MSDN Blog Postings

Now I can hear myself

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:53 +0000

I rarely get calls on my office phone, but last Friday afternoon I got a call from Ken Levy asking if I could spare a few minutes to give an interview on F# for the podcast that accompanies Code Magazine. Although I was being highly productive by listening to music and playing with a yo-yo, I agreed to meet him. I hadn’t even started drinking.

Ken posted the interview last night. It clocks in at just under 40 minutes, and you can listen to it here. We mainly discuss F#, functional programming, and Visual Studio 2010. Some of my remarks on Windows Phone were removed, but for more information on that you can watch some of the presentations from MIX10 this week. There are more “um” and “stuff like that” phrases at the beginning than I would have liked, but I only had a few minutes to prepare. About a minute from the end I almost make myself laugh.

I’m going to need a sample app for some presentations I am giving in the next few weeks so I think I will make a variation of the Dots and Boxes game. I will just use a random set of dots and base the scores on the total area you capture with any polygon instead of just boxes. I will also use the game to gauge the interest of some students I work with in geometry and programming.

This is my second post on this blog. That makes it the most successful blog I’ve ever had. My first blog was on Blogger, but it was somehow deleted after my first post.

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

Walkthrough: Cartoon Effect filter using data-flow network

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:53 +0000

This topic shows how to implement a cartoon-like filter that can be applied to video frames by using a data-flow network. The filter consists of two stages:

1. Color simplification: where a Gaussian average of the neighbor area of a pixel is calculated and assigned to that pixel. This is an iterative filter that is done multiple times for each frame. In this walkthrough it is done three times.

2. Edge detection: where edge pixels is assigned a black color.

Here is the serial implementation of both filters:

Color simplification serial code

   1: void FrameProcessing::ApplyColorSimplifier(unsigned int startHeight,

   2:  unsigned int endHeight, unsigned int startWidth, unsigned int endWidth)

   3: {

   4:     for (unsigned int j = startHeight; j < endHeight; ++j)

   5:     {

   6:         for(unsigned int i = startWidth; i < endWidth; ++i)

   7:         {

   8:             SimplifyIndexOptimized(m_pBufferImage, i, j);

   9:         }

  10:     }

  11: }

12:

  13: void FrameProcessing::SimplifyIndexOptimized(BYTE* pFrame,

  14:  int x, int y)

  15: {

  16:     COLORREF orgClr = GetPixel(pFrame, x, y, m_Pitch, m_BPP);

  17:     int shift = m_NeighborWindow / 2;

  18:     double sSum = 0;

  19:     double partialSumR = 0, partialSumG = 0, partialSumB = 0;

  20:     double standardDeviation = 0.025;

  21:     for(int j = y - shift; j <= (y + shift); ++j)

  22:     {

  23:         for(int i = x - shift; i <= (x + shift); ++i)

  24:         {

  25:             // don’t apply filter to the requested index,

  26:             // only to the neighbors

  27:             if (i != x ||  j != y)

  28:             {

  29:                 COLORREF clr = GetPixel(pFrame, i, j,

  30:                      m_Pitch, m_BPP);

  31:                 int index = (j - (y - shift)) *

  32:                      m_NeighborWindow + i - (x - shift);

  33:                 double distance = Util::GetDistance(

  34:                         orgClr, clr);

  35:                 double sValue = pow(M_E, -0.5 *

  36:                      pow(distance / standardDeviation,2));

  37:                 sSum += sValue;

  38:                 partialSumR += GetRValue(clr) * sValue;

  39:                 partialSumG += GetGValue(clr) * sValue;

  40:                 partialSumB += GetBValue(clr) * sValue;

  41:             }

  42:         }

  43:     }

44:

  45:     COLORREF simplifiedClr;

  46:     int simpleRed, simpleGreen, simpleBlue;

  47:     simpleRed   = (int)min(max(partialSumR / sSum, 0), 255);

  48:     simpleGreen = (int)min(max(partialSumG / sSum, 0), 255);

