Thanks for all the replies,

Rob L:
200GB disk for 2 hours sounds pretty good. We would rarely shoot more than 4 hours per day, so a couple 200GB disks wouldn't break the bank, which is nice to hear.

I completely understand that it's in the test phases now, but people seem to be moving rather quickly. My father is an electrical engineer who has helped me homebuild anything from jibs to body mounted steadicams, so this would be a welcome challenge to him and myself. The movie is still very up in the air, and shooting would not happen untill around this time next year, do you think that's a little too wishful thinking still? It's cool if it is, we'll just be forced to make the most of that dreaded SD :( hehe

Laurence:
I hear ya, I'm on a g4 with a 23" cinema display right now at my internship...the thing is most definitely impressive. I can't bring myself to switch completely to using a mac though, and cannot justify owning two expensive rigs at once. I just want to make sure that PC's work well with quicktime editing, 'cause myself I've only worked in Microsoft DV avi's.

Thanks again for your responses
Spencer

ASA?
 

Does anyone have any ideas about how to determine equivalent ISO/ASA for a sensor at various gain settings? I guess I could purchase the ISO standard, but I'm not sure if it would help, since it's meant for film.

I set up a new thread for this if anyone has any ideas.

Thanks!

BTW, Rob,

If you want to keep things RGB instead of YUV, use the 10-bit RGB codec from Blackmagic. You'll have to download the version 4.x version for the HD Pro card, but just install the RGB quicktime component instead of the whole driver package. If you need to, I can email you the codec.That's lossless compression, right?

BTW,

a quick question based on Spencer's questions:

Do you think by November/December we'll be able to start shooting with this system (as a beta-tester)?

I've found all the parts I need to create a very compact, portable, shoulder-mountable camera system, the only thing that is in question is software. I'll probably be using 4 2.5" SATA drives in a RAID 0 config using the dynamic disk (software RAID) options in Windows XP. Also it will have PCI-X, so It can handle the Altasens. A Pentium M at 2.0Ghz will round out the processor power. An Anton Bauer HyTRON 120 will give plenty of power for this system, since as of right now we're hovering around 60W of total power. And instead of a viewfinder I'll use a touchscreen from Xenarc. So if I was to build this, and combind it with the Altasens, do you think that shooting would be possible by December/January (provided the Altasens is out in October)? I'd like to start off by shooting a 10-minute short with this system.

I think this time next year I will have a complete camera system that is easy to use and costs a bunch less then any other HD system out now..not to say that EVERYONE will not have a mpeg2 HDV cam by then but ours will be a professional RIG not some HDV garbage..so yes I think you will have a system by that time ;) I sure hope we do!

BTW i have seen a test of the 3300 RGB from Silicon Imaging..it looks VERY good...NO smear at all guys! I will have one in my hands maybe as early as next week...I will keep everyone posted...we are still working through the software, no big news yet...

Jason I need priceing of realworld micro boards with P M CPU..do you have any that are forsale NOW ? not some future design?

BTW make sure it has DUAL HEAD graphics so we can have a viewfinder AND a touchscreen LCD....

Jason I have a 1024x768 touch screen ready for our camera..it's good but not as bright as a standard non-touch screen...resolution is great for such a tiny screen...what is the res on the one you found?

here is an awesome item:

http://www.grandtec.com/wirelessVGA.htm

for transmission of preview screen from camera to a monitor for follow focus and or a Director monitor...awesome...I will build a custom follow focus system for our camera that will use standard 35mm SLR manual lenses and a wireless focus system like I build for the dvx100...sweet!

Obin, the SBC83810 from Axiomtek is a 5.25" board (5.75"x8" or the size of a 5.25" enclosure/CD-ROM, etc.) with Pentium M, PCI-X, 2 SATA ports, MiniPCI, PC104, USB, VGA, LVDS (dual head graphics), 1GB of RAM, 40-pin and 44-pin IDE connectors, and costs $489. They can ship one to you in a week if you want it.

If you need more SATA ports, you can add the SATA-2R miniPCI card with two more SATA ports from Kontron. That's what I'm planning on doing with a total of 4x2.5" SATA drives from Fujitsu, and then stripping them using Window's built-in software RAID. I'll then also add a 1.8" 20GB drive from Toshiba for the system drive.

