4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

Obin Olson · November 13th, 2004, 03:08 PM

looks like it's going to cost $500 for 30min of disk storage with the new SATA Raptor from WD $250 each..I am thinking of using the standard 3.5 type enclosure that fits into a 5.25 bay on a server. Mount the 2 disk drives in that and fit the whole thing with a plastic molded case. This will give me hot-swapp of drives while shooting. like a roll of film. I can install CIneLink on a laptop and plug the full drives into the laptop via SATA PCMCIA card and do the convert into CineForm 10bit files.

For post all I have to do is connect the drives to the videoserver load all footage into the raid and edit with any machine setup with Premiere PRO and CineFOrm codec and do all color work in AFterEffects with the CineForm stuff over the network

Jason Rodriguez · November 13th, 2004, 09:19 PM

If you step down to 1280x720, you can overcrank to 72fps with the GigE interface-that should be plenty of speed for slow-motion.

Barend Onneweer · November 14th, 2004, 05:01 AM

I guess I you'd want to use a laptop for recording, you'd be limited to USB, firewire or GigE connections. That means 24p1080 at 12-bit is not an option.

I'm not seeing the clear advantage of using a laptop yet. You'd have a built-in TFT, and battery power. But you won't get a full day of shooting out of 2 batteries, so you'll need more laptop batteries (expensive).

Not sure If powering two Raptors from a laptop is an option.

Maybe I'm overlooking the obvious, but building a shuttle-size system with a PCI-X bus, and a couple of built-in drives on a SATA RAID seems like a more powerful (and possibly even less expensive) route. Use a PCI-X cameralink framegrabber to record raw data. If Rob L would get the lossless realtime compresssion of raw data going, it could save valuable drive space. In between takes or during set changes it's no problem to back up to an external firewiredrive for safety issues.

Bring two car batteries on a cart, and hook those up to the machine, and you might be able to run a full day of recording on car batteries.

What's the maximum length of the cameralink cable?

Barend

Richard Mellor · November 14th, 2004, 12:16 PM

hi everyone this is a link to a free utility that will allow us to watch these videos in beautiful 1080p . we have been using this on our crt projectors

http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

Jason Rodriguez · November 14th, 2004, 02:37 PM

Hey Obin,

If you get a chance, can you do a new outdoor test like the one you did before with fence (outside your office) that had some whip-pans in it to see what the rolling shutter artifacts are like at the higher clock speed?

Obin Olson · November 14th, 2004, 04:56 PM

Indeed I will Jason as soon as I can get the system outside for testing. I have the camera running on our CGI box now because it is the fastest box in the office but it can't be taken outside ;)

As soon as I get a new microatx board and Raptor drives I will go out side and shoot 12bit files!

Barend I am NOT using a laptop for recording..ONLY after the drives are full then I would hook up the drives on the laptop and CONVERT the raw files to CIneForm 10bit codec. This would be the image development part of shooting RAW.

Wayne Morellini · November 15th, 2004, 07:41 AM

Marin, yes I agree, I think apart from buffered compressed signal, Gige overclocking is our only cheap option to get to 30fps 1080p 12 bit, maybe some of the technical engineers here would like to comment on the idea, it definetly would solve quiet a few problems in the very short term? I would still like to hear anybody say dual Gige or Firewire800 though (after the first port the second would be cheap, but ever so valuable).

Wayne Morellini · November 15th, 2004, 07:44 AM

<<<-- Originally posted by Barend Onneweer : I guess I you'd want to use a laptop for recording, you'd be limited to USB, firewire or GigE connections. That means 24p1080 at 12-bit is not an option. -->>>

There are people here that want to do 720p on laptop, others want portable PC 1080 based solution. There is flexibility to have a number of solutions for each of us.

Steve Nordhauser · November 15th, 2004, 09:22 AM

Gigabit: why overclocking? 1920x1080x24 bit @ 12 bits per pixel (average since there is a frame buffer at the interface and data packing) is 75MB/sec. At 30fps it is 94MB/sec. You can transfer data up to 100MB/sec. This is the derated and tested number for continuous transfer - Like the 100MB/sec number for PCI-32. Spec is 1gigabit/sec, tested and continuous is 800Mb/sec.

Camera link is up to 10m without buffers or conversion to fiber.

Wayne Morellini · November 15th, 2004, 09:56 AM

Yeah, good point, sorry I didn't do the calculation for 30fps, so used to cameralink bloat problems I didn't think of it that way, good. Now lets get down to brass tacks, that many will disagree with but still it is the standard. Cinema camera companies are going 6MP for single chip bayer, and video companies have done three chip, and a number of people have pionted out the need for slow motion effects, let alone shooting at 48fps, and 60fps, which I know some people want to do for digital cinema. So there is still a need, with the existing cameras that need is for slow motion and dropping frames for rolling shutter stuff, and eventually in time we will hopefully go to at least 16bits per pixel (well thats the way the pixel crumbles, into a mountain). So for some of us it is still rather cool to do the overclocking. esoecially if it could allow slow motion effects (to main memory), 8MP or three chip. Sorry for the missunderstanding. For PCI overclocking I suppose that interests the software writers the most.

