spice), RPC system developers and
users, media engine developers, media player and IP telephony client
developers.

Note: the authors are NOT working for Red Hat, this work is being done
by volunteers in their spare time.

Outline:
* Common media processing usecases
* Red Hat Spice overview
* Description of media stream processing problem in VDI
* Media redirection concept description
* Media redirection prototype description and demo
* Feature evolution plan
Discussion topics:
* architecture & design considerations
* new Spice APIs for virtual channels and overlay rendering
* fault-tolerance practices (crash, disconnect)

-- 
Best regards,
Fedor