4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

Jason Rodriguez · June 18th, 2004, 12:28 PM

I believe the 8-bit capture problem was a limitation of Obin's computer right now (not fast enough drives) or something like that. He's mentioned it in past posts.

Les Dit · June 18th, 2004, 12:47 PM

He can still just grab one still image, save it, then grab another right after that, and save it.
Two images, a few seconds apart, is all we need!
-OR-
Save a small window of the sensor, at speed.
-Les

Obin Olson · June 18th, 2004, 02:47 PM

Les don't make me angry!

do you have a LIFE?? I do and I spend EVERY waking moment doing the things I *must* do and the rest testing the camera and after that talking with you and the gang - calm down

tell me what you want 2 frames in 16bit? we do not have 10bit or even 12bit all we can get is 8 or 16 what do you want

Obin Olson · June 18th, 2004, 02:49 PM

check this:
http://www.dv3productions.com/test_i...studio-HD1.jpg

shot with blue gain at 11db and red-green at 4db in the studio with studio lights

NO white balance..just blue gain higher then the rest..did the trick
guess a better way would be to adjust the RGB when doing the bayer conversion

Obin Olson · June 18th, 2004, 02:50 PM

UPDATE:

I now have raid 0 drives and get 55MB/sec write speed I can capture 48fps at 8bit and 24fps at 12bit maybe more then 48fps at 8 have to try and see...

Steve Nordhauser · June 18th, 2004, 03:40 PM

Obin, beautiful shot. I think you will get better overall dynamic range by balancing the color the way you did first using the analog gains. We know that the blue in the Bayer filter has less optical throughput - not just your lighting temp.

Obin Olson · June 18th, 2004, 04:26 PM

thank you Steve, I setup our lights and shot that how I would shoot a "real" gig and I am VERY happy with what that image looks like after we did some color work in post..as you can see the Bayer plugin is bad but that will be fixed ;)

the footage downsized to DV and played on a big TV set looks just amazing! it would pass as 35mm to my eyes onscreen...it's so much more organic then dv or traditional "video" and yet is super high-res looking..like watching a feature film on DVD

Les Dit · June 18th, 2004, 10:16 PM

Obin, sorry for pestering so much about the two frames, I've must have asked about 4 times now !
This data, the noise, is one of the most important measures of the camera. As most of you know, CMOS has noise issues, both fixed pattern, and random. It's a big issue with CMOS. People poo poo CMOS because of this. I think Micron and the newer sensors have fixed a lot of the concerns.
I just wanted to see where it's at, noise wise.
The main reason to even do this project is to get more than 8 bits from a camera. And yet nobody has bothered to see if the image is any good in those lower bits.
It's fun to look at the 8 bit images, and >8 bits on stills, but motion ( as I described before ) shows a whole different set of possible 'gotcha's'.

I've been digitizing motion picture stuff from back in the days of working on 'Willow' where we did the first morph shots in a feature film.
I'm not a newbie. I'm not asking for unimportant useless info.
Sorry to bother you.
BTW when I say 10 bit, I don't care what file format it's stuffed into, or how the bits are shifted in a 16 bit word, it's 10 bits coming from that cam, irregardless where they are shifted to.
-Les

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : Les don't make me angry!

do you have a LIFE?? I do and I spend EVERY waking moment doing the things I *must* do and the rest testing the camera and after that talking with you and the gang - calm down

tell me what you want 2 frames in 16bit? we do not have 10bit or even 12bit all we can get is 8 or 16 what do you want -->>>

Rob Lohman · June 19th, 2004, 05:06 AM

Obin: please keep it civil. The reason everyone is asking you is
since you are the only one to have the camera yet. I'm sure we'll
be busting on Rob S's door when he gets one as well.

No-one is asking for shots 10 minutes after they post a question.
They are just asking (as I am/was) about certain types of shots
to understand how the camera works and wether it is good
enough to pay a large sum of money to buy a chip of their own.

Personally I'm not going to pay a lot of money and then have a
chip performing below what I was expecting. I'm NOT
saying that this performs below expectation. But we are all just
trying to figure out how well it works for movie making in regards
to noise, motion blur, rolling shutter and latitude.

Those are fair question. If you are busy and need time to compile
these requests that is very fair as well. But we would be great
if you can supply us with the information we need. No need to
get angry about a simple request. Just indicate whether you
can do it or not and we'll wait for when you have the time.