Contact David Ramil at ramil@axiomtek.com and tell him I sent you. He's our sales rep since we're both in the Virginia/NC area. They're in California, so be concious of the time differences.

BTW Obin, what are you going to use for a viewfinder? One of those Kopin EVF's? Also I haven't found any small-sized LVDS touchscreens, most of those interfaces are around 15" or more for LVDS. The small 7" touchscreen I've found is the Xenarc, and it's nice because it includes this keyboard emulation utility and right-mouse button emulation, so you can do without a keyboard.

Something tells me that Obin r-e-a-l-l-y wishes that the HDV thing didn't exist ;)
I like using it as a reality checker. Did you guys like the dollar bill shot? ;) Not bad for 1.1 Mpixels!

Personally, I wish that they didn't use decades old mpeg2 compression, but what the heck. It sure beats the web cam DV stuff.
I am looking forward to a 2 Mpixel plus single chip high bit depth camera. I too will set up a camera system to use such an industrial style camera. Just wait for a Taiwanese company to produce something. Like what they did to the flat bed scanner market. Sumix ? Bring it on.
-Les



<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : I think this time next year I will have a complete camera system that is easy to use and costs a bunch less then any other HD system out now..not to say that EVERYONE will not have a mpeg2 HDV cam by then but ours will be a professional RIG not some HDV garbage..so yes I think you will have a system by that time ;) I sure hope we do!

BTW i have seen a test of the 3300 RGB from Silicon Imaging..it looks VERY good...NO smear at all guys! I will have one in my hands maybe as early as next week...I will keep everyone posted...we are still working through the software, no big news yet... -->>>

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : That's lossless compression, right? -->>>

Definitely Jason! I have it running for 8-bit at the moment and
will be testing it for 10/12 bit and how fast it can compress this
weekend. I'm not ease to throw much numbers your way but
it looks like it can do 40% reduction on average. Again this is
for 8 bit files and we'll have to see how well it does in 10/12
bit and how fast it will be in C or in Assembly (hopefully fast
enough for a realtime implementation => it was "designed"
with that in mind, so hopefully that will show as well)

Steve: the reason I'm asking about 2048x1152 is that this will
be a 16:9 frame on the 4:3 sensor. If we can drop some bayer
blocks and lines this shouldn't be too hard to transform to
1920x1080 or 1280x720 in real-time and maintaining the full
field of view. The only question is how good it will look and I
hope to test that out with your original 2048x1536 file this
weekend.

BTW Steve, did you get my e-mail?

It's really hard to estimate a time frame with so many variables, but I think it's very likely. A lot of it depends on how much rework will be required to support the AltaSens camera.
Production quality? Hard to say. It might be suitable for a ten-minute project, but I'd have a "Plan B" if I were you :-)

We'll see how it goes over the next few months.

Well, the 10-minute film could be "on-going" if you know what I mean. With my own camera it doesn't have to be shot in one weekend :-)

What kind of compression Rob?
Arithmetic, Huffman (fixed table, dynamic),RLE, Dictionary variant.....
Could you tell us more?

Good! That's the perfect project to shake out the system.

It's a form of parallel difference/"RLE" compression (for lack of a
better "term"). I'm not too knowledgeble in regards to the math
descriptions and whatnot. I'm preparing to add 10/12 bits
now to see how well it does there and then it's on to converting
it to assembly because it takes around 500ms per frame now
(1280 x 720) which is way too long. It will have to drop to a max
of 30 ms to support 30 fps recording for example.

I've tried to design it for speed (in the way that it works, not
in the implementation yet!) and one pass encoding instead of
dual passes or dictionary/huffman type encoding which would
probably be way too time consuming. We suffer in compression
efficiency, but it is a lot better then I thought it would be. Since
it is not a fixed compression ratio algorithm like DV is it will
fluctuate in size as well depending on content, so we will have
to wait and see how well it will do in the real world.

I will not make it available till it is completely ready, Rob S. will
be testing with me and if it is fast enough it will be implemented
in his camera firmware.

guys, here is what a DOF adaptor can do for miniDV cameras!

check out this shot from a take in the spot I am working on now:

www.dv3productions.com/test_images/DOF shot.jpg
www.dv3productions.com/test_images/DOF shot2.jpg
www.dv3productions.com/test_images/DOF shot3.jpg

tell me that does not look like 16mm film?? ;) I do love this "look" with that shallow DOF!