  49:     simpleBlue  = (int)min(max(partialSumB / sSum, 0), 255);

  50:     simplifiedClr = RGB(simpleRed, simpleGreen, simpleBlue);

  51:     SetPixel(m_pBufferImage, x, y, m_Pitch, m_BPP, simplifiedClr);

  52: }

Edge Detection Serial code

   1: void ApplyEdgeDetection(BYTE* pImageFrame, unsigned int startHeight,

   2:  unsigned int endHeight, unsigned int startWidth, unsigned int endWidth)

   3: {

   4:     const float alpha = 0.3f;

   5:     const float beta = 0.8f;

   6:     const float s0 = 0.054f;

   7:     const float s1 = 0.064f;

   8:     const float a0 = 0.3f;

   9:     const float a1 = 0.7f;

  10:     BYTE* pFrame = new BYTE[m_Size];

  11:     memcpy_s(pFrame, m_Size, pImageFrame, m_Size);

  12:     for(unsigned int y = startHeight; y < endHeight; ++y)

  13:     {

  14:         for(unsigned int x = startWidth; x < endWidth; ++x)

  15:         {

  16:             float Sy, Su, Sv;

  17:             float Ay, Au, Av;

  18:             CalculateSobel(m_pBufferImage, x, y, Sy, Su, Sv);

  19:             CalculateSobel(m_pCurrentImage, x, y, Ay, Au, Av);

  20:             float edgeS = (1 - alpha) * Sy +

  21:                 alpha * (Su + Sv) / 2;

  22:             float edgeA = (1 - alpha) * Ay +

  23:                 alpha * (Au + Av) / 2;

  24:             float i = (1 - beta) * Util::SmoothStep(s0, s1, edgeS)

  25:                 + beta * Util::SmoothStep(a0, a1, edgeA);

  26:             float oneMinusi = 1 - i;

  27:             COLORREF clr = GetPixel(m_pBufferImage, x, y,

  28:                                     m_Pitch, m_BPP);

  29:             COLORREF newClr = RGB(GetRValue(clr)*oneMinusi,

  30:             GetGValue(clr)* oneMinusi, GetBValue(clr) * oneMinusi);

31:

  32:             this->SetPixel(pFrame, x, y, m_Pitch, m_BPP, newClr);

  33:         }

  34:     }

  35:     memcpy_s(pImageFrame, m_Size, pFrame, m_Size);

  36:     delete[] pFrame;

  37: }

Pipelining and data flow network

The pipeline resembles the above diagram. It has three color simplification stages and one edge detection stage. This pipeline, however, uses only half of the available computation resources if it is running on an eight core machine. To extend it to use all CPUs, the frame can be divided into chunks; each chunk is passed to a network similar to the one above.

The number of chunks matches the number of networks, which is the number of CPUs divided by four (number of stages inside each network). This network would use 100% of CPU utilization on any CPU it is run on, but it would hit a thread safety issue regarding edge detection. The problem here is the dependency between the two filters implemented on each frame. The rule is that color simplification must end before the edge detection begins which is not the case with the network above. In this scenario chunks of the same frame might be in an edge detection stage while other chunks of the same frame are inside color simplification stages. To solve this problem, a frame must wait to be done with color simplification before entering edge detection. This is done using a join message block waiting for all color simplification stages to end before allowing a frame to pass to edge detection like in the diagram below. After edge detection is done, the video reader block is signaled to send the next frame into the network. The reason for this feedback loop is to prevent the video reader from overwhelming the network with messages while relatively slower processing of frames takes place. However, initially the video reader sends some frames to insure that the network is busy at all times with a number of frames that is larger than one. In our case here we send four times the number of color simplification stages of frames to the network initially (12 frames). This way the network is ensured to always have 12 frames to process at all times.

Now this is ready for implementation. The code below shows the Video agents that behaves as the connection point between the UI and the network signals the video reader to read the initial frames.

