looks like it's going to cost $500 for 30min of disk storage with the new SATA Raptor from WD $250 each..I am thinking of using the standard 3.5 type enclosure that fits into a 5.25 bay on a server. Mount the 2 disk drives in that and fit the whole thing with a plastic molded case. This will give me hot-swapp of drives while shooting. like a roll of film. I can install CIneLink on a laptop and plug the full drives into the laptop via SATA PCMCIA card and do the convert into CineForm 10bit files.

For post all I have to do is connect the drives to the videoserver load all footage into the raid and edit with any machine setup with Premiere PRO and CineFOrm codec and do all color work in AFterEffects with the CineForm stuff over the network

If you step down to 1280x720, you can overcrank to 72fps with the GigE interface-that should be plenty of speed for slow-motion.

I guess I you'd want to use a laptop for recording, you'd be limited to USB, firewire or GigE connections. That means 24p1080 at 12-bit is not an option.

I'm not seeing the clear advantage of using a laptop yet. You'd have a built-in TFT, and battery power. But you won't get a full day of shooting out of 2 batteries, so you'll need more laptop batteries (expensive).

Not sure If powering two Raptors from a laptop is an option.

Maybe I'm overlooking the obvious, but building a shuttle-size system with a PCI-X bus, and a couple of built-in drives on a SATA RAID seems like a more powerful (and possibly even less expensive) route. Use a PCI-X cameralink framegrabber to record raw data. If Rob L would get the lossless realtime compresssion of raw data going, it could save valuable drive space. In between takes or during set changes it's no problem to back up to an external firewiredrive for safety issues.

Bring two car batteries on a cart, and hook those up to the machine, and you might be able to run a full day of recording on car batteries.

What's the maximum length of the cameralink cable?

Barend

powerstrip
 

hi everyone this is a link to a free utility that will allow us to watch these videos in beautiful 1080p . we have been using this on our crt projectors

http://entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

Hey Obin,

If you get a chance, can you do a new outdoor test like the one you did before with fence (outside your office) that had some whip-pans in it to see what the rolling shutter artifacts are like at the higher clock speed?

Indeed I will Jason as soon as I can get the system outside for testing. I have the camera running on our CGI box now because it is the fastest box in the office but it can't be taken outside ;)

As soon as I get a new microatx board and Raptor drives I will go out side and shoot 12bit files!

Barend I am NOT using a laptop for recording..ONLY after the drives are full then I would hook up the drives on the laptop and CONVERT the raw files to CIneForm 10bit codec. This would be the image development part of shooting RAW.

Marin, yes I agree, I think apart from buffered compressed signal, Gige overclocking is our only cheap option to get to 30fps 1080p 12 bit, maybe some of the technical engineers here would like to comment on the idea, it definetly would solve quiet a few problems in the very short term? I would still like to hear anybody say dual Gige or Firewire800 though (after the first port the second would be cheap, but ever so valuable).

<<<-- Originally posted by Barend Onneweer : I guess I you'd want to use a laptop for recording, you'd be limited to USB, firewire or GigE connections. That means 24p1080 at 12-bit is not an option. -->>>

There are people here that want to do 720p on laptop, others want portable PC 1080 based solution. There is flexibility to have a number of solutions for each of us.

Gigabit: why overclocking? 1920x1080x24 bit @ 12 bits per pixel (average since there is a frame buffer at the interface and data packing) is 75MB/sec. At 30fps it is 94MB/sec. You can transfer data up to 100MB/sec. This is the derated and tested number for continuous transfer - Like the 100MB/sec number for PCI-32. Spec is 1gigabit/sec, tested and continuous is 800Mb/sec.

Camera link is up to 10m without buffers or conversion to fiber.

Yeah, good point, sorry I didn't do the calculation for 30fps, so used to cameralink bloat problems I didn't think of it that way, good. Now lets get down to brass tacks, that many will disagree with but still it is the standard. Cinema camera companies are going 6MP for single chip bayer, and video companies have done three chip, and a number of people have pionted out the need for slow motion effects, let alone shooting at 48fps, and 60fps, which I know some people want to do for digital cinema. So there is still a need, with the existing cameras that need is for slow motion and dropping frames for rolling shutter stuff, and eventually in time we will hopefully go to at least 16bits per pixel (well thats the way the pixel crumbles, into a mountain). So for some of us it is still rather cool to do the overclocking. esoecially if it could allow slow motion effects (to main memory), 8MP or three chip. Sorry for the missunderstanding. For PCI overclocking I suppose that interests the software writers the most.

