4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

[Rai Orz]

Wayne,
24Bit capture: The FPGA i played with, have a lot of not used input pins. It can be reconfigured by software to adapt different sensors (fillfactory, micron, altasens). For a sensor with 12Bit at two channels, it used only 24pins (less than a quarter at all), so 24Bits should be possible, in theory. With faster HDDs, it should also be possible in practice, but i do not see the necessity, remember its RAW. 3 x 24Bit, whohww. What will you do with those thing?

You mentioned „long process“. I think differently. My fist inquiry on this thread was middle july last year. At that time i hoped i can find here a working solution for a comming movie project. Then, september we started our first own trials with camera heads from different manufacturers, because here i found no working system. As you know, it take only a few weeks till the film crew started to shoot the movie with our beta version (incl. a camera head with own hardware changes). End december we finished our camera system. Not only the camerahead + cine software, also all mechanical parts and asseccories, like case, focus follow, matebox, support rag etc. Now, we got a title story in a german (HDTV) magazine. I think, thats not a long process.
And, be sure, if i now said those new universal camera head is possible in the near future, i mean what i said.

Your wish list about price is maybe possible (numer of items). But is this the goal? Why cheaper than other companies? (SI, SUMIX) On the other hand, with those camera heart (its maybe a better name than head) its possible to build cameras from low cost home video up to high end cinema, so it will be not a good idea to sell it in all cases at the same price. More details not public...
Yes, its right, you do not need high end PCs, because capturing and record are part of the camera. Viewfinding is another thing. A cheap camera need only a small tft, at low fps. For the first version you need external solutions, so from gameboy, handheld over notebook to high end PCs, all things are imagingably, because in all cases the camera can record also without those things.

Your absolute right, the prosumer/video production/documentary market is 100, i add maybe 1000 times more to the indie market. But as cheaper a camera go, as more automatics (autofocus. etc.) is a must. This take a lot of extra development time, so i see it at the end of the list.

You mentioned the output time. The good thing is, RAW datas hold all captured informations, the bad thing is, it need a software to transform it to available formats. While transforming, you lost informations. And there are a lot of different ways how you can transform: compress, color correct, etc.. At the moment i see the best way, to put the camera HDD block out of the camera and in a spezial PC connected box (maybe USB or Firewire) and let do a PC those works. This is the way we do it also with our existing camera. You can also change the „style“ by software select and it is easy to install a new version, new better debayer, etc. on PC. To implement those function in the camera head, it is possible, but it need a lot of development time.

[Wayne Morellini]

<<<-- Originally posted by Rai Orz : Wayne,
>RAW. 3 x 24Bit, whohww. What will you do with those thing?

Just predicting where industry will go, eventually, with new technologies. But as I said, 16 bit is enough for mement.

> You mentioned „long process“. I think differently. My fist inquiry on this thread was middle july last year. At

In terms of what we were talking about before you jioned. Camera in less than 3 months. People are simply "talked out" because too much talking and no systems out yet, nothing really to do with your camera, just the projects. So probably best to think for them and list, so they can pick which features they like.

> Your wish list about price is maybe possible (numer of items). But is this the goal? Why cheaper than other companies? (SI, SUMIX) On the other hand, with those

Marketing, if too many competitors in market, can get new market and undercut them, if you can make more profit selling to 100 times more people, and moral ideal, so the poorer people don't get left out. So we are in agreement.

>Your absolute right, the prosumer/video production/documentary market is 100, i add maybe 1000 times more to the indie market. But as cheaper a camera go, as more automatics (autofocus. etc.) is a must. This take a lot of extra development time, so i see it at the end of the list.

I have done some figuring long ago, canbe done simply (very simply). External physical controls developement hardest though. We really, also, only need one or two codecs to dump directly into TV station system (one uncompressed and one standard compressed). This also means that you can pass live feed from camera, as studio or feild camera. So not really the greatest jump. In a way, the next step for cinema camera. As we know some open FPGA compressiuon designs allready out. But maybe just use software (fast Arm, FPGA processor etc). With the increases in processing power, soon this will be possible cheaply.

