Ben, I have no problems with the Angenieux lenses.
How old are they?
My problems are with crappy c-mount lenses wich are not a rare item...

BTW I'm really happy about such good news.
Nice to hear everything is going better. :)

Ben,

It looks like I can put together a fanless PC with 2.0Ghz P4, but I'm not sure that's fast enough. Maybe I can get by fanless with a 2.4Ghz P4?

Sorry for all these questions, but depending on how I think your images turn out, I think I'm gonna go for it-very exciting :-)

Oh, and I don't want to screw up, that would be a costly mistake for me, so this thing has to be useable. So I'm trying to put together a slim PC and then cobble some other stuff together like a touch screen LCD, etc. I've found some LCD's, but they were 640x480, is that too low-res?

One more biggie-what frame-rate is this thing running at exactly. In other words, when we try to sound-sync this thing, it can't be running at weird frame-rates. I'm assuming that since it's an image sequence, I can get it to go at 23.98fps just by telling the computer that's how fast it is, but I don't want video and audio going out of sync, that would be DEATH to the quality of any piece, I don't care how good the images look ;-)

Jason: you can shoot at almost any resolution as long as it fits in 1280x1022. The smaller the frame size, the higher the max frame rate. The frame rate depends on what Mhz the camera is running at. The higher the Mhz, the higher the frame rate, the shorter the exposure, the darker the image. 1280x720 @ 24mhz gives you just about 24fps. At 40mhz, you can get it up around 39, but I've had some issues with random row errors at 40mhz. Although now I don't see them.

I would heavily advise against P4's. I looked into them because Sumix recommends a 1.8ghz P4 or greater, but the P4 is all wrong for this. The Centrino uses less power, so your battery life is better, and at 1.6ghz, it benchmarks the same as a 2-2.4ghz P4. The P4 is hot, power-hungry, and inefficient. So there's no reason to use P4 in a laptop scenario.

Fanless is good but not necessary. My Asus M3000N hasn't kicked on the fan once since I started recording. I think you'd have a hard time finding a fanless Centrino over 1.5ghz. But maybe not -- let me know!

Re: sync. I haven't tested sync sound yet, but the frame rates are definitely not fixed. They vary from shot to shot -- I've been getting 23.5, 23.16, 23.6, etc. Is this a big deal? Absolutely, positively not.

I think it's only going to be possible to reliably record to RAM, which limits you to 30-50 seconds. How far can you go out of sync in 30 seconds? A couple of frames or so. If you average the frame rates and then slowdown/speedup all your audio, you should be able to fudge it without anyone noticing.

We're not shooting Russian Ark here. ;)

One thing that's great about this setup is its size. The 14" laptop, the camera, all my lenses (Juan, that Angenieux is probably 20 or 30 years old, btw) and the cord fit into my normal shoulder bag, and clock in at around 7 pounds. That's about how much is normally in my shoulder bag! It weighs about as much as my GL1 with the anamorphic adapter on it and the 3 hour battery.

Walking around, it feels weird to know that you have an uncompressed HD studio in your bag. It feels good. :)

I learned some valuable tips today. You can mess with the gamma via the hardware LUT, but if you drive it too hard, you'll get banding, even with 10bit. I also found out that the "gain" sliders are 100% software, not hardware. So if you up the gain, you will increase banding. I shot some good footage I won't post, because there's serious banding. However, I did get some good stuff.

Check out this shot of the lake (Computar)

Also, check out the movie! (web res)

Edit: both of these are post color-correction. Coming off the sensor, they're far more washed out.

- ben

Hey Ben,

What are you planning to do with all that moiré?

Other than that, the images look really good.

Jason: I don't know -- one of the pitfalls of high resolution is that you go past Nyquist, and then you start to Moiré. Canon seems to just blur the image until it's not a problem anymore. :) I'm not sure what the best thing for us to do is, but I'm open to suggestions.

I'm coding a plug-in right now to alter the chroma gains individually and shift them around. I'll post the results when they're in.