Les...really I don't care about HDV..like I said I thiink it's total CRAP I have had my hands on it and unless your doing DOC work it stinks bad...have you done any CC work with it? I have and as soon as you try it has HUGE mpeg2 artifacts..so I really don't care...I jsut think its crap that's all ;)

Rob L.,

Will we be able to turn it off (compression) if it's eating too many processor cycles for recording at high-speed (i.e., 48fps)?

I hear yah man. I thought DV was bad, HDV . . . oh no . . .

But ... it's high definition, it must be good! ;-)
I'm the wrong Rob (:-) but I'll answer anyway: Yes.

Hey guys,

Not too sure about this, but can you connect an Ultra 320 drive to an Ultra 160 card? Just curious since the Seagate Savvio looks like the perfect drive for what we need (2.5" 10K drive), but it's U320, and I can only find 68-pin U160 Mini-PCI cards.

But it transfers the same amount of data and concumes more or less the same as the Raptor with its SATA interface, Jason.
Are you sure?


http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/...84,610,00.html

But one's a 2.5" drive in comparison to a 3.5" drive. You can stuff 4 2.5" drives in the same space as one 3.5" drive.

Also Ultra 160 is just as fast as SATA.

Really?
Try this: Show some HDV and some DV to some laypersons on an adequate monitor . Ask *them* which one looks better. Artifacts and all.
Everybody I've shown the stuff to picks the JVC footage.

-Les




<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Scott : But ... it's high definition, it must be good! ;-)
I'm the wrong Rob (:-) but I'll answer anyway: Yes. -->>>

Whoops, I'm nailed. I should have stayed out of that one -- I've never shot HDV :-)

sure HDV "looks" better...but it's not..in the thinking of working with it..YES it is HIgh RES..but it's full of artifacats!! like I said try and CC the stuff..and then you have to recompress it!

anyway this is not about HDV, it's about 4:4:4 10bit single CMOS cams..and they look MUCH better then the NDV format will ever look unless they up the bitrate

I will have the 3300RGB from Silicon Imaging next week...will keep everyone posted!

Very Cool Obin.

BTW, you gotta check for that smearing ;-)

Are you going to be running at the full 1920x1080, or keep back down at 1280x720?

Also has anybody tried doing a sound-sync test, say of a minute or two of footage?

In other words, I'm wondering with these cameras, with sufficient resources, shouldn't you be able to record till you fill up your hard-drive? Are their any indicators when you start or have dropped/missed a frame?

yes I have seen Smear tests Jason and no it does NOT seem to have any smear!!

Hmm,

That's good. Depending on how noisey the chip is then, at 10 bit you should be able to get around 6-7 stops without banding.

BTW, enjoying your hurricane :)

NHC has us under tropical storm warnings right now. Nice wet day . . .

>>Try this: Show some HDV and some DV to some laypersons on an adequate monitor . Ask *them* which one looks better. Artifacts and all.
Everybody I've shown the stuff to picks the JVC footage. <<

Interesting. Have you displayed this on an SD tv though (since most of the population will be using such to view DVDs)? It seems like downconverting would be likely to cause problems and then you're still left with a single chip image. I don't know anything for sure though :).

Gawd! the storm did some damage!! I drove around in it taking pics of stuff thrown around...then I went surfing in the 8 foot + waves! now I am at the local Java bar...uploading the pics for the local newspaper ;) fun fun.. our house still has no power!

Awh man, sorry about the power thing. When Isabel came through here last year, many of us were out of power for two-three weeks! FEMA was passing out gas generators in many neighborhoods, and at night all I could hear for two weeks was the gutteral chatter of generators-the streets smelled like I was riding behind a lawn mower.

Anyways, glad to hear you're all safe,

and oh, great surf! :-)

anyone who has the answer:

what is the bayer pattern of the 1300 and or 3300 Silicon Imaging cameras?

RGGB BGGR GGBR?????
I need to know asap for my programmer

what he is telling me:

"The main problem is that I also do not have the exact Bayer pattern from the camera and I have to code things by feel"

First line: GRGR ...
Second line: BGBG...
...and so on.

thx Rob

Guys:

what is an LVDS connector? and what monitors can connect to that?

it seems to be on some of the small boards that have DUAL head they have DVI AND LVDS....what is it?

