All looks good Bill but can I use it with my Sony Z1 to record and view live footage onto the laptop?

I can't answer that as I am unfamiliar with the Z1.

My thought is that this laptop paired with the Matrox MXO2 Mini might be a good solution for people like me who have the HV series camcorders from Canon and can get 4:2:2 color via the HDMI port and use Cineform software to improve the workflow.

This thread started 2 years ago in November 13th, 2007, 04:29 PM ...
"CineForm HDMI Recorder Concept " still concept ? !

Not quite. No hardware manufacture wanted to build the the prototype we proposed. :(

However, this CineForm recorder will be out in a couple of months (if not sooner.)
cinedeckHD (http://www.cinedeck.com) Hardware's done just software to finish.

That's amazing David, and very sad. Too many vested interests out there? I've always had the impression that CineForm quality and workflow has been a thorn in the side of the big players. I do wonder if ProRes would exist at all if it weren't for CineForm...

Not quite. No hardware manufacture wanted to build the the prototype we proposed. :(

However, this CineForm recorder will be out in a couple of months (if not sooner.)
cinedeckHD (http://www.cinedeck.com) Hardware's done just software to finish.

Confused a little - So Cineform are building a hardware device as well as the cinedeck?


Or are you building just the software for the cinedeck?

CineDeck developer licensed our codec.

We have alway been a 99% software company, and the HMDI recorder project was going to happen the same way. We did have a hardware partner earlier in the project, but they went belly-up. Still open for others. We are still looking for non-custom hardware solution for this, like an Atom based netbook/embedded motherboard -- the performance is not quite there yet (so close though.)

David, thank you for info about CineDeck.

CineDeck developer licensed our codec.

We have alway been a 99% software company, and the HMDI recorder project was going to happen the same way. We did have a hardware partner earlier in the project, but they went belly-up. Still open for others. We are still looking for non-custom hardware solution for this, like an Atom based netbook/embedded motherboard -- the performance is not quite there yet (so close though.)

David what sort of specs you after?

Processor
◦Intel® Pentium™ SU4100 Dual Core ULV Processor 1.3GHz
◦800MHz FSB 2MB Cache
◦Intel GS45 + ICH9MS
Memory
◦3GB DDR3 800MHz
◦Configuration: 2GB + 1GB
◦2 x Slot SODIMM
Hard Drive
◦250GB SATA

Samsung X120 Netbook - Netbooks at Ebuyer (http://www.ebuyer.com/product/176512)

I've commented on the Atom spec's before in this long thread. Over 12-months ago 1.6Ghz dual Atom would encode 1080p at 16-17fps, with 533MHz FSB. The memory bus is faster now and clocks up a bit, but otherwise that haven't change much in a while. The missing feature to Atom setup is a single PCI-Express lane, so we can feed HDMI in without a big hardware effort. If as can get to 20fps with a PCI-E lane, we can do 24p/30i through SSD buffering -- it is really close.

I do wonder if ProRes would exist at all if it weren't for CineForm...

I don't understand this statement at all. The two have nothing to do with each other and use totally different technologies.

ProRES (DCT) and CineForm (Wavelet) are too vary different technologies, but in many case serves the same purpose -- higher quality intermediate. However, Richard is more correct than is publicly known. More generally I think Avid's DNxHD and CineForm, lead Apple to ProRES. This is always a license, buy, or build it yourself decision, ProRES was not created in a vacuum.

Completely understood. I am aware of the DNx/ProRes connection, just couldn't see how to extrapolate that to Cineform, which if my information is correct, predates them both.

Yes, CineForm pre-dates both, and the first is still the best :)

I've commented on the Atom spec's before in this long thread. Over 12-months ago 1.6Ghz dual Atom would encode 1080p at 16-17fps, with 533MHz FSB. The memory bus is faster now and clocks up a bit, but otherwise that haven't change much in a while. The missing feature to Atom setup is a single PCI-Express lane, so we can feed HDMI in without a big hardware effort. If as can get to 20fps with a PCI-E lane, we can do 24p/30i through SSD buffering -- it is really close.

