oh, sorry.
Anyone here to answer the questions I made Steve N.?
Or just to point me to an old answer ??

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Wayne:
Wayne on GigE:
I'm inclined to agree with you - pixel packing and maybe lossless compression at 2:1 (visually lossless at 6:1??) could really extend GigE and we will probably go that way in a bunch of months. This is mostly useful for remote head cameras (remote from the PC) although we could possibly migrate the FPGA into a simple digital interface or camera link. That might make the 3 chip Altasens make some 'sens'. -->>>

That's great, this year? My interests are plainly size, and doing away with a $500 frame grabber board, which would probably suit your customers to. There are also twin GBe on some main boards.

About compression, I agree. I would like to see both true lossless and visually lossless, and even 20 to 50:1 wavelet.

On a side piont: Rob, with something like the Toas system you can record to DVD and include a player/codec/decoder plugin that should work on windows, unix, and Mac.


Thanks

Wayne.

@Juan:
Most mechanical shutters do not like to be run continuously - the exceptions being LCD and spinning wheels. They are certainly an option but for rolling shutter what you need to do is expose the sensor during vertical blanking time (all pixels integrating) and shut it off for readout. This is the same effect we have been discussing with running at double rate and an extended vertical blanking and tossing every other frame.

The SI-3300 is just coming out of engineering - we don't have much experimentation time on it yet. It has smaller pixels than the SI-1300 so the DOF is greater at 1280x720. At 1920x1080 it can run 24fps @10 bit. Not integrated with Streampix yet so recording is an issue.

Really fast disks tend to be hot and noisy and not as large. Other than removability, I would think a larger array of 250GB 7200RPM SATA drives would be best for recording. Just my thinking on this.

Interesting. Reducing the number of drives and increasing the speed would help, you still get multiple capacities too.

Thanks

Wayne.

Thanks Steve :).
The problem I see is that I believe that 4 7200 rpm HDrives inside a thight enclosure would produce more heat and consume more power than one 10,000 rpm HDrive.Just common sense, so I'm surely wrong.

It's possible. IIRC, Kinetta is using 12 drives in theirs! 40 GB iPod-style drives (=480 GB), which I think are <5,000 RPM.

BTW, no need to apologize about the questions earlier. I don't think we ever discussed drive speed in any detail.

Don't know its pricing, and I don't know if it could be usefull.
It is a PCI card with two 1 GHZ G4 CPUs and consumes 40 watts.

http://www.eqware.net/Products.html

Also there is this German Cameralink grabber, which has an FPGA on board, don't know if it could be modified to compress the image on board.

http://www.silicon-software.com/microenable3.html#_mE3


And here is a cheap PCI FPGA card from Xilinx (from $399)

http://www.fpgajournal.com/news_stor...0040210_06.htm

I thought the drive speed and throughput was allready researched?

I have got some good news:

Proposed 500Mb's Wireless Lan (but ptobablynot this year)

Actually now I think of it, previously I posted about a next gen board that had simular wireless claims.

Bill gates forcasting the death of DVD

He doesn't mention that he (or MS) had investment in a 3D DVD replacement, and the many other alternatives.

New small formfactor Shuttle case with PCI-Express

Is there anybody here that can help Rai? From his post I think he is prepared to use simple capture software in a stationary case?

Rob. I looked at the vB code guide on that Camcorderinfo site, any chance we could get a more comrpehensive one like their's?

That shuttle is nice. It can handle 3 internal HDs so you can do a two drive raid and leave the OS on another drive. Two slots (one pci-32 and one pci-X) so you put a capture card in one, maybe a TV out on the other for preview if you didn't want a computer LCD display for preview. Plenty of power there.

I'm going to throw a curve ball here.

Playstation 3, next year

About the patent Please note: they can add cells to compete with the recent powerpc xbox2 spec. Cell is a more complex clearspeed like device.

Wouldn't it be good to put the wind up Sony by making a PS3 version. The processing power on this beast means only an internal hardrive and external link to the camera would be needed? I would even reccmmend the Playstation Portable (quiet powerful) for 720p except it didn't have external interface or IDE.

But still this is mostly in jest.

Wayne, yes we need at the beginning simple capture software in a stationary case on the end of a 10m cable.

With those system, we will start shooting the movie. I think, if the cam works with a external PC and the pictures are that what i hope, it push the power on. And at the last shoot there is also a new HD CAM, because all we wont a HDD-in-the-Cam-Case-Solution. What a great Story...