   1: void VideoMultiFramePipelineAgent::run()

   2: {

   3:     QueryPerformanceFrequency(&m_Frequency);

   4:     QueryPerformanceCounter(&m_StartTime);

   5:     QueryPerformanceCounter(&m_EndTime);

   6:     m_Overhead = m_EndTime.QuadPart - m_StartTime.QuadPart;

7:

   8:     QueryPerformanceCounter(&m_StartTime);

9:

  10:     FrameData data;

  11:     data.m_pCartoonAgent = this;

  12:     data.m_fParallel = m_fParallel;

  13:     data.m_PhaseCount = m_nPhases;

  14:     data.m_pVideoReader = &m_VideoReader;

  15:     data.m_neighbourArea =

  16:             ((CCartoonizerDlg*)m_pUIDlg)->m_NeighbourWindow;

17:

  18:     m_pFrameProcessor->SetNeighbourArea(data.m_neighbourArea);

19:

  20:     for (int i = 0; i < 4 * m_nPhases; ++i)

  21:     {

  22:         m_VideoReader.ReadNextFrame(data);

  23:     }

24:

  25:     done();

  26: }

Here in the following code the network is initialized. A transformer block is used for edge detection and color simplification as both stages sends and receives data. The video reader is a call block as it only sends data.

   1: void MultiplePipelineNetworkAgent::InitializeNetwork()

   2: {

   3:     m_fNetworkInitialized = true;

   4:     m_ProcessedMsgs = 0;

   5:     m_fAllMsgsRecieved = false;

6:

   7:     m_colorSimplifier = new transformer
   8:              FrameData>** [m_pipeLines];
   9:     
  10:     m_edgeDetectionJoin = new join(m_pipeLines);
  11:     m_edgeDetection = new transformer,
  12:          FrameData>([&](vector const& arrData) -> FrameData
  13:     {
  14:         if(arrData[1].m_EndHeight != 0)
  15:         {
  16:             arrData[1].m_pFrameProcesser->SetParallelOption(true);
  17:             arrData[1].m_pFrameProcesser->ApplyEdgeDetection();
  18:             arrData[1].m_pFrameProcesser->FrameDone();
  19:             arrData[1].m_pCartoonAgent->FrameFinished(arrData[0]);
  20:             m_Finished = true;
  21:         }
  22:         return arrData[1];
  23:     });
  24:  
  25:     for(int i = 0; i < m_pipeLines; ++i)
  26:     {
  27:         m_colorSimplifier[i] = new transformer
  28:                              FrameData>* [m_phaseCount];
  29:  
  30:         for (int count = 0; count < m_phaseCount; ++count)
  31:         {
  32:             m_colorSimplifier[i][count] = new transformer
  33:              FrameData>([](FrameData const& data) -> FrameData
  34:             {
  35:                 data.m_pFrameProcesser->ApplyColorSimplifier(
  36:                     data.m_StartHeight, data.m_EndHeight,
  37:                     data.m_StartWidth, data.m_EndWidth);
  38:  
  39:                 return data;
  40:             });
  41:  
  42:             if (count > 0)
  43:             {
  44:                 m_colorSimplifier[i][count-1]->link_target(
  45:                             m_colorSimplifier[i][count]);           
  46:             }
  47:         }
  48:         m_colorSimplifier[i][m_phaseCount-1]->link_target(
  49:                         m_edgeDetectionJoin);
  50:     }
  51:     m_edgeDetectionJoin->link_target(m_edgeDetection);
  52:  
  53:     m_reader = new call([](const FrameData & data)
  54:     {
  55:         FrameData newData = data;
  56:         if(NULL != data.m_pVideoReader)
  57:         {
  58:             data.m_pVideoReader->ReadNextFrame(newData);
  59:         }
  60:     });
  61:  
  62:     m_edgeDetection->link_target(m_reader);
  63: }

Then here is the code to divide a frame into chunks and send it to the network. The chunks are only sent to the first color simplification column as the network connection will pass the chunks to the next stages when a first color simplification is done.