Again, no-one has requested HD frames in a movie. We are only
look at still frames which can be deliver at 640x480 for all I
personally care. HD is nice, but we've seen that. We are interested
in other features which don't care about resolution. So if you
have trouble with high data rates / frame rates / resolution just
lower some stuff.

Again we approciate what you are doing on this and I'm greatfull
for your last movie because it actually showed what we all have
been thinking about lately.

Now it is time for some more tests. If you can do them, do them
at your own pace and time. That's fine!

As Les indicates he his very knowledgeable and would only ask
the questions if it is important to ask them.

No offense to you at all Obin.

Thanks Obin, Steve, Les and all others that contribute!

Obin Olson · June 19th, 2004, 07:00 AM

i have lots of stuff on the disk drives now, I shot a bunch yesterday and have it all. It's all 16bit tiffs tell me what you want - frame number 1 and frame number 2 from a scene? in what format? what size? and waht bitdepth? I will extract what you want from the raw files

everyine should not forget that I have a very cheap lens on this camera..it will effect the image

Steve how do you adjust analog gains?

I need help in the edit department!

anyone care to poke around and try to find a codec that can be used to edit this footage on a standard pc?? sofar I can't edit on my 3.06ghz p4 with premiere pro at all....we all need to pitch in and find a codec OR NLE software that a standard computer can edit with...I am not sure if it's a datarate issue or a cpu load issue or both and more..SheerVideo can play fine on the system if you open the file in quicktime but can't play in premiere pro..how could this be? it's only 15-18MB/sec datarate!

Jason Rodriguez · June 19th, 2004, 09:53 AM

Premiere Pro is no longer Quicktime native. It'll work with Quicktime files, but it's not like FCP anymore.

SheerVideo will playback fine on a Mac.

Jim Lafferty · June 19th, 2004, 09:57 AM

I think Avid's the only NLE other than...something obscure like Razor or Linux's Cinelerra...that would cut 10-bit.

Vegas does YUV 4:2:2 and can import/export all Avid 10bit codecs -- but internal processing is all in 8 bits (not that anyone's cared to check if this matters in real world tests...)

I'm of the opinion that, for the moment, we should be sticking with 8-bit, 4:4:4 uncompressed or realtime lossless compression -- downsize the data stream, and the project's needs become simplified.

Personally, I think the idea of lugging a PC around is laughable -- if the project's not portable then it's of little use to anyone looking to shoot: outdoors, on the run, rougher conditions, etc. What everyone's proposing so far is a good studio cam, and for those of us without studios...

That said, anyone know of realtime hardware encoders that we might use? Looking for something small, fast and cheap :D

I think we need to invite Dan Vance in on these talks. He built his system from scratch -- not around a pre-built camera core -- and did it all for under $3,000.

- jim

Wayne Morellini · June 19th, 2004, 10:05 AM

Have a look over at the Viper thread, I've summarised some new technologies, and potential camera configurations. Steve I also found some good fast cheap interface information and camera network compression idea that may help with your camera line. I also found reference to big tape backup, and low powered processing arrays that can be used for camera head compression, that canbe reprogrammed in C.

I forgot, MiniFlex motherboard form factor.

Thanks

Obin

I was going to ask about the lense, it is doing a reasonable job, the footage also has very little washout compared to the HD10 park footage, it is doing well.

I think Les was just after some standard stationary shots with reasonable lighting contrast in your normal bayer pattern tiff. Frame 1 then 2 then 1-2 seconds after another (though he only asked for two). Your existing outside shoots would probably be good (with some plain surface to really show trhe niose).

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : the footage downsized to DV and played on a big TV set looks just amazing! it would pass as 35mm to my eyes onscreen...it's so much more organic then dv or traditional "video" and yet is super high-res looking..like watching a feature film on DVD -->>>

Cool, that's what we need.

Steve

Actaully the HD10 uses some sort of complementary filter hybrid to get more res than Bayer.