So, let me know, what parts work.

Steve,
That Shuttle machine doesn't have a PCI-X slot but a PCI-Express.They are different.
Are there PCI-Express Frame Grabbers?


Rai,
Just my opinion.
Ask Steve which is the right motherboard to work with using SI GigEthernet drivers, put on it the fastest P4 you find, add a good RAID controller card (the best are the ones with the Intel XOR engine, they cost around $700), put as many disks as you want and I think you are ready to go if the capture software works well.
Another hint: It would be the best to buy a motherboard with a PCI-X slot (64 bit, 66 MHZ)

Juan:
whoops, too good to be true. Ignoring the fancy suffixes, there are PCI-32/33MHz, PCI-64-33MHz, PCI-64/66MHz and one PCI-64/133MHz frame grabbers.

Rai:
Obin is the only one who has pounded on a real work flow with our cameras. The SI-1300/Epix FG/Norpix SW is the only solution that is complete NOW. The SI-3300/Epix FG is done but would need Norpix integration for the same work flow. I don't know how practical that is - let's say Obin seemed less than thrilled.

Have read newer information on the PS3, it will be shown at E3 may next year, and release musch later, so there is no point. Pity the price piont of console hardware is lower than PC.

So false alarm.

Have you guys seen this one?:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0105910/2004/07/10.html#a900

Don't know what are people using here to Demosaick their RAW footage so here I go again:

This is DCRAW ,an open source program to demosaick Bayer images with the best quality I've ever seen.
I post it in case Rai needs it.May be Rob can modify it to process the camera captured stream.

http://www.insflug.org/raw/software/tools/dcraw.php3

Thanks Juan! I'll definitely be looking at that.

ok guys I am coming out of the closet now - and I do apologize to Rob C.
I have hired a software programmer and we are writing a capture program that WILL work for production of commercial projects/feature films - at first we will capture RAW images in 8bit and 10bit @ the max framerate the computer can write-to-disk later on we will look at compression BEFORE DISK WRITE

Our software will have ALL camera controls inside the UI in a very easy to use setup - It will save to QuickTime tiff jpeg and avi and use the LeadTools codec for editing - this system will WORK and can be used in production. when better sensors come out they will be supported and as time passes we will have it as an embedded system like a Kinetta but at much less $$

We will also be addressing the issues of Bayer filters for post-processing so we can get the most out of the chip
As of now we are displaying the live image and working on implementing the camera commands and doing multi-threading for a ROCK STABLE capture, I think we may have beta up and working end of this week..we will see I will post screenshots of our mockup UI if anyone wants to see!

Great, but this must be costing you a fortune. For Rai, will the exisitng solution do in the meantime? I know we all like everything to be perfect, but is the existing system ussuable?

Thanks

Wayne.

Good luck with that, Obin. I hope you got a decent developer who will do a good job for you.

StreamPix is not somthing you want to use - Xcap is the worst!

so no nothing that could be used at the moment

Steve, from the PB-MV40 4 Megapixel document, it is nearly 3 years old, but not listed in their products. What gives?

Thanks

Wayne.

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn : Don't know what are people using here to Demosaick their RAW footage so here I go again:

This is DCRAW ,an open source program to demosaick Bayer images with the best quality I've ever seen.
I post it in case Rai needs it.May be Rob can modify it to process the camera captured stream.

http://www.insflug.org/raw/software/tools/dcraw.php3 -->>>

dcraw's code was used in the first version of the Adobe Camera Raw plugin (now part of the Photoshop CS). Their current code is also likely based on that. It is a very good convertor and free for any kind of use, including commercial.

Wayne:
That was as a photobit design - probably Micron is just supporting existing customers, not fishing for new designs.

Obin:
Quite an interesting bombshell you just lobbed.

Norpix is getting a facelift fairly soon to make the GUI more intuitive. We shall see - I suspect this group will be way beyond there by the time it is ready.

we are writing a capture program that WILL work for production of commercial projects/feature films

I've been following this project for a while and I'm very interested in its outcome. Obin, if you are going to pay to develop some software yourself, what are you planning on doing with it. I'm prepared to invest the money into a working camera system, but since there already is a prototype and no working software, there's no reason to do it yet. At the same time, there's no reason to build my own system if there is no software to support it. Obin, are you going to be licensing your software, giving it for free as was originally discussed, or keep it for your own services?