Is this possible Cineform device a online or offline device?

I mean will I be plugging in my camera to the Cineform device and recording directly onto the netbook/nettop device? Will I have a live feed on the netbook so I can use it as a external monitor?

Or will it be a offline device and convert my tapes/mt2 files after I have got them off the camera?

The idea has always been to bypass camera compression recording CineForm directly in a mobile device -- whether that design included monitoring was only a bonus feature not a requirement.

The idea has always been to bypass camera compression recording CineForm directly in a mobile device -- whether that design included monitoring was only a bonus feature not a requirement.

Live screen would be a great feature! Ideal hardware setup would be the customer buys the hardware solution then just buys a Cineform pack that would do the recording and live feed.

I don't understand this statement at all. The two have nothing to do with each other and use totally different technologies.

The technology behind it is irrelevant. It is about the workflow. Cineform developed an edit friendly full raster 10bit 4:2:2 intermediate format that allowed you to edit 1080i/p at about 15MB/s. A year or two later Apple releases ProRes which does exactly the same thing (but using a different compression technology). They were trying to fill the same workflow hole with their own similar product. Then Cineform added support for 4:4:4 and Alpha channels, and recently Apple has added the same support to ProRes. There is a pretty obvious link on the competition and marketing side, regardless of the underlying technology. The shifting paradigm taking place of "compressed" becoming acceptable for professional work was pioneered by Cineform and a few other innovative companies, and then Apple and Avid jumped on once that shift in the industry mindset had already taken place.

I've commented on the Atom spec's before in this long thread. Over 12-months ago 1.6Ghz dual Atom would encode 1080p at 16-17fps, with 533MHz FSB. The memory bus is faster now and clocks up a bit, but otherwise that haven't change much in a while. The missing feature to Atom setup is a single PCI-Express lane, so we can feed HDMI in without a big hardware effort. If as can get to 20fps with a PCI-E lane, we can do 24p/30i through SSD buffering -- it is really close.

Fudzilla.com just posted some pictures and specs of an upcoming mini-itx motherboard from Zotac that use the H55 chipset from Intel with integrated graphics and 2 DDR-3 memory slots: Fudzilla - Zotac goes Intel (http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/17153/37/)

In looking at a review of an new ASUS H57 motherboard using an i5-661 power consumption is between 77 and 116 watts. (Power Consumption - Review Tom's Hardware : Intel Core i5-661: Clarkdale Rings The Death Knell Of Core 2 (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-clarkdale-core-i5-661,2514-15.html)) I would expect the Zotac board might also be in this range.

I haven't seen much info on the Tegra other than the CPU operates at 1 GHz and the memory is still DDR2.

ASUS has a new laptop called the G73Jh with an impressive set of components. No pricing has been listed.

I imagine there are other laptops and motherboards that will come from CES. Should be possible to build/buy a low powered device to capture via HDMI and capture with a Cineform product this Spring.

I'd love to know how the mobile i7s perform with CineForm. However, the real problem with a mobile device is that there really isn't an off-the-shelf solution you can easily adapt.

An mITX solution is lacking the inbuilt touchscreen you really need (I actually had an Intensity interfaced with a Mac Mini via its WiFi port). If you go for a laptop, you need to get VERY creative to interface PCI Express, to the point where you lose portability that way. I'd also prefer at least PCIe x4 bandwidth rather than the x1 laptops give you too. Maybe you could repurpose a notebook SLI solution (one GPU and one other device), but in my experience with mobile capture getting the hardware to do anything other than it was designed to do is a real pain.

Bearing all that in mind, the power draw seems like the smallest problem to me! I'd be very curious to know how CineDeck has made their device so small... FPGA? mITX with a really clever custom case?

I don't know if this info is any use or just a distraction.


CarTFT in Germany, stock a barebones version of a small USB touch-screen monitor in a sort of metal skeleton. I think but have not confirmed that it is the same innards or similar without the external casework to the monitor modified by P+S Technik used on the SI2K camera.