I'm detecting a lot of light drop off in the pictures Steve, is it direct lighting or is it the filter squashing the blacks? It is like a strong ND filter, or 35mm adaptor, but the detail is still there when I turn the monitor up? Niose looks very good.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Wayne on speeds: Yes, buffering in the camera or grabber would reduce peak speeds to average. Not sure if it is worth the cost. -->>>

Yes but 4+ MB or relatively slow memory for a behind chip buffer, is a realtively small cost compared to system costs (real costs). Actually some mebbeded processors have more memory than that. Arms and NEC chip are probably the best chioce I can remember. With processors like that you could also reprogram them to do some on chip manipulation (like with clearspeed parrallel array processor compression). Actually using a control processor with frame buffer and a clearspeed would be a good programmable comrpession platform.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Now that I think about it, if you have separate color analog gain controls within the camera like the SI-1300 does, by changing them inidvidually, you are applying different color filters prior to digitizing. This means that you still have the dynamic range in that color as opposed to applying them in a post process step. I don't think you need color optical filters at all. -->>>

Robs:

Yes, I was going to suggest that, especially if that canbe computer controlled on the fly as well as with external controls. Those are other things we will need in the software eventually that would be desirable at capture: basic lite (too much gain will increase niose) clour balance, gain exposure control and shutter exposure control for field work ( I would add selectable auto focus, Iris (Through auto electronic slr lense), and image stabilisation but at lasss that is all upto us ;) and niose elimination (would help compression). Most of these would require analysis and control cammands rather than much extra processing, what do you think?

Eliot, Rob and Obin

Flash bootup, low power requirements (believe me a shoulder case with any normal CPU/fan is going to drive you or your sound tech nuts). ITX has low power, speed, Raid interfaces, and onboard flash. There are convertors also allowing you to hook a compact flash to a standard IDE channel.

The problem with flash is that it is really slow, you might be better off booting from disk. M-systems is also another place for flash drives. There are cheaper better alternatives to flash comming. Intel is trying to develope plastic memory, and Onvul or something is developing somethingn that uses material they use on Rewritable CD/s. There have been numerouse other scheems, but failed or normally do.

As somebody mentioned it works better if the OS is on a seperate drive, That's why I suggested 1GB or Ram and cleaning out the rubbish inbetween shoots, to keep most of the OS in virtual memory (or Ram drive, and use the same image everytime). If you do do virtual memory then USB2 external drive (to free a IDE channel) or flash could be used, as most requests should be comming from memory.

The embedded OS issue:
That is why I suggested Toas Intent/Elate platform, the emmbedded realtime virtual OS core is kB/s in size, very fast and efficent (but use/compile your C to their virtual code). These guys really know how to code (as I was trying to piont out a few days ago), it should be much better than windows. Both me, OAK (now Java) and Toas started around the same time on our VOS/s. Your code then can run (unmodified except for custom interface issues) unmodified on Playstation like machines, Mac, PC, Linux etc. As long as they have the VOS for that machine. They are light years ahead. It is used in many embedded consumer electronics, and actaully some of the consumer el giants are part owners.

ANother two OS/s of interest (they both use parts of Toas tech as well). IS QNX an old but very good Real Time OS with Unix capability, and Amiga OS (which is a rebadged version of Toas with their own custom libraries). These are among the best available.

You can goto the MS deevelopers website and check if you can download a exprerimental Windows embedded XP for free (there done that sort od thing in thepast with CE). Maybe there is information how you can strip down normal XP.

Thanks

Wayne.

Jason Rodriguez · June 19th, 2004, 10:10 AM

And only a Meridian Avid or Symphony, or AVID D$!!

FCP will work fine at 10-bit. It's the cheapest 10-bit solution out there. Which means Obin that you could take your footage, render it in After Effects with the BlackMagic 64-bit (16-bit codecs), codec, and then export that 10-bit BM codec file back to FCP and play it back with no problems. It's a very nice solution.

You can see a sample of the codec here http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/enco...=bmd-10tri_osx, and here's a description from Marco from the website:

This codec uses 16-bit technology, but doesn't create a 40-megabyte per second file like the Cinewave 16-bit codec. No wasted disk space, no extra bits thrown out the window. For CGI/animation/visual effects artists, this is your codec.

So you can see the the Mac here is nicely set-up for this type of work. Not trying to be one of those obnoxious mac-pushers here, or a "I'm-better-than-those-PCee's" type of attitude. I just think that some here are overlooking the best tool (and only think of it that way, not as a platform) to do the job of editing this stuff at the highest quality with the least amount of pain.

Obin Olson · June 19th, 2004, 10:17 AM

oh, Jason can you download a small sheervideo file and try to edit on FCP HD?? do you have FCP HD? this would be a great test..I really want to see if we can edit this stuff at all...what about Sheer being 8bit...that sucks right? or should we do our color work in Combustion and then output sheer codec at 8bit and edit FCP?

