Home made camera designs?

[Laurence Maher]

Valeriu & Wayne

I agree with keeping the signal as high quality as possible. I think 1080 is much more important for those of us looking to do theatrical realeases. 720 is pushing it.

Also, I'm curious, there was mention of "doing the final encoding at 8 bit". Maybe I'm not thinking straight here (I'm assuming you mean final encoding of footage into a format one can edit with . . . yes, I'm a programming layman) but I think if it's possible it should stay in 10 bit. 8 bit, just like 720, is pushing it for theatrical release. Both 720 and 8 bit are MINIMUM most professionals consider for going to the screen, not hardly preferable, and would make quite a sacrafice when considering a finished product.

Another thing is that you were talking capture rates of 50 Mbps? I heard rumors Canon is coming out with a 50 Mbps HDV camera by the end of the year under 10 grand. If that's true, we all surely would have wasted some serious cash, for what the canon would deliver, complete with lens, would probably be so much more worth the convenience of an extremely cumbersome, and not nearly as feature-filled system. Again 50 Mbps is not theater screen quality really. Might get away with it, but . . . you're pushing it.

We must remember that if we want MEDIUM quality (somewhere between TV and theater movies), that's not too far away for a price similar to what we're talking about drumming up here. If we're going to all this trouble, let's do it to compete with the BIG BOYS, not just to go to the next category closer. Otherwise, somewhere between 2 and 5 years from now we'll realize we're back in the same place . . . wondering why we AREN'T making hollywood level films.

Just IMHO.

[Rob Lohman]

Okay: I'd like to make a couple of suggestions:

1) BB code FAQ. Please everyone read it. I've edited almost all the posts here with hyperlinks to make them clickable. Please take the time to read that short page so everybody can make their own links working. Thanks!

2) I think it is time to slowdown a bit. I think all the enthusiasm is great and all the information that everybody is digging up, but I'm personally getting a bit lost and swamped and I feel others are as well.

Let me elaborate on point 2. The only person currently having the
chip on this thread is Obin. Rob S. and myself are currently looking
into seeing if we can get hold of it as well.

After we or anybody has the chip we still need to hook it up and
get it running which Obin seems to have in the basic form. Let's
wait to here from Obin and see some pictures first.

Then we need to start working on getting frames ourselves
(to learn how the device is working). After (or perhaps in the
same time) it is time to start working on the design of software
and hardware etc.

Personally I'm not going to invest time and money into things like
mini pc's or mini-PCI/ATX boards etc. just now. Let's get a
prototype working correctly on our normal PC's first. Then it is
time to work on the whole camera package.

My guess would be that we are months away to get a working
prototype with our own software and controls and file output
working and in a format to allow it to be editted.

Then it is time for the complete package and whole different
range of mainboards / computers / harddisks / connectors etc.
might be out.

Ofcourse we need to keep an eye out and do our research in
time. But I have the feeling we are now all running around looking
for information and dumping it all in this thread. It might even be
wise to setup multiple threads and I'll have some chat with this
with our great forum owner Chris.

I say it's time to get working a bit from structured with lists and
stuff to do?

What do you all think?

p.s. I will be out on sunday and monday doing things with the
family so I won't be able to attend much. Please keep it as
structured as possible in the meantime!

[Rob Scott]

<<<-- Originally posted by Laurence Maher :
Also, I'm curious, there was mention of "doing the final encoding at 8 bit".
-->>>

I suspect that was referring to final delivery format such as AVI/Divx, QuickTime or MPEG-2.

<<<-- Another thing is that you were talking capture rates of 50 Mbps? I heard rumors Canon is coming out with a 50 Mbps HDV camera -->>>

Actually, we're talking about 50 MB/sec ... that is, 50 megaBYTES per second, which is 8x more than 50 megaBITS per second.

There is no question that a Canon (or other brand) camcorder will be far more convenient than the system we're talkin about here, but we're talking about 4:4:4 10-bit uncompressed data, and I don't see any manufacturer doing that for under $10K any time soon. They would cannibalize their higher-priced market.

[Rob Scott]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman :
1 BB code ...-->>>

Will do.

<<<-- My guess would be that we are months away to get a working
prototype with our own software and controls and file output
working and in a format to allow it to be editted. -->>>

Absolutely true. This is definitely a long-term project and we need to pace ourselves.

Thanks!

