Inquiring minds combined with strong engineering backgrounds brought two friends in Singapore together to develop a winning entry in the finals for Texas Instruments' DSP Solutions Challenge. The team of two students is from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), in southwest Singapore.
Dilip Krishnan and Showbhik Kalra, second-year, computer engineering students at NTU, became one of three finalists in the worldwide competition with their digital signal processor (DSP)-based system restoring old films for archiving and re-release. Whether recorded on flammable nitrate-based film that decays rapidly or made with today's safer, acetate-based film, movies are susceptible to degradation by gouges, scratches and the accumulation of dirt. Digital storage can halt film deterioration, but any defects already on the film will be transferred with the film to digital storage. The restoration of a classic motion picture is a labor-intensive, costly undertaking. For example, a recent restoration of Snow White took 18 weeks with 60 workstation operators using 40 workstations in three shifts a day, seven days a week.
The system that Dilip and Showbik designed opens the way to more advanced systems that could handle such projects in a fraction of the time, at much less cost, and with far fewer people. Using parallel processing techniques on a network of DSPs, the Singapore motion picture restoration system erases damaged areas of the film and fills in the resulting empty space with information captured automatically from elsewhere in the film. It does this by taking advantage of the fact that image frames in a movie do not change significantly from one frame to the next, except for the changes of moving people or other objects in a scene. This means that the frames preceding and succeeding the image will provide enough repeated information to enable the system to first detect degraded areas and to mathematically model the image region so the degraded region can be filled in with a restored image. Although they have not done a large restoration-because they need a mass storage system and an excellent digitizer-the team members are convinced that their system will be of great interest to the entertainment industry.
Dilip Krishnan (19) and Showbik Kalra (19) both graduated from secondary school in New Delhi, India, and both won full scholarships to NTU. They met each other on the flight from India to Singapore in 1994, and have been good friends ever since. Interested in finding a tougher test of their abilities than their regular schoolwork, Dilip and Showbik responded to a poster about the TI DSP Solutions Challenge and sought out Dr. Chong Man Nang, who is DSP lecturer in NTU's School of Applied Science. Dr. Chong told them about his idea for a film restoration system, and they decided to begin work.
Dilip Krishnan comes from a family of engineers and has been interested in computers since he was a young child. After studying all the advanced mathematics and computing that's required for India's stiff engineering college entrance exams, he knew that he had what it takes to be an engineer.
Showbik Kalra is the son of a school teacher and an engineer. Like Dilip, he enjoys computing and mathematics. As a result of the DSP Solutions Challenge project, Showbik has become much more interested in a career in research and development.
Sports are an integral part of life for both Dilip and Showbik. Showbik said, "We have been burning the midnight oil together in the lab, slugging it out on the squash courts, and working out in the gym. We both believe that sports are very important for keeping us focused on our work. Sports develop the same kinds of qualities-tenacity, determination, and a never say die attitude-that are needed to be a successful research engineer."
When asked what they would like the world to know about them, Dilip replied that he would like to tell the world, "We hope to contribute to the engineering community and help formulate solutions for real-world problems."
Both students said that this project will not end with the DSP Challenge competition: they plan to keep working on it, and they have been authorized to expand their work to restoring color film.
Dr. Chong Man Nang is Faculty Adviser to the Singapore team. Dr. Chong leads the parallel processing group at School of Applied Science at NTU. He holds Bachelor of Engineering and Ph. D. degrees in electronic and electrical engineering from University of Strathclyde in the United Kingdom. Previously, he was assistant manager for UK Department of
Trade and Industry Parallel Signal Processing Centre/Science Engineering Research Council (SERC)'s Scottish Transputer Centre in Glasgow. While working there, Dr. Chong demonstrated a multiprocessor video conferencing system at the International Conference on Transputer Applications (1991). His research interests encompass parallel and distributed processing, scientific visualization and multimedia signal processing.
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