   1: void MultiplePipelineNetworkAgent::DoWork(FrameData& data)

   2: {

   3:     m_Finished = false;

   4:     unsigned int shift = data.m_neighbourArea / 2;

   5:     int count = 0;

   6:     m_ProcessedMsgs = 0;

   7:     int index = 0;

   8:     for (unsigned int h = shift; h < (data.m_EndHeight - shift);

   9:             h += m_step, ++count)

  10:     {

  11:         FrameData localData     = data;

  12:         localData.m_StartHeight = h;

  13:         localData.m_EndHeight   = min(h + m_step,

  14:                                 (data.m_EndHeight - shift));

  15:         localData.m_StartWidth  = shift;

  16:         localData.m_EndWidth    = data.m_EndWidth - shift;

  17:         localData.m_final       = (localData.m_EndHeight ==

  18:                                   (data.m_EndHeight - shift));

19:

  20:         index = count % m_pipeLines;

  21:         asend(m_colorSimplifier[index][0], localData);

  22:     }

  23: }

Results

Using data flow network showed liner speedup up to 48 cores on a video stream with frame size of 640×360.

Mohamed Magdy Mohamed Parallel Computing Platform Team

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

꿈이 자라는 다락방 서버!! 마이크로소프트와 네이버가 응원합니다.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:53 +0000

영상이 보이지 않으면 이곳을 클릭해서 실버라이트를 설치하세요

“꿈이 자라는 다락방 서버“는 Windows(WPI)와 XE를 통해 누구나 쉽게 웹서비스 및 홈페이지를 개발하고 서비스할 수 있도록 도와주는 캠페인입니다!

“다락방서버” 의 웹서비스 체험 및 활용법 그리고 43인치 4D TV가 걸려있는 이벤트에 대한 궁금하신 분들은 지금 바로 “다락방서버” (www.darakserver.com) 에 접속 하시기 바랍니다!!

Windows Media Video (WMV)

Windows Media Audio (WMA)

iPod Video (MP4)

MP3 Audio

Zune Video (WMV)

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

Photos from the Cornell Finals

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:53 +0000

The photostream from the finals at Cornell University….(read more)
This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

Test post through windows live writer.

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:53 +0000

This is a Test post from windows live writer.

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

Lancement Dia7 … succès!

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:52 +0000

Une soirée à succès avec du monde et du beau monde pour le lancement de la nouvelle gamme Dia7 … Ecouté le buzz …

Un lancement qui a été accompagné par la mise en service de sa boutique en ligne et la pré-commande du tout dernier HTC HD2 à ses couleurs.

Microsoft et l’équipe du MTC ont accompagné ce projet à la convergence du vêtement technique de Mohamed Dia, JL Errant (Boostyle en charge du produit) et des innovations technologiques telles que Windows Azure, Silverlight, Windows Phone Series …

Et bien sur les partenaires de ce projet: Bewise, Dotvision, RueduCommerce et HTC

Nouveau site : www.dia-7.com

Boutique : http://store.dia-7.com

HTC Dia7 en exclusivité: http://www.rueducommerce.fr/htc-dia7/

Le futur … www.mygeolive.com

Interview de Mohamed Dia: sur frogz

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

Project Server 2010 – Even more reasons to keep your server clocks in sync

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:52 +0000

As we in the US (or most of us) have just changed our clocks for daylight savings this is a great time to talk synchronization of server clocks. The first section talks about things running slow, and was also applicable to 2007. If this doesn’t persuade you then the second section deals with things stopping – which ought to be a good enough reason!

My Farm is Running Slow!

One possible reason for the farm, or more precisely the queue jobs, running slowly (apart from underpowered configuration) is clock synchronization between the application layer and the database (SQL Server) layer. The reason behind this is that the queue may timestamp a job that should be run immediately – but the time (Now!) is not actually now, but a few seconds or minutes into the future (or even hours!). This was also covered by a posting for 2007. The queue therefore delays each job by a little. May not make much difference if the time difference is small and the server is busy – but worth avoiding as the resolution is so easy. Please note – setting the Application Server clock ahead of the WFE will NOT speed up your farm by making the jobs start before they arrive :).