Which product in particular are you looking at?

Info from CML3D

Recently Rogue Element Films shot some test footage with a 2 x SI2K mini
mirror rig. The kit was as follows :

2 x SI2K mini heads
2 x Lemo to ethernet cables
16mm Ultra Lenses
Synch box
Small Mirror Rig
C-Motion lens control
Cinedeck recorder with 2 x Ethernet input ports and hot swappable SSD
drive slot

The above hardware was then recorded as Cineform RAW in a QT wrapper to
SSD drives using a brand new small recording device called a Cinedeck.
This took both left and right eye feeds via ethernet into its unit and
recorded the rushes to the SSD drives which are removeable media. The
size of the box is slightly bigger than an Astro 6" monitor and the
display is the same as the 7" SI unit you all know already.

The Cinedeck worked beautifully and we had zero issues with the
recording and the archiving of the rushes. This allowed us to do away
with laptops and have a much more self contained and mobile unit. The
Cinedeck has the ability to display left and right eye, overlay, switch
plus LUTs via Speedgrade and lots more besides.

I'd like to thank SI and Ari Pressler from the US for helping with the
testing and also Charles from Cinedeck for such wonderful assistance. If
anyone would like a more detailed description of the kit/workflow I'll
be posting much more on the Rogue website which I'll link to CML.

The kit worked really well and we were all extremely impressed with the
kit and the workflow, so much so its how we are going to work on the
next few projects.

Regards
Dan Mulligan
Rogue Element Films

I just found out about this board via engadget.com:
Congatec BM57 fits mobile Core i7 onto tiny mobo -- Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/13/congatec-bm57-fits-mobile-core-i7-onto-tiny-mobo/)

It looks like it has a lot of potential. Here's a link to their website with the press announcement:congatec: congatec announces new COM Express small form factor module based on latest Intel® Core? i7 processor (http://www.congatec.com/single_news+M5d3bbd227a8.html)

Mouser Electronics sells their products so you can get an idea of possible costs:
congatec Distributor (http://www.mouser.com/congatec/)

MSI's race car inspired F Series packs NVIDIA Optimus, we go hands-on -- Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/03/msis-race-car-inspired-f-series-packs-nvidia-optimus-we-go-han/)

With all these new devices coming out they should be quick enough to support online streaming from a camera? I'd love to buy a small decent netbook/mini laptop and have a Cineform device connected so I can plug my camera into.

Any updates?

So is the sub-$2,000 dedicated CineForm recorder dead?

Not dead, just emerging in different forms. CineDeck won a couple of NAB award with it CineForm based mobile recorder and there are others in the works.

Isn't the CineDeck around $8,000? Maybe my emphasis was wrong. Is the sub-$2,000 CineForm recorder dead?

I've built a custom mini PC (http://primehd.com/images/sip_2746.jpg), battery powered, to capture from Si-2K into Cineform RAW.

Cost about $2K.

CPU photo below.

Rockstar can is shown for scale reference, I promise the PC is not powered by it! :)

Yes certainly DIY can be done for under $2K. The CineDeck is around $8K for a DualLink SR deck replacement, which is very cool but no where near $2K. Their HDMI version will be a lot less, although we don't know price yet. CineDeck is not the only company developing CineForm based mobile recorders so I expect we will see sub-$2K, just not likely in 2010.

...or one can buy my own DIY version cheap, and use it right now. Works fine. Field and studio tested.

Just posted in Classifieds - click here to marvel (http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/private-classifieds/477185-mobile-minipc-si-2k-mini-capture-play-back-raw-footage-studio-field-use.html)! :)

I take it that you used a dual core 1.6 ghz atom cpu?

No, I think David already commented that Atoms are still below the processing power needed for Cineform processing.

Mine is Intel 2.6Ghz

I'm am interested in trying the new DDR3 Dual Core Atoms (e.g N455) More memory bandwidth with a better dual core implementation might do the trick.

Alex did you use a mobo cpu or the full beans desktop cpu?