I would like to point out the annoucement of the professional version of the Sony HDV camera (mentions Cineform too) on camcorderinfo. Nice camera, big talk, more competition for us.

Steve Nordhauser · November 15th, 2004, 10:03 AM

Wayne:
One of the advantages of gigabit is that it is a standard. It works with a variety of hardware and we provide a set of fast drivers. You would have to overclock both ends. For the future, I would rather see: 10gigabit (it is on the horizon, not sure how long before it is cheap) or lossless or minimally lossless at the camera head before the interface. If you can do 2x compression with RLE, that will be much more effective than overclocking - except that it has to be uncompressed for preview.

Wayne Morellini · November 15th, 2004, 10:27 AM

Yeah, I was meaning with lossless as well, but until then we only got the interface. I also meant to overclock at both ends, it would have to be done on specific target systems (meaning if you want it you have to copy a system allready worked out for a particular mainboard camera, no big fuss here where quality matters more than flexibility). For decompression to preview many graphic systems have decompression hardware that is much more capabile at decompression than compression, so we might not loose much there. So Steve how possible. feasable and practical do you think it is to overclock a short Gige interface, rather than buy 64bit frame grabber? Could we ever possibly double the speed for some real slow mo.

I agree that it looks like your Gige cameras will be the cinema camera chioce for normal usage.

I was just going to re-edit the last post to add this. About the new Sony HDV camera, the normal one has 18db gain, and the pro one has 36db gain. But the most interesting feature for us is that it has dual gamma slopes, one for shadows, and one for the rest. Sounds like a artificial dual slope feature, maybe it would be good to implement something like this. You mentioned the possibility of doing one frame slow and one frame quick to emulate dual slope (with some carefull capture software alligning on the fly). If you combined this with dual gamma curves (as above), 8 bits is going to fly, and 10-bits should fly and be colour correctable, possibly competing with 12bits+ straight.

Now another thing that comes to mind is that I have read a book (maybe article) that says research identified over 355,000 colours distinguishabvle to the human eye (thats 19bits intotal, TV does around 20bits) For those who don't know, that's because vision is non linear (hence why we do 24bit pluss in toital lineraly to cover all colours bases, gamma curves are only a closer approximation, but I imagine no where near exact). So I was wondering, if the output of the camera was made into a colour space that suited the human eye, plus some more for colourisation and editing we end up with no more than 24bits, or on average 8 bits per pixel). Is such a scheme feasable or advisable?

Speaking of Gige, I just found this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06...e_uwb_roadmap/

1Gb/s wireless. Hopefully they will get around to piggybacking gige on it like they are USB2.0 and Firewire.

Jason Rodriguez · November 15th, 2004, 12:34 PM

HDV is NOT our competition! That stuff looks like complete garbage and utter crap, especially when it's in motion (if a film-look is what you're after and not a third-generation satellite feed "look").

I think the only hope for HDV will be the Sony and JVC professional offerings in 3-chip camcorders at 50 and 75Mb/s, this 19Mb/s stuff is a total no-go for me.

Régine Weinberg · November 15th, 2004, 02:02 PM

I have found a rather small board with 10 !!! Gige Ports. I've found a SBC with Intel chips for a S ata Array, so no need to pass via PCI and Gige on board. all about 400 bucks

I have o Linux a programm that works with S ata or SCSI 320 up to 2 Gige Input ports as a NAS . In a Sniffer mode it writes all that comes like with the Steve cam , in fact it is a peer to peer network, direkt to the array. Just have to test it some day. I only need a redhat cheap not a fairly old one Redhat in France is fro 386 EURO about 400$ up to 2396 EURO

There is a still cam out that does quite 20 FPS in VGA, I bet this Chip could be do more it is only politics, it's a 8 M chip.

going wild again

my Swiis friend stold me ,amateur radio group, the did transmit with 10 Ghz a Pal stream from Spain via the Med sea to Italy about 1564 km. I do guess we need only about 1 km ???????

Jason Rodriguez · November 15th, 2004, 03:18 PM

Ronald, what motherboard did you find, and could you post a link?