Steve how can we have a DVI/VGA OUT from the Silicon Imaging cameras built in? this would solve so many issues for us..that would allow RAW data capture by the computer and a bypass of the video signal that could then be sent out to a monitor and viewfinder..can this be done?

then all the horsepower would be used for image CAPTURE

dunno..just thinking out loud

LVDSSource: http://www.9xmedia.com/Pages/Technology%20-%20LVDS.html

On my recent web journey's I came accross some other stuff:

Ibase makes miniITX board for Transmeta 1GHz chip
Harddrive test
New VIA chipset with dual Pci-Express 16x channels

LVDS

Did I read that Camerlink is based on it, Steve?

The via dual PCIE link is broken.

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : thx Rob
Steve how can we have a DVI/VGA OUT from the Silicon Imaging cameras built in? this would solve so many -->>>

That would be interesting, that VIA MB comming out will have DVI in/out (by the looks of it).

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Scott :
In fact, this weekend, a cousin of mine (actually a cousin-in-law, who oddly enough is also named Rob!) is going -->>>

Maybe you guys should take on a knick name so we can tell you apart, like: Rob, Bob, Tod, sod, or attack of the clones1 clone2 clone3 etc ;-)

Well since I have been feeling a lot better, I have been thinking of the possibility of doing a capture program for USB, Firewire, and Gigabit, as they are going to be the real future of low cost HD. I sketched up a kickass draft menu/control structure spec last night. Simple stuff that gives a strandard front end/controls and backend interface. It allows for all facets, and would allow people to plug in custom programs, hardware and do simple menue/screen files and changes. I am looking at some propper fast embedded OS's to do it on (or Linux, DOS etc) (maybe Apple will have a computer good enough to fit in a small shoulder case, hmm... I just had the ultimate thought on that subject). But I haven't got through the other stuff on the project yet, and I am looking at another one to two thousand pages of print out on my desk to add to the other eight (who would ever think reading was so slow ;), and I am loosing interest in doing it.

But we allready have Rob's, Obins and who ever else capture program (Ben??) (I actually know of at least two more, only one for us). I think I'm getting "stir crazy" like others here, and finding it hard to wait to next year to do something. Are any of you guys going to have anything soon? Are any of you guys doing support for USB, firwireb, Ethernet or HDSDI?

Ahhgggh the waiting, Michael Angelo, when when! ;)

Wayne: I fixed the link, sorry bout that.

Next year was the estimation for having a reliable shooting
product Wayne. Developing products takes a while, especially
if you can't do it fulltime.

The basis for the camera is already quite developed. Rob S.
has it running with disk recording, camera control and color
preview. I'm working on compression and some other efforts
and work has also started on the convert application which
other programmers should be able to extend soon.

We are setting up the whole architecture up as flexible as
possible so it should not be too hard to support GigE Ethernet.

Don't expect USB2/firewire support since basically it just isn't
fast nor scalable enough (it won't drive the higher res chips
for example). At the moment it is cameralink only. I was hoping
to get the camera with a GigE interface so Rob S. can develop
the cameralink driver and I could do the GigE driver. However,
I don't have the cash to get the camera at this point in time.

So we'll have to wait and see how GigE turns out. However, the
most important thing is the whole platform. Once that is in place,
running smoothly and optimized it shouldn't be too hard to add
drivers for other communication channels that are now available
or will be available in the future.

I understand everyone is excited, but as Obin already found it,
you don't develop a complete product in a couple of weeks!

If all goes well you guys should see some actual stuff coming
from Rob S. and myself shortly.

Just did another swing pass the tape issue, no luck yet expensive for the sort of rates we want. But found this reference for 150 Terabytes of video for Lord of the Rings (how much of the budget did they blow on that??, and was that at only 2Mp or 8??)). That is why I wanted to look at tape so you could backup a couple of Terabyte of storage cheaply (compared to buying X number of drives) (The articles still say that tape is half the cost per mb (and 30 year shelf life), but I think that is compared to expensive server disk setuips rather tthan cheaper consumer drives).

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1012597,00.asp

Rob, when can you get to the stage of pro control, capture RAW, and convert, that would be all we need, it looks like your pretty close.