I would like to point out the annoucement of the professional version of the Sony HDV camera (mentions Cineform too) on camcorderinfo. Nice camera, big talk, more competition for us.

Wayne:
One of the advantages of gigabit is that it is a standard. It works with a variety of hardware and we provide a set of fast drivers. You would have to overclock both ends. For the future, I would rather see: 10gigabit (it is on the horizon, not sure how long before it is cheap) or lossless or minimally lossless at the camera head before the interface. If you can do 2x compression with RLE, that will be much more effective than overclocking - except that it has to be uncompressed for preview.

Yeah, I was meaning with lossless as well, but until then we only got the interface. I also meant to overclock at both ends, it would have to be done on specific target systems (meaning if you want it you have to copy a system allready worked out for a particular mainboard camera, no big fuss here where quality matters more than flexibility). For decompression to preview many graphic systems have decompression hardware that is much more capabile at decompression than compression, so we might not loose much there. So Steve how possible. feasable and practical do you think it is to overclock a short Gige interface, rather than buy 64bit frame grabber? Could we ever possibly double the speed for some real slow mo.

I agree that it looks like your Gige cameras will be the cinema camera chioce for normal usage.

I was just going to re-edit the last post to add this. About the new Sony HDV camera, the normal one has 18db gain, and the pro one has 36db gain. But the most interesting feature for us is that it has dual gamma slopes, one for shadows, and one for the rest. Sounds like a artificial dual slope feature, maybe it would be good to implement something like this. You mentioned the possibility of doing one frame slow and one frame quick to emulate dual slope (with some carefull capture software alligning on the fly). If you combined this with dual gamma curves (as above), 8 bits is going to fly, and 10-bits should fly and be colour correctable, possibly competing with 12bits+ straight.

Now another thing that comes to mind is that I have read a book (maybe article) that says research identified over 355,000 colours distinguishabvle to the human eye (thats 19bits intotal, TV does around 20bits) For those who don't know, that's because vision is non linear (hence why we do 24bit pluss in toital lineraly to cover all colours bases, gamma curves are only a closer approximation, but I imagine no where near exact). So I was wondering, if the output of the camera was made into a colour space that suited the human eye, plus some more for colourisation and editing we end up with no more than 24bits, or on average 8 bits per pixel). Is such a scheme feasable or advisable?

Speaking of Gige, I just found this:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06...e_uwb_roadmap/

1Gb/s wireless. Hopefully they will get around to piggybacking gige on it like they are USB2.0 and Firewire.

HDV is NOT our competition! That stuff looks like complete garbage and utter crap, especially when it's in motion (if a film-look is what you're after and not a third-generation satellite feed "look").

I think the only hope for HDV will be the Sony and JVC professional offerings in 3-chip camcorders at 50 and 75Mb/s, this 19Mb/s stuff is a total no-go for me.

Gige Ethernet
 

I have found a rather small board with 10 !!! Gige Ports. I've found a SBC with Intel chips for a S ata Array, so no need to pass via PCI and Gige on board. all about 400 bucks

I have o Linux a programm that works with S ata or SCSI 320 up to 2 Gige Input ports as a NAS . In a Sniffer mode it writes all that comes like with the Steve cam , in fact it is a peer to peer network, direkt to the array. Just have to test it some day. I only need a redhat cheap not a fairly old one Redhat in France is fro 386 EURO about 400$ up to 2396 EURO

There is a still cam out that does quite 20 FPS in VGA, I bet this Chip could be do more it is only politics, it's a 8 M chip.

going wild again

my Swiis friend stold me ,amateur radio group, the did transmit with 10 Ghz a Pal stream from Spain via the Med sea to Italy about 1564 km. I do guess we need only about 1 km ???????

Ronald, what motherboard did you find, and could you post a link?