June 18th, 2004, 03:40 PM	#336
Steve Nordhauser Silicon Imaging, Inc. Join Date: May 2004 Location: Troy, NY USA Posts: 325	Obin, beautiful shot. I think you will get better overall dynamic range by balancing the color the way you did first using the analog gains. We know that the blue in the Bayer filter has less optical throughput - not just your lighting temp. __________________ Silicon Imaging, Inc. We see the Light! http://www.siliconimaging.com

June 19th, 2004, 05:06 AM	#339
Rob Lohman RED Code Chef Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Holland Posts: 12,514	Obin: please keep it civil. The reason everyone is asking you is since you are the only one to have the camera yet. I'm sure we'll be busting on Rob S's door when he gets one as well. No-one is asking for shots 10 minutes after they post a question. They are just asking (as I am/was) about certain types of shots to understand how the camera works and wether it is good enough to pay a large sum of money to buy a chip of their own. Personally I'm not going to pay a lot of money and then have a chip performing below what I was expecting. I'm NOT saying that this performs below expectation. But we are all just trying to figure out how well it works for movie making in regards to noise, motion blur, rolling shutter and latitude. Those are fair question. If you are busy and need time to compile these requests that is very fair as well. But we would be great if you can supply us with the information we need. No need to get angry about a simple request. Just indicate whether you can do it or not and we'll wait for when you have the time. Again, no-one has requested HD frames in a movie. We are only look at still frames which can be deliver at 640x480 for all I personally care. HD is nice, but we've seen that. We are interested in other features which don't care about resolution. So if you have trouble with high data rates / frame rates / resolution just lower some stuff. Again we approciate what you are doing on this and I'm greatfull for your last movie because it actually showed what we all have been thinking about lately. Now it is time for some more tests. If you can do them, do them at your own pace and time. That's fine! As Les indicates he his very knowledgeable and would only ask the questions if it is important to ask them. No offense to you at all Obin. Thanks Obin, Steve, Les and all others that contribute! __________________ Rob Lohman, visuar@iname.com DV Info Wrangler & RED Code Chef Join the DV Challenge \| Lady X Search DVinfo.net for quick answers \| Buy from the best: DVinfo.net sponsors

June 19th, 2004, 09:57 AM	#342
Jim Lafferty Major Player Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Brooklyn, NY Posts: 636	I think Avid's the only NLE other than...something obscure like Razor or Linux's Cinelerra...that would cut 10-bit. Vegas does YUV 4:2:2 and can import/export all Avid 10bit codecs -- but internal processing is all in 8 bits (not that anyone's cared to check if this matters in real world tests...) I'm of the opinion that, for the moment, we should be sticking with 8-bit, 4:4:4 uncompressed or realtime lossless compression -- downsize the data stream, and the project's needs become simplified. Personally, I think the idea of lugging a PC around is laughable -- if the project's not portable then it's of little use to anyone looking to shoot: outdoors, on the run, rougher conditions, etc. What everyone's proposing so far is a good studio cam, and for those of us without studios... That said, anyone know of realtime hardware encoders that we might use? Looking for something small, fast and cheap :D I think we need to invite Dan Vance in on these talks. He built his system from scratch -- not around a pre-built camera core -- and did it all for under $3,000. - jim __________________ Realism, anyway, is never exactly the same as reality, and in the cinema it is of necessity faked. -- J-L G

June 18th, 2004, 12:28 PM	#331
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	I believe the 8-bit capture problem was a limitation of Obin's computer right now (not fast enough drives) or something like that. He's mentioned it in past posts.

June 18th, 2004, 12:47 PM	#332
Les Dit Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Southern Cal-ee-for-Ni-ya Posts: 608	He can still just grab one still image, save it, then grab another right after that, and save it. Two images, a few seconds apart, is all we need! -OR- Save a small window of the sensor, at speed. -Les

June 18th, 2004, 02:47 PM	#333
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	Les don't make me angry! do you have a LIFE?? I do and I spend EVERY waking moment doing the things I must do and the rest testing the camera and after that talking with you and the gang - calm down tell me what you want 2 frames in 16bit? we do not have 10bit or even 12bit all we can get is 8 or 16 what do you want

June 18th, 2004, 02:49 PM	#334
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	check this: http://www.dv3productions.com/test_i...studio-HD1.jpg shot with blue gain at 11db and red-green at 4db in the studio with studio lights NO white balance..just blue gain higher then the rest..did the trick guess a better way would be to adjust the RGB when doing the bayer conversion

June 18th, 2004, 02:50 PM	#335
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	UPDATE: I now have raid 0 drives and get 55MB/sec write speed I can capture 48fps at 8bit and 24fps at 12bit maybe more then 48fps at 8 have to try and see...