[Obin Olson]

Thank you Rob! the thing is this even if Canon or whoever comes out with a lowcost HD camera we can still apply what we learn to a 2, 3, 6, even 12 megapixel camera that will blow what the big 3 will put out away in terms of raw image quality..I seen no need to worry at al,l I for one started this whole thing because what I am about to get from a a 2-3,000$ upfront cost is good enough to work with in many ways..it's great for color work in post it's great for greenscreen shots it's great for tracking animation and when all is said and done after you compress it's size to fit a standard tv screen it looks much much more like film then cheap video AND you can get the high-framerate for REAL slomotion(this being the biggest reason our production company wanted to build this thing anyway) so is it worth it? IMOH yes. will they come marching to our door with all the features above for $4,000 or even $10,000 ?? no.


Update:

Late last night I got the capture software capturing at 24fps. Something is wrong with the colors, reds are green and everything looks the wrong hue...I will get back on it monday and see if I can figure it out...I think it's a bayer issue, looks like the streampix software does not deal with the 1300 camera's bayer filter in the right way.I ordered a 2 week trial dongle for the x-cap standard edtion so if streampix never get's working i can test the camera with x-cap...both software packages cost over $1,500...this is one reason we need that simple software made...this stuff has tons of features that we have no use for in the production markets...all I want is exposure, framerate, basic white balance, gama, ROI, and gain...thats really all we need and a bigger cmos chip atleast 2/3inch

[Laurence Maher]

Cool Rob and Olsen,

Thanks for clearing everything up. Makes all sorts of sense, (especially now I know you're talking bytes, not bits, lololol). Are delivery formats usually not 10 bits? (Don't know much about delivery specs).

[Obin Olson]

here is a good display device for the itx system!



I bet that would be just nice!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...134438908&rd=1

[Obin Olson]

<<<-- Originally posted by Laurence Maher : Valeriu & Wayne

I agree with keeping the signal as high quality as possible. I think 1080 is much more important for those of us looking to do theatrical realeases. 720 is pushing it.

give me 720p 4:4:4 anyday rain or shine over 1080i or p that is compressed like ALL of the cameras on the market are today - yes even the 100,000 dollar sony and panasonic


if you would like to spend more then 8 grand on a system you can have that NOW no question about it - go for it! i don't make feature films I make 30sec commercials for broadcast and have no need for more resolution then 720p. I know that some have shot with the Panasonic varicam that is 720p for blowup to 35mm with good success and great results - some have even shot with the little dvx100 and all of it's compression and still blown up to 35mm... it's your project not the camera that makes or breaks the show

[Obin Olson]

Steve can you build a SDI HD or a s-vhs out for broadcast monitor preview? or better yet a digital interface like you have on a computer graphics card so we can jsut pipe a true hd signal to any old cheapo CRT computer display? that would be the best and cheapest for the market to use....feedback?

[Steve Nordhauser]

I've looked into HD-SDI at the urging of this group. It looks expensive and unnecessarily complex. So, for camera out we will probably stay with camera link and gigE. I will be actively assisting in getting CL integrated into a usable form for filmmakers.

Since our cameras must run with a computer, it would make sense to me to attach your monitor there - there is a wealth of cheap cards with s-video ouput. I poked at that Lilliput monitor link - looks nice. Too bad it isn't 1280, but very interesting. If Rob and Rob write some software, they might be able to do some tayloring of the controls so that the buttons are coarse enough to use the touchscreen for changing exposure, stop and start recording, etc.

[Obin Olson]

Rob and Rob need to program the the capture software so that it's using video overlay to display the live camera image . That way we can use a dual-head card and pipe 2nd head on the card out to a CRT/lcd that supports 1280x720 OR a converter box that will take the signal and convert it into a true HDTV analog signal for a broadcast HD monitor.

With video overlay you can have your graphics card dislpay the overlay fullscreen on the 2nd monitor out from the card - i think maybe this is a function of DirectX??

[Obin Olson]

someone must know this, can we take a laptop screen that is 1280x1024 and make a homemade connector to plug it into a D-sub connection on a standard graphics card port? if so we can have a 12in and a 15in display...much better then lugging around a big 17in lcd for the itx system

i can't find ANY standard off-the-shelf screens with 1280 resolution smaller then 17in lcd

[Jason Rodriguez]

http://www.xenarc.com/product/700ts.html

This one will go up to 1600x1200, so you can definitely get 1280 resolution out of it, and it's a touch-screen to boot.

[Les Dit]

Physical Resolution: 800 (H) x 480 (V)

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : http://www.xenarc.com/product/700ts.html

This one will go up to 1600x1200, so you can definitely get 1280 resolution out of it, and it's a touch-screen to boot. -->>>

[Obin Olson]

nope I don't think that wil cut it