JVC a good benchmark in sharpness
 

Ben,
The wave pic has some issues with a moire pattern in the pavement. If you flip through the channels, it animates in an interesting way even on the still. A slow pan on that as a movie would have been problematic.

Can you post a pan of some buildings or other vertical objects that would show how the shutter looks? The shot of the folks moving in that one shot looks good, but you really can't tell if they are 'leaning into it' of there is a shutter problem ;-)

I recommend 7 mbps Media 9 for 720P posting, it has very few artifacts and has a good compression ratio. It would also preserve moire problems.

I know what a neat feeling it is to have an HD studio in your bag! I own the little JVC HD10, and it makes very nice images, sad it has crappy exposure controls.

The HD10 had some slight scintillation effects on the 'Eagle Creek' backpack tag, but still, the detail is quite frankly amazing for what the camera is. Here is the short un color corrected wmv video:

http://s95439504.onlinehome.us/park.wmv

Resolution wise, none of the CMOS 1.3 cameras looks anywhere near that sharp. not even close.
It's obvious JVC has a kick ass demosaiker. Plus they are compressing it to a 19 megabit tape stream, all fits in your hand!

It's fun to use the JVC as a poor mans HD benchmark!

-Les

Les, if you read the posts right before yours, you'll see we're well aware of the moiré. In fact, it's a good thing, because it tells us we're at/past Nyquist for the lens/sensor combination. I don't know what strategies the major manufacturers use to combat moire, but my guess is that they blur the image, and then sharpen it.

The HD10 is nice, but it way oversharpens everything, which is a dealbreaker for me. That's part of what gives the HD10 that "video" look. Nothing coming off the Sumix camera looks like video. And I hate to argue with your assertion about sharpness, but I think these CMOS cameras have the upper hand. My camera is rendering 1x1 pixel details. You literally cannot get sharper than that. In fact, you don't want to be that sharp, because that gets you into problems with aliasing and moiré as you brought up.

Check this image out. This is pre-color correction, and one of the images that is impossible to correct fully. I've since learned a lot about how far you can push the on-board 10->8bit downsampler.

-ben

Ben,
Yes, I see we had a burst of posts there! I missed them.

While I think that the HD10 still might be a bit crisp, it doesn't do that much ringing on the edges, like the poor HD1 does. One thing that I have noticed is that people who work a lot with DV footage ( what I call web cam res ) tend to be a little taken back by the HD10, they are not used to seeing every hair on someones head.
As long as there is minimal edge ringing, you can always soften or diffuse shots in post. But on the HD1, the ringing is horrible, nothing can be done. HD10 ain't so bad.
When I first saw frames from my HD10, it reminded me more of scanned film than DV, just sharpness wise, ignoring grain. I'm way more used to seeing scanned film than DV. Maybe it's psychological.
Perhaps we can shoot a standard res chart ( A fresh $1 bill ) and then see what's going on with the various cameras ?


Did you recently look at the footage I posted? Can Mac's play it OK? I'm not sure if Mac people can see it.
Well, back to the garage.... I'm finishing my GG orbitor for DOF tests on the HD10.
-Les

Les,

WM9 footage plays back extremely slow on my system, like 1fps -- but maybe that's because it's a 867mhz G4 Powerbook. That's partially why I'm hesitant to encode to WM9...

- ben

You can't encode to WMV9 on a Mac right now Ben.

BTW, all those moire problems I'm seeing should be fixed by an optical low-pass filter like what we were talking about.

One thing I'm wondering though,

Were's the color??

The color-corrected version of this that I have reminds me of faded film from the 70's! I know there must be some green in those trees!

edit: I was just thinking to myself-yes, this does look like film, just not stuff from the 90's ;-)

BTW, Ben, that clip you showed of people walking around, that seemed to have okay saturation, at least something to work with.

Jason, the color is best pulled out by manipulating the RGB as YCbCr (YUV). That's what my new software chromaPop does -- gives you chroma gains.

