4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

[Obin Olson]

ha! funny!

[Steve Nordhauser]

Hmm, if you think your life is serious, you aren't paying proper attention to the script. Or maybe you need to change your viewpoint for proper perspective.

Just keeping a close eye on reality now, not quite ready to bring it home for dinner.

Rob, if you see success on the software side, we can certainly discuss FPGA-ware.
(see this post is appropriate for this topic).

[Wayne Morellini]

Back again, Rob S I sent you an email yesterday but your email box is full, Rob L could you send your copy to Rob? Thanks.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : On the FPGA/DSP idea, if someone comes up with a person with a full hardware design (schematic) and tested FPGA design for compression, I'll do a run of boards that can be integrated into the cameras. I would have to work out the licensing and all but it is something we would like to add to the cameras but don't have the resources. -->>>

I'll check if my guy is interested too. You can get incircuit reprogrammable silicon. But I doubt that cheap programmable silicon is upto the low powered perforamnce of 25.6 GFLOP @ 10 GFlop per watt performance of the first clearspeed part. I think future clear speed parts could be much faster.

[Rob Lohman]

Wayne (and all others): I have received your e-mail but haven't
read it yet. I will forward it to Rob S.

The reason I haven't read it is that I just had to do an emergency
re-install of my laptop since my Windows went down the tube and
a couple of clients where "screaming", so my time was needed
there. I will read it today, Wayne. Thanks.

[Wayne Morellini]

Thanks, no rush.

Wayne.

[Rob Scott]

Steve Nordhauser wrote:
Rob, if you see success on the software side, we can certainly discuss FPGA-ware.

Yeah, no rush for sure. There is plenty of work ahead on this project.

Wayne Morellini wrote:
Rob S I sent you an email yesterday but your email box is full

Got it, thanks!

----- EDIT ------
Hey guys, I got a C-mount lens and tried it last night without much luck. It's a CCTV lens by Computar, and all I get is a blur. If I try to adjust the back-focus I can get a very clear view of some nasty dirt somewhere, but that's about it.

Did I get the wrong lens or am I doing something else wrong?

[Obin Olson]

weird...Rob is the Iris closed? what about backfocus? did you screw the thing all the way in and out ?

is it a zoom or a standard prime? can you see light if you look with your eye into the back and front of the lens?

[Steve Nordhauser]

Rob on lenses:
There are two lens types that use the same threads- C mount and CS mount. C mount has a 17.526mm flange distance (lens shoulder to sensor) and CS mount has a 12.526mm distance. If you cannot adjust the back focal distance to match the lens at all, you probably have a CS. Since the distance is less, you are stuck or you have a bad lens, but that is unlikely. Even with the cheap lenses, I've only had one with a loose element.

You can check this by holding the lens a couple of inches from a piece of paper, threaded side down. Move it up and down until you get a good image. Measure your height to the mounting shoulder. That is the flange distance. The diameter of the circle will also give you the format (1/4" to 1").

[Rob Scott]

Obin Olson wrote:
is the Iris closed? what about backfocus? did you screw the thing all the way in and out ?

Yup, made sure the iris was open and tried adjusting the backfocus quite a bit.
[quote]is it a zoom or a standard prime? can you see light if you look with your eye into the back and front of the lens?[quote]Standard prime. I can see an image through it, and I can get a blur on the screen.

Steve Nordhauser wrote:
There are two lens types that use the same threads- C mount and CS mount

Nuts, I didn't know that. I think that's the problem -- I just Google'd the lens and it appears to be CS mount. I guess I'm stuck. I guess I'll re-sell it on eBay :-)

---- EDIT -----
OK, I think this is the lens I bought: http://www.rmassa.com/manu/computar.htm listed under V1213. I'm not 100% sure because I'm at work right now and can't check the lens directly. If it's a V1213 it should be compatible, doesn't it? (Aside from being 1" format instead of 0.5" to match the chip.)

---- EDIT #2 -----
OK, the V1213 is not the lens I got. The one listed on EBay was a 12.5mm C-mount lens, and it should have worked. However, what I got shipped was an 8mm CS-mount lens. I'm going to return it.

By removing part of the lens mount, however, I was able to get the lens closer to sensor and get a nearly recognizable picture (though still very blurry) and verify that my simple Bayer filter is working properly. It's not much to look at, but I'll post it if anyone wants to see it.