June 18th, 2004, 04:26 PM	#337
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	thank you Steve, I setup our lights and shot that how I would shoot a "real" gig and I am VERY happy with what that image looks like after we did some color work in post..as you can see the Bayer plugin is bad but that will be fixed ;) the footage downsized to DV and played on a big TV set looks just amazing! it would pass as 35mm to my eyes onscreen...it's so much more organic then dv or traditional "video" and yet is super high-res looking..like watching a feature film on DVD

June 18th, 2004, 10:16 PM	#338
Les Dit Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Southern Cal-ee-for-Ni-ya Posts: 608	Obin, sorry for pestering so much about the two frames, I've must have asked about 4 times now ! This data, the noise, is one of the most important measures of the camera. As most of you know, CMOS has noise issues, both fixed pattern, and random. It's a big issue with CMOS. People poo poo CMOS because of this. I think Micron and the newer sensors have fixed a lot of the concerns. I just wanted to see where it's at, noise wise. The main reason to even do this project is to get more than 8 bits from a camera. And yet nobody has bothered to see if the image is any good in those lower bits. It's fun to look at the 8 bit images, and >8 bits on stills, but motion ( as I described before ) shows a whole different set of possible 'gotcha's'. I've been digitizing motion picture stuff from back in the days of working on 'Willow' where we did the first morph shots in a feature film. I'm not a newbie. I'm not asking for unimportant useless info. Sorry to bother you. BTW when I say 10 bit, I don't care what file format it's stuffed into, or how the bits are shifted in a 16 bit word, it's 10 bits coming from that cam, irregardless where they are shifted to. -Les <<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : Les don't make me angry! do you have a LIFE?? I do and I spend EVERY waking moment doing the things I must do and the rest testing the camera and after that talking with you and the gang - calm down tell me what you want 2 frames in 16bit? we do not have 10bit or even 12bit all we can get is 8 or 16 what do you want -->>>

June 19th, 2004, 07:00 AM	#340
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	i have lots of stuff on the disk drives now, I shot a bunch yesterday and have it all. It's all 16bit tiffs tell me what you want - frame number 1 and frame number 2 from a scene? in what format? what size? and waht bitdepth? I will extract what you want from the raw files everyine should not forget that I have a very cheap lens on this camera..it will effect the image Steve how do you adjust analog gains? I need help in the edit department! anyone care to poke around and try to find a codec that can be used to edit this footage on a standard pc?? sofar I can't edit on my 3.06ghz p4 with premiere pro at all....we all need to pitch in and find a codec OR NLE software that a standard computer can edit with...I am not sure if it's a datarate issue or a cpu load issue or both and more..SheerVideo can play fine on the system if you open the file in quicktime but can't play in premiere pro..how could this be? it's only 15-18MB/sec datarate!

June 19th, 2004, 09:53 AM	#341
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	Premiere Pro is no longer Quicktime native. It'll work with Quicktime files, but it's not like FCP anymore. SheerVideo will playback fine on a Mac.