It's there

Pentium M Processor with Intel E7501 Chipset and Gigabit (10/100/1000) & Four 10/100 LAN; SafeXcel 184x Co-Processor; CompactFlash Socket; Up to 8 GB DDR RAM

http://www.win-ent.com/IP-06049.htm

its a board that goes in GIGE routers

have fun

Ben keep it tuned to this channel I will be broadcasting news updates very soon..don't go ..yet...

Jason, you miss the piont, I did not say they were a very competitive recording format as far as competition goes (though if Jaun puts RAW filmstream on it that's another matter) but I am talking about for price and chip level performance (admittedly not in resolution). Also, that is what many videographers and a number of Indies will consider instead of us just for the convience and name brand. Besides I think they are probably going to sell these by the truckloads again, just like they did with the pro version of he vx1000. So if we can beat them on these things as well we beat "Everybody" by the truck load, otherwise we are just stuck with a few thousand indies, maybe tens of thousands. Just food for thought. So if we just look at optical performance/quality of images pulled we can agree. Besides don't get distracted by that, I imagine the thing about the dual slope, dual gamma curve is more up your alley, and much more practical. Better to concentrate on practical aspects, and leave the rest as comment.

Ben, the thread is not a farce, we have even got two camera systems here close to market. Though if people took it more seriously, like engineers, you could consider it so.

Ronald, your a legend, most here complains but won't put in the effort to see the forest. But still I think it has 10*GigE ports rather than 10-GigE port.

Drake, when are you releasing your camera?

Dear Wayne

fine a bit of history, 6 yaers ago with some friends of Hawaii and US and well known research labs in the mainland we finally patented after 10 years work our new way to make a lowcost high output photovoltaic cell. We got no money in,.....much fame !!

Shell took the plunge , went into mass production, our layout was for small production units just were the need is, third world and so. World bank told us... NO,, there are Shell and others.!! Finally Shell and others pumped millions in to convert our process to mass production, anyway, the cells are now cheaper but not more efficient.

We still need some 5 Millions to start the first small production units can be transported anywhere with two 40 foot containers.
But even in Africa they do love Shell !! They have to !!.

This was the history of long discussions with he big ones. The will be fascinated, take the idea, and will produce scrap from it as there are politics. Go in NOW hear this. I did ask what DAW to take for live recording. The only answer was YOU can take any. No way, to record more than 8 traks there is maybe Nuendo, first written to run on SGI Octane, As Octane was only 20 bit Audio and not 24 bits ...who will hear this ??

It was never released on SGI. Windows has a latency problem, there is no Kenel you can patch like in Linux. The Windows multimeda Fantasy is scrap, not to use for serious work. Big mixing desks rulez that is politics, Big cameras rulez that is professional.

Stay with 10.000 Indies like Kinetta will do, or Aaton does with his famous S16 why not, going masss production. Take this Maya on my 5 year old bi pro octane with the MXE bords still roks, no Nvidia can do !!

This maybe a bit technical for most people, just skip to end:
 

Hi

Having hard time to follow, but:

Solar interesting, several years ago Japanese company (big like Canon) announce way to make thin flexible plastic Solar panel cheap as chips (like normal plastic role). They predicted that the process could go to 60% efficeincy, and was around 30% to start, I think then, but where is it, dissapeared. Since then two other high efficency cheap technologies announced, highest around 70% efficency (beats claurifil??) but still where are they? I say if Shell wants to take over and give you money let them, because small company soon swamped by cheap 30-70% technologies. Also we have 20 foot solar containers made here in Australia, supplying outback homes with solar power, maybe they would be good to partner with for production. These Oil companies not to bright, they want to continue to pump every last drop of oil out of he ground, but what then, price goes up, solar patents reach life and everybody else manuafctures and takes market, then oil suddenly runs out and oil companies start going broke ?? Instead, even with Solar power there is a need for oil in modern society, as oil is running out they should stretch out profits from oil reserves, by making money on alternative energy before petents run out, and selling oil at high price for longer. When oil runs out they still sell alterntive energy ;) . But people aren't bright, they see many trees to knock down but not the forest.