You go from this (straight off the camera, no CC)

... to this (same image with levels applied, and then chromaPop)

I had been wondering how to get rich reds and bright colors... I guess it was all hiding in the chroma! :)

chromaPop also lets you apply the change in only the R&B channels -- sometimes you want to keep the G channel pristine, since it's doing the heavy lifting detail-wise.

- ben

I have a vectorscope here though, and that swings image you sent basically had no color info except for cyan. I'm not sure if that was intentional or it was really dark or what, but playing around with the YUV channels isn't going to help that image. Your rotten tomates shot has much more color info, plenty to play with.

I think we need to shoot a MacBeth chart or something to actually get this stuff white-balanced.

Here's the dollar bill shot. Although it's not exactly a completely fresh bill. There are a bunch of artifacts as a result of the moiré happening and my de-Bayering software not knowing what to do with it.

But you can see that "Secretary of the Treasury" is readily legible, as are some of the paper fibers. The camera is almost able to capture the insane grid behind Washington...

I'd love to see the same test shot on the HD10, the SI-1300 and maybe even the DVX-100...

- ben

Like the doller bill, maybe we should compare all the cameras with test charts, and window and 100W bulb streaking, lines and blowouts.

Good to see the images getting better. Could you try the head and shoulders shot again with the same lighting, to see how much the image has improved? How is low light sensitivity now? I am most worried about colour range and sensitivity, it seems too low to play with.

There has been some negatrive talk about the Fillfactory chip and USB in times past, so could I ask some questions to clear things up, your reply would be greatly appreciated.

Have you got the latest version of the chip?

How fast can you run the shutter and not drop below 24FPS in 8 bit and in 10 bit modes.

Can the software gaurantee a frame rate (i.e 24fps, 25fps)? Does sumix know of any front end pro video capture/control software, I have found the cameralink website over at the technical thread but haven't done a extensive search yet.

Obviously there is no pixel packing mode to better use the USB bandwith? Do they have frame buffer memory on the camera (to even out the USB2 bandwidth requirements)?

Real Range and light sensitvity estimates?

Sumix is supposed to be making a range of cameras to suit us, even with compression in the camera head. Have they mentioned anything to you about where ever there will be Gigabit E version, or Gigbit ethernet and USB2 versions with compression?

Thanks for giving me some hope for USB2.

Just done a cinema fov test on the doller of bill shot, and the bayer errors on the still looks acceptable for veiwing.

<<<-- Originally posted by Les Dit : Ben,
Resolution wise, none of the CMOS 1.3 cameras looks anywhere near that sharp. not even close.
It's obvious JVC has a kick ass demosaiker.
-Les -->>>

Thats a worry, the HD10 only has around 850K pixel actual resolution.

Thanks again

Wayne.

Obin

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : .if you have a hotspot that is close to 100% it will have the smear across the whole image -->>>

The smearing problem, could that be from using a faster lense supplying a greater range and more energy to the pixels.

Steve wrote some stuff about adjusting the camera settings to reduce problems a little while ago.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Jason on smearing:
That smearing with oversaturated pixels is a Micron problem (all Micron 1.3Mpix cameras will have it). Definitely not the lenses. I bugged them about it and they said run slower, which negates what we want to do about rolling shutter. I was told (but haven't seen) that the 3.2Mpix Micron doesn't do that as much - different pixel architecture. The 3.2Mpix should be able to do both 720p and 1920x1080@24fps, 10 bit. If Obin and Rob want to upgrade in about a month I'll work it out with them. The SI-3300 will have less sensitivity though.
-->>>

So the next version is an improvement.

For people asking where Steve is:

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Hey gang, I'm going to be gone starting this evening through Sunday. Doing a camping folk festival - not even taking a computer, cell phone or video camera. Hopefully the 1920HD will be at the FG company by then, you guys will conclude that a system can be built the size of a cell phone and someone finds all the software under their pillow. That's my fantasy and I'm sticking to it until a better one comes along. -->>>
On the 21st, that was a lot of pages ago ;) So he should be back soon.

Steve, I have an idea for this.

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn : You don't understand me.I mean CONCENTRATE (put a lens between the SLR and the sensor), not WASTE.