[Dan Diaconu]

I do not know if this:

http://www.isgchips.com/Templates/t_quadhdtv.htm

might be of interest to you. Found and delivered.
I hope it helps.

[Obin Olson]

trying many may ways of image save...a real pain...progress in the save? yes..but slow...more later today

[Obin Olson]

Monday morning I will have some more updates...a test program has been coded that tells us the specs of my hard disks and what the msec of time is we need to let the drives 'recover' between writes..this is helping a bunch and letting us tune the save for this. things are looking up ( but taking longer then I would have thought )

cheers!

[Obin Olson]

weird question...what if...we could find a 35mm sized CMOS chip like the D-20 Arri camera and take pixel 'chunks' from it to make a native 1080p image with the FOV of a TRUE 35mm camera!!! this would ROCK..anyone know of a box cam with a 6-12megapixel chip that is full 35mm sized?? cameralink?

[Aaron Shaw]

And DOF! That's a pretty cool idea actually. That and your low light sensitivity and signal to noise ratio would go up a lot (if I understand things correctly)!

I suspect these are very expensive though :(. My father has a dalsa scientific camera in one of his instruments that shoots 30fps, with a full sized chip, (not as high res as you are looking for though) but it costs approx. 10k.

[Kyle Granger]

Obin,

> and take pixel 'chunks' from it

Many CMOS image sensors can perform "binning", where 4 or 9, etc, pixels are combined into one pixel (albeit with higher resolution). However, with a Bayer matrix, this is much harder.

> ...we could find a 35mm sized CMOS chip like the D-20
> ....with a 6-12megapixel chip that is full 35mm sized??
> cameralink?

Then you will need a very high pixel clock, and/or more CameraLink taps, and a large sensor pixel size, all expensive items.

I got into this CameraLink world, first by using a couple of Olympus 3 megapixel cameras. I had the idea to do a stereoscopic film in timelapse. I actually found some very nice controller software from PineTree (www.pinetreecomputing.com/camctl.asp), which allowed me to shoot and download from multiple cameras, completely synchronized. One cycle took a minimum of 12 seconds.

Then I started to look at SDKs from other manufacturers. Kodak's SDK for their 14 MP DCS SLR is very nice (the chip is from FillFactory). One could actually make a 3D IMAX film with that. There was a timelapse (flat) IMAX film once made...Chronos. You could make something like that now, in 3D, for much less money.

Basler has a nice camera, the A402k (and A403k, etc., with higher pixel clocks). The chip is from Micron. 7 micron pixel, 2352x1726. But only 10 bits, and monochrome. And $10k, and higher ( www.baslerweb.com ) The sensor size is about 16mm x 12mm, getting close to 35mm cine (camera has F-mount)

Also, you will need multiple CameraLink taps. The Basler A404k can do 96 fps, with a 50 MHZ clock, using 8 CameraLink taps. These grabber cards are expensive; some of them allow for 4GB RAM, installable on the card.

This link lists many of the CMOS/CCD industrial cameras out here (Dalsa, Basler, Jai/Pulnix, Sony, etc, but not Silicon Imaging). Aaron is correct about Dalsa: nice cameras, but expensive.

http://www.opsci.com/

Without a programmable clock synthesizer, getting 24..0000. 23.9760, or 29.97 FPS, with variable ROI is also difficult.

[Obin Olson]

"I have also found out that splitting the
file between two drives with IDE drives can slow things down due to the IDE
disk system that cannot handle split bus transactions. I will see if this
applies to SATA too. It might seem that you might need SCSI drives to
implement this properly. I'll have more on that later when I get a bit more
information on this."


anyone here have a firm answer to this question from my programmer?