Anyway back to cameras. Politics I hear you, I know the stories. But even here "early" politics dictate cumbersome hard to use cameras, and workflows :( for cinema users only. I say it does not cost much to make cameras and workflow as freindly as HDV Sony, then nobody needs to buy HDV Sony, you switch your camera to from Cinema mode to ENG mode and dump 50Mb's+ ENG standard codec video file straight to broadcaster, don't even need to save to tape. Little extra care in designing system makes camera twice as good and easy, and ten times more popular, then much cheaper. But forget live compression for the moment and tape, can all be done after editing/filming anyway, what we need is good user interface (one mode for Cinema, one for ENG, one for Doco) and good results (like dual slope dual gamma curve idea), now most people are very happy. Without numbers system will allways be expensive because of high fixed and variable costs.

I'm a bit confused on the multi-track recording, but Windows has many realtime problems, and third party developers sell realtime OS core replacements for Windows. MS upgraded the Windows core many times, now they use realtime Tron Operating System (Japanese official Realtiem OS) task switching in ".net" to solve problems (where ever actually solved I do not know). With careful OS/System configuration 8 track should now be possible, I give Rob links to configuration sites. But using "any door" applies to being able to use the equipment you personally want top use, as good as you want.

Maybe Windows will overcome Multimedia fantasy, but probably with many times more computer power than realtime OS needs.

The secret is to have it simple and flexible enough to suite anybodies budget, taste and work environment. Then no arguments, everybody is happy, they just configure it to suite their politics.

Dear Wayne
Voila you got it. my three times warp brain dump *2twbd* Linux with kernel 2.6.7 can do hibernation the swap memory is saved to disk and you can patch it to low latency and preemtive as well....so for sound it can go more than 8 traks and for video.....

Take a single board computer in the form factor of a nvidea graphics card, there is a Gige port, a Xeon and hardware Intel Sata raid support that will do one altasens as the pci bus connector is only the power supply. three Altasens we take three, on each a Linux application is running witing the data data to disk so we have no PCI bus Problem for the data, our Cam would have trhee Gige out no need for cameralink or HDSDI if we have 4 Altasens we woud have 4 CPU board and alltogeher 16 dik same number as Kinetta

Yes, that is right, you can up the board and the number of cameras. I often only consider a one camera job, but something like the movie "Bamboozoled" (you need to see that one, for how good MiniDV really is) he used upto 13 cameras etc. This is very good, but boy the storage requirments ;) . But I am not going to get into a Linux only debate here (the Mac people waiting for theirs will lynch me, not to mention the Windows people) let them do what they want in the end one OS computer system will be defficent and one will be the best. But the question begs us, if we are just using the camera for capture software, then why not go for Linux instead of Embbeded XP (thats provided we get drivers for GigE which must be somewhere for Linux servers). I don't raise this issue because I want to switch the camera over to field editing functions, wordprocessor etc when not shooting, and heroinwarrior never wrote back to me.

You know another good system is the BEOS technology used as the basis of the new Palm OS6. Imagine if we had ports to raw data through that ? Actually think about it, we should be able to do SD RAW, veiwfinder with .camera on the back, use a electronic lense and some finger controls and you got it. I am not advocating that here, but nice thought food.

Indeed sounds cool Wayne. wel no OS battlefield no religion hm I'm just downloading and try to compile, may take some time
an LINUX NAS tool, what it does, well exact the same as the embedded XP in the Lacie Ethnernet disk The lacie has Gige E and is huge

The lInux tool will support up to two GIG E and an array of SATA or what you like and gratuit..GNU Well it needs some tweaking but if I get it up running it takes from any camera with an ip adress like Steve what comes from what ever it is, data for, no gin tonic or so.

I like Linux, but what's wrong with Windows?

Stuff is working on windows BTW. Look at Pleora's system, it'll do DMA and only use 1% of the CPU by bypassing the windows stack. Once it's in memory, write it to disk.

Linux is much more efficient and customizable, but if it works on Windows also, then I don't see the reason for slamming it-the thing is if the camera works, it works-and if it doesn't, it doesn't. Frankly I don't care what OS the camera is running as long as it works, and it works well (and in order to work well, it's gotta play friendly with every OS, including my Mac ;).