Anyway you don't like what I'm saying :(

Please if someone here could explain him what I'm trying to say, it would be nice :) -->>>

My version doesn't have GG.

Please don't get offended Ben, if I repeat something you allready know, I don't know what you know, and it is usefull to repeat things for clarity and for the other readers.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...hreadid=22715&
We face the same problems as detachable XL1s lense people face:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...down+the+image

Have agood week. I eagerly wait for your next camera releases Steve.

Ben,
If your lens is 30 years old or up, sorry to hear that.
Although it would be a really good lens, it would give some color distortions and artifacts under certain situation.This is just because it lacks a modern coating treatment.If it is 20 years old I´m sure it is fine.
But no problem it is what you got. :)

The tomatos shot is nice but has unbalanced color.Look at the bright zone left on the tomato.It is yellow/green that is why you don´t get a nice red.

Now that you work in YUV colorspace, there is a simple method to apply a lowpass filter on colors.
Take U and V planes, downsize to 640x360 and upsize again to 1280x720 using bicubic or Lanczos. (Bicubic sharpens or not depending on internal coefficients, Lanczos always sharpens)

Test it.I can´t send you an image now.

I'm curious to know why these cameras, if they're operating at a certain frequency, can't keep a consistent frame-rate.

Ben, you were saying that your frame rates were all over the place. I was doing some math, and if you're varying by more than just a little bit, like .2 or .3 fps, you're going to be out of sync very fast-half a frame to a whole frame every second. I was planning on getting 2GB of RAM for 90 seconds of recording time, but at that rate, I'll be way out of sync by the end of 90 seconds, anywhere from 2-4 seconds from the frame rate flucuations you described!!

So if everything here is computer controlled, how come the fluctuating frame-rates? Is there a way to get a timing circuit on the camera that can lock the frame-sync? Anything else seems to spell big trouble for my projects which depend on sound-sync.

BTW, pitch-shifting audio when you're trying to edit mixed takes is an absolute nightmare, and any other editor except for myself on my own projects would throw the material back in my face! :-)

hey ben,
how do quick pans look with the camera? could we maybe see a clip?

Ben,
Have you tried to see what kind of framerate consistency you can get at lower resolutions? For example, have you tried 720x480 @24fps to see if the framerate still ends up being slightly different everytime you capture.
How many different computers have you tried capturing to? Does the camera get its power from the USB2.0 port?
Ultimately, I don't think the slightly erratic framerates are that big of a problem unless you plan on using really long takes (90 seconds) without any audio work. As an editor, I wouldn't shy away from mixed takes with such incrementally small differences in framerates. Even Adobe Audition has robust enough "time-stretching" filters to take care of the job these days.
I wouldn't suggest the camera rig for a long form documentary... but for cinema... I'm sure I don't need to say much more than ADR and Foley.

I'm wondering if sync is coming from the USB port, or if it's coming from the Camera itself. If so, can you plug in a timing circuit to the external sync connector on the camera and run the camera in "snapshot" mode? That should get good sync with a crystal timing circuit.

You guys are freaking out about the sync issue. It's a 90 second take, tops. Since it's double system, you'll have to line the clapper up with the audio anyway -- it's not too much more trouble to stretch it to fit a little. Like I mentioned before, it only varies by a small amount each time. Juan, your math is suspect. If it varies .2fps, how could you go out of sync by a whole frame in 1 second? The difference is .2frames.

The camera is driven over USB2 -- that's the only cable. It gets its power from the USB2 bus (although it needs very very little power -- it can actually run over USB1, even if the USB1 can't keep up with the data). The sync probably varies because the camera depends on the computer to tell it to take another frame. The computer doesn't always have the same taskload, so it will vary.

Wayne, interesting stuff on the 35mm adapter. Here's my question to Juan: how is using this setup better than C-mount lenses? This setup requires another piece of glass -- a "relay" lens -- of questionable optical merit. Any additional piece of glass between the film plane and the subject is "bad." So what makes you think that this would be better? Do you just loooooove SLR lenses? They're not carved out of god, man.