[Adrian White]

Haven't posted for a while as I have been following the contributions of the more technically knowledgeable people on this forum. I have come up with a possible low cost hd workflow solution. (feel free to respond and pick holes as any feedback is very welcome.)

Hardware:
Camera link camera (silicon imaging or imperx) 1920*1080
frame grabber
Streampix recorder software.
Suitable spec pc with either raid or number of external hard drives.
Use 16mm c mount lenses bolex or sneider (or get c to f mount adaptor and use nikon 35mm?)

1. Use streampix software to record 8bit images from camera and save to hard disk/raid. Save in a file format that is compatible with both streampix and Vegas.
2. Import video files into Vegas Video 5. Here are a list of file formats acceptable, when i last checked, streampix uses at least 3-4 of these:

AC-3 Dolby Digital AC-3**
AIF Macintosh® AIFF
AVI Microsoft® Video for Windows®
BMP Windows® Bitmap
GIF CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format (stills and animated)
JPG Joint Picture Experts Group (JPEG)
MOV Apple® QuickTime® Movie
MP3 MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Audio)
MPG MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Video
OGG Ogg Vorbis
PCA Perfect Clarity Audio™
PNG Portable Network Graphics
PSD Adobe® Photoshop®
RM RealNetworks® RealAudio® 9
RM RealNetworks RealVideo® 9
SWF Macromedia Flash
TGA Targa™ File Format
TIF Tagged Image File Format
W64 Sony Pictures Digital Wave 64™
WAV Microsoft Wave®
WMA Microsoft Windows Media® 9 (Audio)
WMV Microsoft Windows Media 9 (Video)
Still Image Sequences (Script)

Apparently Vegas 5 is resolution independant and can manage frame sizes up to 2048*2048! 1920*1080 is supported with 23.976,24,25,30 fps options.

I dowloaded the trail version toady and will be web hunting for small clip samples to try.

Further info can be found at "sony pictures digital"
Am I missing something here or is this workable, any responce welcome.

P.S. If this is workable, I also found out about a linescan dalsa camerlink camera currently in beta version that has a frame size of 2048*2048 at 30fps but can be reprogrammed to do 24p, would this be practical?

[Obin Olson]

mmm streampix is ok...that is what I use right now but we will have software that is built for video production soon...streampix is for capture but has no support for 1300camera

Basler is high dollar, I think the cheapest is 4 grand

8bit sucks..you don't have much control in post with 8bit

your on the right track..keep it up!

[Steve Nordhauser]

Adrian,
Linescan - one to three linear lines of sensor, usually very long. Think page scanners where you move the sensor or object down the page.

Streampix - for fastest recording RAW data is sent to the HD. If you record in AVI directly, there is a lot of overhead and the max image/frame rate will be a lot less.
Conversion to a standard format is best done as a "pre-post-processing step.

Rob - larger format c mount are not a problem - just a bigger light circle. As you discovered, CS is a problem. You can also remove the backfocus adjustment ring from our camera to gain a few mm of handheld capture.

[Rob Scott]

Steve Nordhauser wrote:
You can also remove the backfocus adjustment ring from our camera to gain a few mm of handheld capture.

Thanks! That's exactly what I did and managed to get an image that was blurry but semi-recognizable. See my blog update with a screen shot. Not pretty, but the best I can do right now. I'll be heading out in the morning, so probably won't be posting again until next week.

Adrian, you're definitely thinking along the same lines as we are. At first we are planning to support

• TIFF (16-bit)
• QuickTime (10-bit codecs)
• OpenEXR
• Cineon

...because they support high bit depths. I'm also keeping my eye on the Matroska container format as an alternative to OGG and AVI.

[Obin Olson]

Jason did you ever get FCP to edit the footage I sent you? I am having very large issues with workflow...does FCP work?

[Obin Olson]

Ok, I need help....i just got a call about shooting a feature, they want to use the HD cam that I have been working on...I would BUT the workflow is BAD...does anyone know of ANY system that can edit this stuff in native HD? downconversion is NOT an option for this project! What about Cinerella on linux? anyone used that? it says it's an HD editor and can use render nodes for realtime HD stuff....ideas?

will I have to suck it up and convert to HDCAM or DVCPROHD? both have heavy compression...:(