November 14th, 2004, 05:01 AM	#2163
Barend Onneweer Regular Crew Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Netherlands Posts: 111	I guess I you'd want to use a laptop for recording, you'd be limited to USB, firewire or GigE connections. That means 24p1080 at 12-bit is not an option. I'm not seeing the clear advantage of using a laptop yet. You'd have a built-in TFT, and battery power. But you won't get a full day of shooting out of 2 batteries, so you'll need more laptop batteries (expensive). Not sure If powering two Raptors from a laptop is an option. Maybe I'm overlooking the obvious, but building a shuttle-size system with a PCI-X bus, and a couple of built-in drives on a SATA RAID seems like a more powerful (and possibly even less expensive) route. Use a PCI-X cameralink framegrabber to record raw data. If Rob L would get the lossless realtime compresssion of raw data going, it could save valuable drive space. In between takes or during set changes it's no problem to back up to an external firewiredrive for safety issues. Bring two car batteries on a cart, and hook those up to the machine, and you might be able to run a full day of recording on car batteries. What's the maximum length of the cameralink cable? Barend __________________ www.raamw3rk.net digital storytelling and vfx

November 14th, 2004, 12:16 PM	#2164
Richard Mellor Major Player Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: cambridge ma Posts: 247	powerstrip hi everyone this is a link to a free utility that will allow us to watch these videos in beautiful 1080p . we have been using this on our crt projectors http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

November 15th, 2004, 09:22 AM	#2169
Steve Nordhauser Silicon Imaging, Inc. Join Date: May 2004 Location: Troy, NY USA Posts: 325	Gigabit: why overclocking? 1920x1080x24 bit @ 12 bits per pixel (average since there is a frame buffer at the interface and data packing) is 75MB/sec. At 30fps it is 94MB/sec. You can transfer data up to 100MB/sec. This is the derated and tested number for continuous transfer - Like the 100MB/sec number for PCI-32. Spec is 1gigabit/sec, tested and continuous is 800Mb/sec. Camera link is up to 10m without buffers or conversion to fiber. __________________ Silicon Imaging, Inc. We see the Light! http://www.siliconimaging.com

November 15th, 2004, 10:03 AM	#2171
Steve Nordhauser Silicon Imaging, Inc. Join Date: May 2004 Location: Troy, NY USA Posts: 325	Wayne: One of the advantages of gigabit is that it is a standard. It works with a variety of hardware and we provide a set of fast drivers. You would have to overclock both ends. For the future, I would rather see: 10gigabit (it is on the horizon, not sure how long before it is cheap) or lossless or minimally lossless at the camera head before the interface. If you can do 2x compression with RLE, that will be much more effective than overclocking - except that it has to be uncompressed for preview. __________________ Silicon Imaging, Inc. We see the Light! http://www.siliconimaging.com

November 15th, 2004, 02:02 PM	#2174
Régine Weinberg Major Player Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: Bordeaux, going to Bangkok, 2011 Posts: 232	Gige Ethernet I have found a rather small board with 10 !!! Gige Ports. I've found a SBC with Intel chips for a S ata Array, so no need to pass via PCI and Gige on board. all about 400 bucks I have o Linux a programm that works with S ata or SCSI 320 up to 2 Gige Input ports as a NAS . In a Sniffer mode it writes all that comes like with the Steve cam , in fact it is a peer to peer network, direkt to the array. Just have to test it some day. I only need a redhat cheap not a fairly old one Redhat in France is fro 386 EURO about 400$ up to 2396 EURO There is a still cam out that does quite 20 FPS in VGA, I bet this Chip could be do more it is only politics, it's a 8 M chip. going wild again my Swiis friend stold me ,amateur radio group, the did transmit with 10 Ghz a Pal stream from Spain via the Med sea to Italy about 1564 km. I do guess we need only about 1 km ???????

November 13th, 2004, 03:08 PM	#2161
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	looks like it's going to cost $500 for 30min of disk storage with the new SATA Raptor from WD $250 each..I am thinking of using the standard 3.5 type enclosure that fits into a 5.25 bay on a server. Mount the 2 disk drives in that and fit the whole thing with a plastic molded case. This will give me hot-swapp of drives while shooting. like a roll of film. I can install CIneLink on a laptop and plug the full drives into the laptop via SATA PCMCIA card and do the convert into CineForm 10bit files. For post all I have to do is connect the drives to the videoserver load all footage into the raid and edit with any machine setup with Premiere PRO and CineFOrm codec and do all color work in AFterEffects with the CineForm stuff over the network

November 13th, 2004, 09:19 PM	#2162
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	If you step down to 1280x720, you can overcrank to 72fps with the GigE interface-that should be plenty of speed for slow-motion.

November 14th, 2004, 02:37 PM	#2165
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	Hey Obin, If you get a chance, can you do a new outdoor test like the one you did before with fence (outside your office) that had some whip-pans in it to see what the rolling shutter artifacts are like at the higher clock speed?