June 19th, 2004, 10:05 AM	#343
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Have a look over at the Viper thread, I've summarised some new technologies, and potential camera configurations. Steve I also found some good fast cheap interface information and camera network compression idea that may help with your camera line. I also found reference to big tape backup, and low powered processing arrays that can be used for camera head compression, that canbe reprogrammed in C. I forgot, MiniFlex motherboard form factor. Thanks Obin I was going to ask about the lense, it is doing a reasonable job, the footage also has very little washout compared to the HD10 park footage, it is doing well. I think Les was just after some standard stationary shots with reasonable lighting contrast in your normal bayer pattern tiff. Frame 1 then 2 then 1-2 seconds after another (though he only asked for two). Your existing outside shoots would probably be good (with some plain surface to really show trhe niose). <<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : the footage downsized to DV and played on a big TV set looks just amazing! it would pass as 35mm to my eyes onscreen...it's so much more organic then dv or traditional "video" and yet is super high-res looking..like watching a feature film on DVD -->>> Cool, that's what we need. Steve Actaully the HD10 uses some sort of complementary filter hybrid to get more res than Bayer. I'm detecting a lot of light drop off in the pictures Steve, is it direct lighting or is it the filter squashing the blacks? It is like a strong ND filter, or 35mm adaptor, but the detail is still there when I turn the monitor up? Niose looks very good. <<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Wayne on speeds: Yes, buffering in the camera or grabber would reduce peak speeds to average. Not sure if it is worth the cost. -->>> Yes but 4+ MB or relatively slow memory for a behind chip buffer, is a realtively small cost compared to system costs (real costs). Actually some mebbeded processors have more memory than that. Arms and NEC chip are probably the best chioce I can remember. With processors like that you could also reprogram them to do some on chip manipulation (like with clearspeed parrallel array processor compression). Actually using a control processor with frame buffer and a clearspeed would be a good programmable comrpession platform. <<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Now that I think about it, if you have separate color analog gain controls within the camera like the SI-1300 does, by changing them inidvidually, you are applying different color filters prior to digitizing. This means that you still have the dynamic range in that color as opposed to applying them in a post process step. I don't think you need color optical filters at all. -->>> Robs: Yes, I was going to suggest that, especially if that canbe computer controlled on the fly as well as with external controls. Those are other things we will need in the software eventually that would be desirable at capture: basic lite (too much gain will increase niose) clour balance, gain exposure control and shutter exposure control for field work ( I would add selectable auto focus, Iris (Through auto electronic slr lense), and image stabilisation but at lasss that is all upto us ;) and niose elimination (would help compression). Most of these would require analysis and control cammands rather than much extra processing, what do you think? Eliot, Rob and Obin Flash bootup, low power requirements (believe me a shoulder case with any normal CPU/fan is going to drive you or your sound tech nuts). ITX has low power, speed, Raid interfaces, and onboard flash. There are convertors also allowing you to hook a compact flash to a standard IDE channel. The problem with flash is that it is really slow, you might be better off booting from disk. M-systems is also another place for flash drives. There are cheaper better alternatives to flash comming. Intel is trying to develope plastic memory, and Onvul or something is developing somethingn that uses material they use on Rewritable CD/s. There have been numerouse other scheems, but failed or normally do. As somebody mentioned it works better if the OS is on a seperate drive, That's why I suggested 1GB or Ram and cleaning out the rubbish inbetween shoots, to keep most of the OS in virtual memory (or Ram drive, and use the same image everytime). If you do do virtual memory then USB2 external drive (to free a IDE channel) or flash could be used, as most requests should be comming from memory. The embedded OS issue: That is why I suggested Toas Intent/Elate platform, the emmbedded realtime virtual OS core is kB/s in size, very fast and efficent (but use/compile your C to their virtual code). These guys really know how to code (as I was trying to piont out a few days ago), it should be much better than windows. Both me, OAK (now Java) and Toas started around the same time on our VOS/s. Your code then can run (unmodified except for custom interface issues) unmodified on Playstation like machines, Mac, PC, Linux etc. As long as they have the VOS for that machine. They are light years ahead. It is used in many embedded consumer electronics, and actaully some of the consumer el giants are part owners. ANother two OS/s of interest (they both use parts of Toas tech as well). IS QNX an old but very good Real Time OS with Unix capability, and Amiga OS (which is a rebadged version of Toas with their own custom libraries). These are among the best available. You can goto the MS deevelopers website and check if you can download a exprerimental Windows embedded XP for free (there done that sort od thing in thepast with CE). Maybe there is information how you can strip down normal XP. Thanks Wayne.

June 19th, 2004, 10:10 AM	#344
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	And only a Meridian Avid or Symphony, or AVID D$!! FCP will work fine at 10-bit. It's the cheapest 10-bit solution out there. Which means Obin that you could take your footage, render it in After Effects with the BlackMagic 64-bit (16-bit codecs), codec, and then export that 10-bit BM codec file back to FCP and play it back with no problems. It's a very nice solution. You can see a sample of the codec here http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/enco...=bmd-10tri_osx, and here's a description from Marco from the website: This codec uses 16-bit technology, but doesn't create a 40-megabyte per second file like the Cinewave 16-bit codec. No wasted disk space, no extra bits thrown out the window. For CGI/animation/visual effects artists, this is your codec. So you can see the the Mac here is nicely set-up for this type of work. Not trying to be one of those obnoxious mac-pushers here, or a "I'm-better-than-those-PCee's" type of attitude. I just think that some here are overlooking the best tool (and only think of it that way, not as a platform) to do the job of editing this stuff at the highest quality with the least amount of pain.

June 19th, 2004, 10:17 AM	#345
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	oh, Jason can you download a small sheervideo file and try to edit on FCP HD?? do you have FCP HD? this would be a great test..I really want to see if we can edit this stuff at all...what about Sheer being 8bit...that sucks right? or should we do our color work in Combustion and then output sheer codec at 8bit and edit FCP?