Rob, Obin, Joshua and all others,

It was my idea to shoot a movie with those silicon images Cam. I know the work time for the movieprojekt that just now beginns. And so, it also was my idea to shoot now, at the beginning, with the unsuitable silicon images software and a pc in a car. I know/hope a better software will come soon and also small hardware. I spoke with producer and director, and they say okay, it can be good for movie marketing (and i think also for CAM marketing), but it must work. And now, they want see pictures.

So my questions: Is it possible? First shoots with the software bundled with the camera and later with new software ? I mean, is there a difference in the pictures? What is the different format? What different Hardware it need?

Steve, I held it back untill my last breath of air!! no, I just did not want to talk untill we had somthing in the works forsure..;)

pictures are the same the workflow is really hard. you will want to wait for the good capture software or els waste lots of time on-set. The Streampix cost $1500 and Xcap is $1500 SO you will buy software that will be trashed in a mater of weeks or less..NOT worth it!

what is your reason for shooting with this camera? how not get a Panasonic Varicam? or 16mm film? what is your budget for the movie?

"software bundled with the camera" this software does NOT capture video only 1 still frame at a time

> "software bundled with the camera" this software does NOT capture video only 1 still frame at a time

Sorry, it is a misunderstanding. I meant the Streampix Software, because silicon images sell it too. And, if you buy it "bundled" with a cam, it cost only around $1000.

>what is your reason for shooting with this camera?

I would like sell it with our 35mm solutions and with other nice parts. The movie is Advertisement for the camera. But the camera is also Advertisement for the movie.

This is the reason.

Interpolating bayer fixer
 

Hey all,

I think I'm going to bite the bullet and get the Sumix SMX-150C camera. 1280x1024 @ 27.5 fps over USB2. After seeing the sample images, I am convinced.

However, clearly the bundled software does a very crude job of de-mosaicing the bayer filter on the image. It produces images that look like this:
(tight crop of image at 100%)
(same image at 200% zoom)

See the weird "zippering?" If you look at the red + blue channels, they are at half resolution, and the green channel is all wiggy. This is the result of nearest neighbor "interpolation" -- it makes the image look pixelated, even at 100%.

One solution is to do a 1-pixel box blur on the footage. That seems to clean it up pretty nicely:
(footage with box blur, 200% zoom)

That's okay, but now the image is a touch soft. What we really want to do is an actual interpolation between the color sites on the sensor -- nearest neighbor isn't really interpolation in my book. There are tons of available methods -- spline, bicubic, etc, but I'll stick with plain old linear interpolation, because it's extremely fast.

I wrote up an After Effects plug-in to take footage with half-a$$ de-mosaicing and produce nice images. The result is something like this:
(footage with "linBayer" filter, 200% zoom)

My algorithm leaves the original pixel values untouched and deals only with the in-between values, so you retain as much of the original data as possible. Also, it offsets the color channels so that they match up better. Simply interpolating the values leaves you with a slight offset that looks like chromatic abberation.

You can download the Mac version of the plug-in here. I'll compile it for PC a little later if anyone's interested.

If anyone involved in the coding of this HD cam project wants the source for the algorithm, let me know.

Well, that's it for now!

- ben

DCRAW isn't a very good bayer demosaic algorithm, it's just using a version of variable gradients, and tends to have a lot of color moiré and/or "zippered" edges-at least compared to the Canon converter or the Phase One Capture One software.

Jason, what are your notes on my algorithm? The green channel has a little zippering left over, but if you get rid of it completely, you lose a lot of information. At 100%, it's almost impossible to see the zippering, and I think once it was projected or on a screen, you wouldn't be able to see it at all...

Ben
Be a little careful about the sample images, as they were probably taken at the exposure that would result in the best still, rather that 1/48 sec, or whatever you want to shoot video with.
Ask them what shutter speed they used. Maybe it was 1/200 sec to minimize noise?
-Les

I think you mean 1/2 second. (?) That's impossible -- the maximum exposure time is 36.44ms. I'm sure they had the subjects well-lit, but so will I. :)

Basically, I need a camera that will operate over USB2 or Firewire. This is it. And it's extremely inexpensive. I'll give it a shot and keep people updated on how it fares. It costs less than half of what my GL1 did, so even if it's really noisy, it'll be an interesting experiment. It's not like I'm going to be handing this thing to Bill Pope, ASC to shoot my movies. :) I do have some really sweet C-mount B&H - Angenieux primes, though, left over from 16mm days -- the 25mm is f0.95! Hottt.