[Rai Orz]

<<<-- Originally posted by Kyle Granger :....
> ...we could find a 35mm sized CMOS chip like the D-20
> ....with a 6-12megapixel chip that is full 35mm sized??
> cameralink?
Then you will need a very high pixel clock, and/or more CameraLink taps, and a large sensor pixel size, all expensive items.--->>

No, 40 - 66Mhz pixel clock is all you need, but at multiple ports. Thats the way all high pixel sensors (or high speed sensors) work. For example:
ARRI D-20 Sensor work at only 20MHz, but with 32ports.
Panavisions QuadHD™8MegaPixel Sensor, 30fps: 37Mhz, 8 Ports
Microns MT9M413 1,3M Pixel, 500fps: 66MHz, 10 Ports
Microns PB-MV40 4M Pixel, 240fps: 66MHz, 16 Ports
FillFactorys LUPA-1300 1,3M Pixel, 450fps: 20MHz, 16 Ports

If you distibute the data to multiple HDDs inside the camera head (see my postings before), it will be not a expensive item.

<<--- Then I started to look at SDKs from other manufacturers. Kodak's SDK for their 14 MP DCS SLR is very nice (the chip is from FillFactory). One could actually make a 3D IMAX film with that. There was a timelapse (flat) IMAX film once made...Chronos. You could make something like that now, in 3D, for much less money.--->>

This nice FillFactory sensor is based on the IBIS5 technologie (see the pictures and you know what IBIS5 can do), but they dont sell it to others than Kodak, because Kodak hold exclusive rights on it. On the other hand, it have no multiple ports, so it work only at low fps.


<<---Basler has a nice camera, the A402k (and A403k, etc., with higher pixel clocks). The chip is from Micron. 7 micron pixel, 2352x1726. But only 10 bits, and monochrome. And $10k, and higher ( www.baslerweb.com ) The sensor size is about 16mm x 12mm, getting close to 35mm cine (camera has F-mount)--->>

There are other comanys, made cameras with color versions of this high speed 240fps sensor. For example:
http://www.fast-vision.com/cameras/camera40.htm

<<--- Also, you will need multiple CameraLink taps. The Basler A404k can do 96 fps, with a 50 MHZ clock, using 8 CameraLink taps. These grabber cards are expensive; some of them allow for 4GB RAM, installable on the card.-->>>

Or, you go a different way (HDDs inside camera head) like i wrote it before...

[Wayne Morellini]

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : weird question...what if...we could find a 35mm sized CMOS chip like the D-20 Arri camera and take pixel 'chunks' from it to make a native 1080p image with the FOV of a TRUE 35mm camera!!! this would ROCK..anyone know of a box cam with a 6-12megapixel chip that is full 35mm sized?? cameralink? -->>>

People have discussed adapting still cameras to motion. In time larger and larger sensors will demand higher and higher base clocks, so 1080p binning should be possible someday, some sensor. Note that some of these cameras will only do a movie mode that is less than the base clock, this might be a restriction that might be related to the sensor, so some firmware code modification might be needed (unless it is hardwired).

Binning is not perfect. It should have higher niose and less low light than single pixels of the same size. But you should get closer to 3CCD colour accuracy as the bayer is binned.

IDE:

Cheap/nasty chipset/motherboard. I haven't heard of this one, most likely depends on the motherboard. Is this one one IDE channel, can you use two channels instead to get around it? Makeing your camera with one good motherboard should get around it. Search for the IDE standards spec/organisation. It should have some terminology for this problem, and any solution, then cross search on that to find the terms the MB manufacturers use for the solution, and serach for boards with that feature. Should be something at sites like that storage review site too, under raid schemes.


Wayne.

[Obin Olson]

I am working with a test app today to find the speed and the delay we need to save with multithreading and twin disk..this should clear everything up so we can go forward with REAL data from my twindisk DFI system and complete the save part of CineLInk...

[Wayne Morellini]

Over on the technical thread I have listed some information on the recent announcements on the Xbox2 Xenon. It appears to be much more of a super machine than first thought with one Teraflop of processing power, which would make it capable of capturing/compressing/editing a UHD (IMAX) like picture live (except we don't know interfaces yet). And software can be made to run on both the PC and the Xbox2.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...833#post284833

[Obin Olson]

when will that be out Wayne?

[Wayne Morellini]

It's in the post, the holidays this year. So if anybody would like another interesting capture device project they should look at developing now. As far as cost effectiveness, and performance, the PC's is becoming dated for low cost camera capture.