Like I said, I'm not sure how old the Angenieux is, but it's clean, smooth, and multicoated.

Eric, quick pans do indeed show some rolling shutter-ness. It doesn't bother me, but I'm not as picky as some people on this board...

@Juan: "The tomatos shot is nice but has unbalanced color.Look at the bright zone left on the tomato.It is yellow/green that is why you don´t get a nice red."

Case in point. This is not the Alatasens. It's an 8 bit camera. Keep that in mind.

- ben

Ben,
Well it seems that no matter what I tell you, everything I say to you sounds wrong.
Anyway do as you like.This is not a competition.I'm telling you some things I've found through my years of experience working at feature films and at the post-production industry.
Within my 5 years of work to develop a Film Recorder system, I've researched many things and discover that some usual things are not as believed (at least not always).
My bussiness partner has around 25 years of experience as DP.He has made more than 5,000 commercials from here and the rest of the world, and agrees with me in what I'm saying.
If you say your Angenieux lens 30 years old is better than, for example, a 10 years old Pentax, its OK to me but I ought to tell you no.
I say SLR lenses cause they are cheap, nothing else, if you want to buy a $10,000 PL lens good for you.
Do you know what's the difference between a normal Karl Zeiss and the Ultra Prime lenses?

What do you think about the low pass method I posted before?

I don't understand what's the relation between a bad white balance and an Altasens chip.

Where did you get that a lens between a lens and the sensor is "Bad"?

Do you know how many lenses a Good angular lens have?
Do you know how much light do you loose because of that extra lens?

As I have started discussing in the technical thread, Steve was talking about USB requiring too much processing power and being unreliable

(thanks Intel, why didn't you just adopt a version of Firewire, ohhh what "Apple/TI product", rather than "Intel Microsoft product" how pathertic, thanks for making our lives a nightmare).

Have a look at cpu usage, it might be possible that USB itself has timing problems, or it is maxing out cpu time. You could work around it, but it will need specialist USB drivers (and system setup) like Steve does with GigbitE (ask Sumix). I have posted some links over at the technical thread.

silly, thought
 

@ Ben

why not make they priority set to the highest and shutdown all other programs/ internet connections etc..

and have a "clean" defragemented harddrive?

(I still think the solid state hard drives are the way to go)

Also @ Ben once you have your captured file (AVI?), is it ready to play? i'm a bit confused with all these bayer stuff that i've read earlier,

i'm thinking of getting this cmos camera:

http://www.compumodules.com/image-pr...S-camera.shtml

FINAL QUESTION:

If i was too buy the above camera (CMOS ULTIMA II, COLOUR 1.3 MEGAPIXEL USB2)

And lens + USB cable, what software will i need to start capturing video
P.S i have a 2.6GHz Toshiba laptop (i hope its fast enough)

Juan, I'm just saying that it's best to use a lens that was designed for your sensor size. Can you find me a 25mm SLR lens at f0.95? How about an 8mm at f1.4?

Jason and I are looking into physical low-pass filters to deal with the moiré -- I'll keep people posted on that.

@Juan: "I don't understand what's the relation between a bad white balance and an Altasens chip."

Okay -- let me explain it. This is an 8 bit camera. The RGB gains are software, at 8bit (not hardware at 10bit). This means there's no way to adjust the color in hardware. Which means that in order to white balance, you need to adjust the image with software. With 8bits, this is simply not possible. When you shoot indoors, you get a yellow-orange image. If you don't want that, you must use an #80 blue filter, because that's the easiest way to color correct the shot.

The Altasens will run at 10 or 12 bit, giving you a bit more flexibility to white balance with software.

That is the relationship between bad white balance and the Altasens.

@Wayne: "You could work around it, but it will need specialist USB drivers (and system setup) like Steve does with GigbitE (ask Sumix)."

Or we need a FW800 camera, like Sumix may be developing...

@Anhar: "why not make they priority set to the highest and shutdown all other programs/ internet connections etc.."

This is a dedicated machine. There are no other programs ever running.