My Farm isn’t Authenticating me!

This one is new to Project Server 2010 and is related to the use of WCF. The typical symptom of this is ‘An unexpected error has occurred’ and when you track the GUID in the error message back to the ULS logs (typically on the Web Front End server) then the message will be something like:

e5mc	Medium	WcfSendRequest: RemoteAddress: ‘http://server:32843/6151221ab8334845843fc3c2bdf789ba/PSI/Authentication.svc’ Channel: ‘Microsoft.Office.Project.Server.Interfaces.IAuthentication’ Action: ‘http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/project/server/webservices/Authentication/GetUserByName’ MessageId: ‘urn:uuid:66949013-4d76-4216-b077-8c81d6d025fb’
tkau	Unexpected	System.ServiceModel.FaultException: An error occurred when verifying security for the message.

and you may also see a 500 internal server error logged from the web service (or in a netmon trace). Where the clock comes in to play is that the SOAP message sent to the web service has an expiry time, which is set for 5 minutes. If the Application Server happens to be outside this timeframe then it will not accept the request – and return 500, Internal Server Error, with the inner message ‘An error occurred when verifying security for the message’. If you Bing for the general WCF error you may find solutions suggesting extending the expiry – please don’t - just put the clock right!

These errors are from Project Server web services, and the basic SharePoint pages do not authenticate through the same pages, so other pages in the farm may be rendering just time.

So please make sure your servers all have the same time – and better still, the right time!

Technorati Tags: psvr2007,psvr2010

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

What do those “IO requests taking longer than 15 seconds” messages on my SQL box mean?

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:52 +0000

You may be sometimes seeing stuck/stalled IO messages on one or more of your SQL Server boxes. This is something it is important to understand so I am providing some background information on it. Here is the message you may see in the SQL error log: SQL Server has encountered xxx occurrence(s) of IO requests taking longer than 15 seconds to complete on file [mdf_or_ldf_file_path_name] in database [dbname] (dbid). The OS file handle is 0x…. The offset of the latest long IO is: 0x….”. The message…(read more)
This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

MIX-Sessions als Download – jetzt Wissen tanken!

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:52 +0000

Alle, die aus unterschiedlichen Gründen nicht an der MIX10 teilnehmen konnten (oder wollten), haben zwar leider die unglaublich gute Stimmung und die Möglichkeiten zum Netzwerken verpasst, müssen aber dennoch nicht auf die Inhalte verzichten, die hier in den vergangenen drei Tagen präsentiert wurden. Denn fast alle Sessions wurden aufgezeichnet und stehen jetzt als Video sowie in Form der PPTX-Präsentation zum “Selbststudium” bereit. Frei nach dem Motto “Selber lernen macht schlau” können die Sessions auf dieser Seite spätestens 24 Stunden nach Sessionende heruntergeladen werden. Eine fantastische Gelegenheit also, in der nächsten Zeit abends einfach mal den Fernseher ausgeschaltet zu lassen und sich spannende und lehrreiche Inhalte anzutun! Viel Spaß!

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.

Marketplace-Zugang für Studenten jetzt kostenlos!

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:05:52 +0000

Ja, es ist wahr (auch wenn es etwas länger gedauert hat): Studenten können sich ab sofort kostenlos beim Windows Marketplace for Mobile anmelden und ihre Anwendungen für Windows Phone dort verteilen oder verkaufen, ohne die üblichen 75 € + MwSt. bezahlen zu müssen! Sie müssen lediglich bei Microsofts DreamSpark-Programm registriert sein:

Dann bei der Anmeldung beim Marketplace einfach Student auswählen

und los geht’s!

Na dann, nichts wie ran und coole Apps für Windows Mobile entwickeln, oder mit den neuen kostenlosen Tools vielleicht sogar schon für Windows Phone 7?

This post originated from and is provided by the MSDN Blogs RSS feed. The original post of the article can be found here.