Yes it is part time, but what about sponsorship? With sponsorship we could get money to do it full time or get professional developement. I would love to approach Apple to see if they could support us and maybe do a special ICam edition computer for the camera? Or some other company that gets involved in these sorts of things, as a Public Relations excercise. Imagine the headlines, "Apple makes life possible for low end Indie Film makers, with new Icam based on XXDVinfo alternative HD system." (or something a bit shorter like "Apple saves Indie with Icam";) (actually, I'll copyright that one, if you want it buy me a good HD Raw camera system, ;-)E).

Cameralink, yes, gigabit Ethernet yes, high end cameras, Firewire 1600, USB3 (300-500MB's??), and 10Gigabit Ethernet are coming, so it is worth supporting present versions as a bridge to the new versions. We must remember that Steve I and Sumix started this, and we were going to support their cameras. I think we owe something to them (though they do not come here and talk to us), as they are developing good product on Firewire800 and compressed 3 chip cameras for us. We can assume that at sometime, even upfront, they will be packed, memory buffered (reducing the bandwidth to 1080 24p to 48MB/s independent to the shutter speed) making even USB2.0 possible (with a good driver) so Firewire800 compressed 3 chip is a possibility. All their announced products follow the recommendations I posted prior to the announcement, it is obviouse they are at least following these threads. The truth is camerlink is dead (eventually), you would have to go upto Ultra HD 3 chip to need it (unless I'm wrong on it's capacity). I'll put it this way, if Firewire is more reliable with less cpu overhead than gigabit ethernet, than I would say yes we should look at it, but if Summix drops it in favour of the Gigabit Ethernet/ 10GBe path than I say we shouldn't bother about it. Problem is, did Sumix select Firwire because there is some future broadcast industry universal capture standard we don't know of? Since we don't talk to Sumix (excpet for mainly Ben and Steve I), we don't know what is happening to support them.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob
I understand everyone is excited, but as Obin already found it,you don't develop a complete product in a couple of weeks!

If all goes well you guys should see some actual stuff coming from Rob S. and myself shortly. -->>>

I understand how long it takes, but I know you where ahead on a number of items and have been on it for months (has it been mnonths allready). So I'll be glad to see your stuff shortly.

I am going to look for cheap but nice cameras, to lower the overall system cost to under $2000 (without expensive software or lense). Ohh..nobrainer, I just figured something out, Cinerella should support Firewire 800 (in 12 bit with camera capture), If Sumix has been reading these threads they would have seen us talking about it :) . That means they don't need our software and can develope a more universal system. They simply can roickup and present an entire camera with software package. We are going to have to talk to them. I was going to talk to Cinerella shortly myself anyway.

OK, I have found out more about the wireless version of USB, which maybe the USB3 I saw in the article at the register (or the enquirer) sometime ago.

It is meant to go beyond 400Mb/s (b for bit). Bluetooth is dead meat, yeah. So that rep that replied to my letter in the Australian about USB bluetooth debacle can get n...ted (ohh believe me "the wicked witch is dead", time to get back to Kansas Dorothy).

There is some movement in the wideband comms sector, but unfortunately I closed the other article and haven't got a link here.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1530522,00.asp
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1530755,00.asp
http://www.uwbforum.org/membership/membership.asp

Ahh here we are, and even firewire wireless demonstration (after how many years??)

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1528297,00.asp

Periphials by years end.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1634014,00.asp

Other highspeed (540Mbs IEEE 802.11n) wireless stuff:
http://www.convergedigest.com/WiFi/w...e.asp?ID=11995

Well, looks like you can wireless a few USB/Firewire cameras before we know it.

ok so what displays are on the market now??

I would need an LVDS monitor for this ...ideas?

The board I showed you also had VGA out. It's the Axiomtek SBC83810.

Another leftfield comment.

Over the last couple of days I have been haunted by "Rodriguez's". It seems that every time I pick up a piece of paper, it has the name "Rodriguez" on it. Not the same one mind you, all different ones. Wierd.

Anyway, I was thinking, I wonder if Robert Rodriguez might be interested in supporting a low budget HD project like this. Apparently he is shooting exclusively on digital now so I imagine he would be interested if he had the time. Maybe even throwing some cash in. You never know your luck in the big city.

Anyone know what he shoots on???

Raavin :)