"and have a "clean" defragemented harddrive?"

I'm recording to RAM.

"Also @ Ben once you have your captured file (AVI?), is it ready to play?"

No -- it captures RAW video files, and then their software converts it to a lossless AVI.

"i'm thinking of getting this cmos camera:"

That's the same exact sensor (looks like the same exact camera) as the Sumix 150c. I think Sumix developed the 150c, so they must be reselling it to other companies...

- ben

<<<-- Originally posted by Ben Syverson : @Wayne: "You could work around it, but it will need specialist USB drivers (and system setup) like Steve does with GigbitE (ask Sumix)."

Or we need a FW800 camera, like Sumix may be developing...
-->>>

well tell me more ;), I'm sick of waiting for a HD camera (I have been waiting since before the HD10 for a better camera that will do 25fps for PAL HD markets).

<<<-- Originally posted by Anhar Miah : @ Ben

why not make they priority set to the highest and shutdown all other programs/ internet connections etc..

and have a "clean" defragemented harddrive?
And lens + USB cable, what software will i need to start capturing video
P.S i have a 2.6GHz Toshiba laptop (i hope its fast enough) -->>>

Actually you can make a difference setting up the computer, as windows runs a lot of service programs in the background (aswell as thrid party anti-virus, secuirity, firewalls, and unistaller monitors). These play havoc with smooth performance, every time they task switch is a big hit. I have posted links to optimisation guides (for realtime processing) on the technical thread, I think one site has links to setups for different processing applications.

ugh, me too.

It seems like with every camera out there that has some promise there's always some other compromises!

.2*90 frames = 18 frames

.5*90 frames = 45 frames

1*90 frames = 90 frames

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse here, but I did want to point out that the frame rate that a recorder will be running at is 23.98 or 24fps.

I noticed in your frame rates that you were off by almost 1fps in some cases. At the end of 90 seconds that's more than 3 seconds off. Very noticeable.

I'm not trying to spaz out with this issue, but it is an issue, and there must be ways to deal with it. And again, my main wonder/puzzlement is that if this is a computer with clocks, etc. how come there is no consistent frame-rate?

Ben and Juan. About the 35mm adaptor benefits and problems.

From what I've been told the only benefits are: GG 35mm adapter, cinematic/arty shallow DOF, and softening of the image with far better optical properties than standard consumer video lense (cheap secondhand). The problem is that yuou ussually loose 1 to 2 stops of light from using the projection plane, but they are working on diffferent methords that might gain (I'll stop there, because last time I said this I got a long thread full of irrate people not understanding what was being said arguijng seimantics?? arguing with people that actually knew what I was talking about).

I only suggested the version without the GG to increase the image brightness in low light situations, using a seperate 35mm lense. As far as I can figure out the aperature ratio tells you how well lit every piont is over a set area. 35mm has, 4 times more area than 2/3"???, so concentrating a good F1.0 slr lense onto 2/3' chip (though yours is 1/2") would give two stops more light than a F1 2/3" lense. Is that right?

Now what Ben has said about putting a lense inbetween producing problems (I think they are discovering that over at the adaptor threads, but I haven't been keeping up with them) is true. It increases variouse chroma abbervations etc, but I think they are using achromatics?? (dual lense type lenses) to correct this. So you can get your cake and eat it. Then again, I am not an optics or production expert.

Thanks

Wayne.

Wayne,
Achromatic or Apochromatic.They are design to avoid color aberrations.In no way anyone can put a single lens system, because this (as a magnifier or Lupa) will ruin the image.
The light transmission for a good quality lens is around 98%.So you just loose 2%.
No problems here about resolution cause they usually resolve more than 200 lp this days.

Ben, after tweaking carefully the Dollar image, to white balance it I needed to increase Blue 30%
The same happens with the Tomato shoot.

Is this a proper workflow?
 

Hey guys. I'm very elementary at this and I realize you guys aren't! So , if you have a chance, please let me know if this is good and proper. I'm ready to try this and was wondering if there is anything I'm missing here. Here are the links for the goods...