My thinking is that if I window the camera readout to 1280x720 and drop the frame rate to 24fps, I may be able to reduce the datarate enough to record directly to a laptop with one of those 7200rpm 60gb drives. We shall see. Even at full res and full frame rate, it's only 38 megabytes a second (it's 8 bit).

I think it'll be interesting to have some variety on this forum -- both the SI-1300 and the SMX150...

Oh, I should mention for the sake of comparison, that 36.44 milliseconds (0.03644) is rather close to 1/48 of a second, which is 20.83 milliseconds (0.0208333...).

We shall see how adjustable the exposure time is.

Obin,
Good luck in developing that software. Wicked good stuff man. Obviously I'd have to first own a sensor and frame grabber to even be considered for beta testing. I'm gonna have to come to a decision and get one soon. Then I can freaking contribute.

by the way, the "zippering" that ben pointed out in those images of the thumb pins is exactly what I was trying to explain about the image from your camera once it was projected on a big screen. Of course, it seems that this will not be a problem anymore. You need to get on recompressing us a video with no image doubling and no zippering! Heeyah! (Whip cracks!)

Ben,
Awesome that you're biting the bullet and getting that sensor. Best of luck to you as well. It would really be something if you could get a Smooth 24fps over USB2. Even if you end up stepping down to a resolution just below 1280x720 to get solid capture performance, it may prove well worth it.
If any of those nice lenses you have are anamorphic, you could always consider doing a 960x720 window from the SMX-150C and stretching it back out to 1280x720 in post. Or shoot some cinemascope 1280x480 stuff!

I have adobe after effects and a PC, and since I definitely plan to get one of these cameras, it would be great if you could compile that filter for those of us poor souls who can't 'think different'.

Matthew, I'm definitely going to try some anamorphic stuff! I've got a 16:9 adapter and a 2.35 adapter that I hope to test out in 1280x1024 mode. It'll be very interesting to see how that comes out.

The only thing I'm wrestling with now is finding a laptop that can handle the data. I just ordered the 7200rpm Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 drive from Memorylabs.net for pretty cheap ($189). Now I have to figure out what laptop to put it into. :)

One idea I had was to put the Hitachi in a USB2 enclosure, and bring it and the camera (and the software) along with me to a computer store. There I could actually test out various models. However, this doesn't test the most crucial thing I need to know: the machine's real-world ATA throughput. Once the drive is inside, the performance will probably be very different than running off the USB2. I've seen benchmarks for the Hitachi clock in at around 31 MB/sec sustained, so hopefully it will be able to handle ~21 MB/sec. (1280 * 720 * 24 / 1024 / 1024 = 21.09 MB/sec)

Anybody have any ideas or suggestions on high-performance laptops that weigh 5 pounds or less? I've looked at Dell's Inspirion 600m -- the specs look good, but as a die-hard Mac user, I don't know if I can bring myself to buy something so ugly. I've also looked at the Sony V505 series, but they're a little pricey.

I guess I should just bite the bullet -- even at $1700 for a laptop, I'm still looking at around $3000 for a portable uncompressed HD rig. Not bad if it works! :)

You know, another idea is to not sweat the hard drive throughput so much. If you had 1GB of RAM free, shooting at 21MB/second, you could record to RAM for about 48 seconds. It wouldn't be the most convenient thing in the world, but in all honesty, most of my shots don't last longer than 48 seconds...

Ok we need a good bayer filter..anyone have an a link to somthing good?

Gang, I spoke with a film-out house in NYC, they are saying that most of the work they do is 1080p filmout!! They could do 4k but MOST stuff is 1080p! so that means with the new Rockwell chip at a NATIVE 1080p we can shoot right to film no problem! this is kIckIN it! they also told me the 1280stuff will be very clear and work GREAT for a big theater projection. Filmout only needs 8bit ;) just a FYI for you guys!

1080p
 

Hi everyone this movie was shot @ 1080p
from a famous director .

It will be out august 6th.





http://www.collateral-themovie.com/

what camera?

- wait - SHOT? or you mean filmout @ 1080p

Ok we need a good bayer filter..anyone have an a link to somthing good?
 

Obin, did you check out my results?

Wayne,
about creating camacases, lets email together next time. At the moment i need a working inside.