November 14th, 2004, 04:56 PM	#2166
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	Indeed I will Jason as soon as I can get the system outside for testing. I have the camera running on our CGI box now because it is the fastest box in the office but it can't be taken outside ;) As soon as I get a new microatx board and Raptor drives I will go out side and shoot 12bit files! Barend I am NOT using a laptop for recording..ONLY after the drives are full then I would hook up the drives on the laptop and CONVERT the raw files to CIneForm 10bit codec. This would be the image development part of shooting RAW.

November 15th, 2004, 07:41 AM	#2167
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Marin, yes I agree, I think apart from buffered compressed signal, Gige overclocking is our only cheap option to get to 30fps 1080p 12 bit, maybe some of the technical engineers here would like to comment on the idea, it definetly would solve quiet a few problems in the very short term? I would still like to hear anybody say dual Gige or Firewire800 though (after the first port the second would be cheap, but ever so valuable).

November 15th, 2004, 07:44 AM	#2168
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	<<<-- Originally posted by Barend Onneweer : I guess I you'd want to use a laptop for recording, you'd be limited to USB, firewire or GigE connections. That means 24p1080 at 12-bit is not an option. -->>> There are people here that want to do 720p on laptop, others want portable PC 1080 based solution. There is flexibility to have a number of solutions for each of us.

November 15th, 2004, 09:56 AM	#2170
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Yeah, good point, sorry I didn't do the calculation for 30fps, so used to cameralink bloat problems I didn't think of it that way, good. Now lets get down to brass tacks, that many will disagree with but still it is the standard. Cinema camera companies are going 6MP for single chip bayer, and video companies have done three chip, and a number of people have pionted out the need for slow motion effects, let alone shooting at 48fps, and 60fps, which I know some people want to do for digital cinema. So there is still a need, with the existing cameras that need is for slow motion and dropping frames for rolling shutter stuff, and eventually in time we will hopefully go to at least 16bits per pixel (well thats the way the pixel crumbles, into a mountain). So for some of us it is still rather cool to do the overclocking. esoecially if it could allow slow motion effects (to main memory), 8MP or three chip. Sorry for the missunderstanding. For PCI overclocking I suppose that interests the software writers the most. I would like to point out the annoucement of the professional version of the Sony HDV camera (mentions Cineform too) on camcorderinfo. Nice camera, big talk, more competition for us.

November 15th, 2004, 10:27 AM	#2172
Wayne Morellini Inner Circle Join Date: May 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 2,762	Yeah, I was meaning with lossless as well, but until then we only got the interface. I also meant to overclock at both ends, it would have to be done on specific target systems (meaning if you want it you have to copy a system allready worked out for a particular mainboard camera, no big fuss here where quality matters more than flexibility). For decompression to preview many graphic systems have decompression hardware that is much more capabile at decompression than compression, so we might not loose much there. So Steve how possible. feasable and practical do you think it is to overclock a short Gige interface, rather than buy 64bit frame grabber? Could we ever possibly double the speed for some real slow mo. I agree that it looks like your Gige cameras will be the cinema camera chioce for normal usage. I was just going to re-edit the last post to add this. About the new Sony HDV camera, the normal one has 18db gain, and the pro one has 36db gain. But the most interesting feature for us is that it has dual gamma slopes, one for shadows, and one for the rest. Sounds like a artificial dual slope feature, maybe it would be good to implement something like this. You mentioned the possibility of doing one frame slow and one frame quick to emulate dual slope (with some carefull capture software alligning on the fly). If you combined this with dual gamma curves (as above), 8 bits is going to fly, and 10-bits should fly and be colour correctable, possibly competing with 12bits+ straight. Now another thing that comes to mind is that I have read a book (maybe article) that says research identified over 355,000 colours distinguishabvle to the human eye (thats 19bits intotal, TV does around 20bits) For those who don't know, that's because vision is non linear (hence why we do 24bit pluss in toital lineraly to cover all colours bases, gamma curves are only a closer approximation, but I imagine no where near exact). So I was wondering, if the output of the camera was made into a colour space that suited the human eye, plus some more for colourisation and editing we end up with no more than 24bits, or on average 8 bits per pixel). Is such a scheme feasable or advisable? Speaking of Gige, I just found this: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06...e_uwb_roadmap/ 1Gb/s wireless. Hopefully they will get around to piggybacking gige on it like they are USB2.0 and Firewire.

November 15th, 2004, 12:34 PM	#2173
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	HDV is NOT our competition! That stuff looks like complete garbage and utter crap, especially when it's in motion (if a film-look is what you're after and not a third-generation satellite feed "look"). I think the only hope for HDV will be the Sony and JVC professional offerings in 3-chip camcorders at 50 and 75Mb/s, this 19Mb/s stuff is a total no-go for me.

November 15th, 2004, 03:18 PM	#2175
Jason Rodriguez Trustee Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Virginia Beach, VA Posts: 1,095	Ronald, what motherboard did you find, and could you post a link?