Camera...
http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlineca...=2490&search=1

Lens-to-body adapter for Canon EF lenses...
http://www.birger.com/html/ef232_home.htm

Hard drive for CameraLink connection...
http://www.leutron.com/english/product/lvmpc_d.htm

Now what am I missing? Something to view it with! Or, should I just capture to a laptop?

What's missing here to make this work?

How bad is the rolling shutter? I know you said not bad, but I'm wondering at 1/48th of a second how it compares to Obin's camera.

Ben, Jason:

I have a CC version of the Dollar image with almost all the color moire removed.Can any of you post it?

yah, email it me at jrod@mindspring.com

Ohh, you are good. I can't really help you, (Obin, Rob, Jason, Ben and Jaun could) but thanks. I can't keep up with all this research, but in the other technical thread I've posted links to cameralink home pages products registery. If you, or somebody else, would like to go through them looking for good cameras, cheap frame grabbers, and good pro video control/caputre software and report back to us it will be helpful for us and you.

So far this is what is happening, two groups are trying to work on provide/cinema freindly software to link any cameralink camera to any codec to any popular supported NLE. It's not finshed, until it is we can't select the minium configuration for certain, or say exactly which system is best for what level of aquisition (but you can allways get something that is more powerfull than needed). This is because continouse optimisations of the software will significantly boost it's performance.

We also are not really selecting the best hardware peices until the new cameras are comming.

A few people are going to try a FPGA compresion accelerator, and seperate codecs are being developed/adapted.


I've got a request, we need volunteers to find suitable components for the system:

We really need to pick up our game. I have done a load of research here, a number of others have too. But it is too difficult to do everything, and I have had to leave a lot of things undone. Steve N has suggested this before, and if you think I post too much, that is because I do lots of research compared to most, and have a lot of technical knowledge because I have looked in to making variouse products in the past. I would like to spend time on other aspects of the project, and other things. I would like volunteers from people who aren't allready doing a lot on the project. Anybody interested?

What we need:

• Pro video capture/control software for the cameralink, usb2.0 and gigabit cameralink cameras.
  Cheap capture cards.
  Good cameras.
  The fastest hard drives raid or normal ata/sata, 3.5 or laptop.
  The best/cheapest motherboards, big, small, or low powered for the capture interfaces above.
  The best/cheapest small computers and laptops.
  The best/cheapest system workflow solutions.
  The best/cheapest power supply/battery options
  The best/cheapest sound options.
  The best/cheapest case options.
  The best cheapest monitors.
  The best/cheapest software/codecs.
  Facts and figure calculations for target performance (advanced).
  Remote controlled (robotic) lense system and camera mounts.
  etc.

Collect the links and information and post to the technical thread and the wiki. A good place to start is all previouse posts and links here, in the viper thread, in the homemade camera design thread, fpga thread and techncial and general threads.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=28781
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=28779

This would require objective scientific investigation and evaluation of the options, specifications, stats and performance, and would suit technical people or engineers. It needs to be a systematic, logical "checklist" investigation down every avenue and option. If you can self organise, and group organise to divide up the work, it would help.


Thanks

Wayne.

Hey Obin and Steve,

I read this over on the Micron site:

So Obin, how come you're getting smear with your sensor?

my chip does not have this feature??
best guess..sorry ;)

my chip looks like a $20 cmos security camera when you get a really hot spot in the frame..like try shooting a scene with a lamp in the frame :(

uggghhh....maybe Steve will ask Micron about this issue

Here\'s what I\'m talking about Obin.

This is one of your original images, there\'s no smear even though you have a very hot image in the BK.

http://home.mindspring.com/~jrod/frame2.jpg

Maybe playing around with the gains screwed things up? I just remember your earlier images looking pretty good-no streaking.

well have you pushed that a bit?

gain is worse..yes

is this the camera with the altasens chip that everyone is talking about?... and is it really less then $2000? when will it be available? will it record directly to computer?... for the love of god... i need answers.

http://videosystems.com/mag/video_shoot_tools_26/