Nothing. within the camera a preemptive low latency linux damm small no gui nothing...take the disks out and put them in your Post computer with your Windows, Apple OSx * UNIX Haha*, Linux, Mosix, BSD, Irix, Solaris, Beos, or what else you are happy with.

That are two totally different issues.

In Windows I have to bypass and so on on Linux even I do have a GUI and there is no royalty nothing we call it GNU application.
Even I do have to pay for my Linux. Even I can compile it or take the cernel I like, with only what I need. Do this with windows thats the reason, Keep it cheap means within the cam what's in set-top boxes and even cell phones not allway Windows, for the user no differenz at all.

Also remember that under Linux you can write to : Ext2, NFS, NTFS (if you don't have prior info writen from windows there is no problem), HFS, HFS+.
That is what I call portability!

got a micro atx board on order today and had my car totaled in an crash. I was driving. I am lucky not to be in bad shape right now. my Audi Quattro is a pile of metal now. Maybe I can melt the metal down and make 300 HD 10bit 4:4:4 camera systems.

today is a bad day.

damn obin, glad you're ok.. without you, the camera project if screwed :)

look at the bright side, it could of been worse:
http://media.ebaumsworld.com/carexplode.wmv

:) how about with the insurance money you buy an old toyota for $5000 and put the rest toward research and development for the camera rig.

so.. since Rai & Markus' "Drake" HD camera is MIA.. or KIA.. does anyone know, or can anyone guess what camera and capture system they were using?

Obin, glad to see you're safe-that's the most important thing.

BTW, Juan, AFAIK, Linux still doesn't support HFS+ (or it's very buggy developmental support), only HFS.

Yellow Dog PPC Linux.This means it has been ported to linux, sooner or later it will be available for i386.

Voila for power PC as usaual and free:
http://packages.debian.org/unstable/...6.8-powerpc-di
does HFS and HFS+

unstable means in debian worl only what.. Im working with unstable sarge since 1 year now rocksolid. Debian is within the Linux world very very conservative annoncing new versions,
maybe the most conservative on the block

What"s wrong with Windows nothing at all there is only one issue, it comes pre-installed so it's on most computers that's the reason for

HFS+
 

good morning, only for the Linux aficinados
http://people.csail.mit.edu/people/a.../ipod.html#hfs

that's the fun with linux, not waiting what Gates will give you,
or the rest makes you pay for.

source: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnupod/gnupod.html

http://sourceforge.net/projects/linux-hfsplus
http://www.ardistech.com/hfsplus/
http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache...hl=en&start=10

To everybody: Take note I'm not against Windows.This is not the classical Net-War between OS's fans. Just pointing out Linux has a better support to give Mac compatibility using a PC (I'm indeed a PC Guy so I don't need it anyway)

Okay... can we try to stay at least near the topic of the thread?

Bar3nd

Operating systems aren't related with these cameras?
Didn't know it, sorry.

I am waiting for the new board to arrive. I hope this week!

then I will really have an idea what we can do!

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese :
In Windows I have to bypass and so on on Linux even I do have a GUI and there is no royalty nothing we call it GNU application. -->>>

Originally we were talking about GNU like capture software.

Barend: I think talking OS is important, however I also agree it is
going a bit far. Reason? The people who are building these
systems are deciding what OS is going on there (basically), so
we can talk all day long about any OS but it wouldn't matter much.
So indeed let's move on to something a bit more productive!

Obin: sorry to hear about your accident. Hope all is well with you.

Does anybody still have that movie and still from Obin's movie
from last week (or perhaps you Obin?) and could put it up? I
somehow missed it and would really love to see it. Thanks!

I would also like to add, if Ronald, and other Linux people would like too, they could put together their own Linux based system. This is still a community home made camera type thing, not just commercial packages. If you want to Ronald you can use my Technical thread and call in fellow Linux/Camera men, I would like to see it.

When you look at it, they could use Cinerella and SI Gige or Sumix Firewire800 as the basis. This just requires Linux to have driver, and Cinerrela to have driver suitable for these cameras. I personally don't know how good Cinerrella is as a Cinema live Camera capture interface, having never seen it. Ronald can you tell us, is it slick, simple and reliable, or ugly slow cumbersom crash fest? Even if it isn't perfect, as it is Open Source the code could be updated.

Wayne.