So, is the sub-$2K CineForm recorder officially dead? CineDeck seems nice, but it's more than four time the price.

Never off the table. Remember we are a software company, we will happily license the technology to any company capable of building it, when we proposed it, we where working with a harware partner but they didn't survive the market down-turn. We have priced out the build cost, two years ago to make sub-$2K partical, still good today. Just need another partner. New partners like CineDeck and 1Beyond use our software encoder, to get to the size and price point we want will require CineForm based hardware encoder (unless Intel Atom processors get a tad faster.)

I'm am interested in trying the new DDR3 Dual Core Atoms (e.g N455) More memory bandwidth with a better dual core implementation might do the trick.

Check out this links that talks about the performance of the new AMD Zacate APU which appears to outperform an Intel Core i5-520M at 2.4 GHz:
AMD's Zacate APU Performance Update - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3933/amds-zacate-apu-performance-update)

The Zacate chips only draws 18 watts! Sweet!!

Hi David just sent you a PM
Let me know what your thoughts.

Check out this links that talks about the performance of the new AMD Zacate APU which appears to outperform an Intel Core i5-520M at 2.4 GHz:
AMD's Zacate APU Performance Update - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News (http://www.anandtech.com/show/3933/amds-zacate-apu-performance-update)

The Zacate chips only draws 18 watts! Sweet!!

Here is a link to the first mini-itx board with the new chip. It is a Gigabyte motherboard. There was no release date mentioned in the article but another site mentions Q1 of 2011.
Gigabyte to Offer Overclocking Functionality for Fusion Zacate Platform - X-bit labs (http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/mainboards/display/20101207230841_Gigabyte_to_Offer_Overclocking_Functionality_for_Fusion_Zacate_Platform.html#)

So any news on this front at all David? I cant believe a company like Atmos Enter The Ninja (http://atomos.com/) can bring their ProRes HDMI recorder to market at such a low price yet there remains nothing like it with the amazing cross platform CineForm codec??

Surely similar technology that drives this device would be able to be used with a CineForm codec? Or is it simply that the licensing costs of CineForm software would mean no recorder would ever get close to a price point like the Ninja?

As far as I can tell transcoding is going the way of the dodo - everywhere you look these days its all about direct to edit. It would be a real shame if CineForm aren't paying attention to this industry trend.

Our licensing is not expensive, we are looking to put the CineForm codec everywhere. Come see us at NAB, while we are not announcing a hardware recorder, there are cool things happening.

For PC users who use Adobe CS 5 and above here is a preview to a new Zotac board which should be announced next week at Computex:
Zotac's Z68 mini-ITX boards listed for sale in Japan (http://vr-zone.com/articles/zotac-s-z68-mini-itx-boards-listed-for-sale-in-japan/12344.html)
It is a Z68 based board. With the GeForce GT430 and 1GB of supposedly dedicated video RAM the one expansion port should be able to host an Black Magic Intensity Pro. Couple that with Cineform software and and camera that outputs HDMI and it could be a truly great solution.

Here is the translation of the akiba website for the Zotac Board:
Z68ITX-WiFi is a relatively orthodox model of the system with a DisplayPort output and 2 HDMI outputs, more wired / wireless LAN, USB 3.0, mSATA also includes configuration. As far as notice that the photo shops, PCI Express x16 slots and expansion slots are DDR3 DIMM slots seem to be equipped with × 2. Cooling mechanism is a combination of heat pipe Fanresutaipu, I / O unit that is attached to the heat sink panel.

On the other hand, is a unique design, Z68 GT430 ITX-WiFi. This product, GeForce GT 430 1GB equipped with additional video memory, four standard screen output (DVI × 2 + HDMI + DisplayPort) that you can. Wired / wireless LAN, USB 3.0, mSATA equipped with such a common but Z68ITX-WiFi, and PCI Express x1 slots and expansion slots are DDR3 SO-DIMM slots seems to be 2 ×. Cooler with fan cooling.

The Z68 Mini-ITX motherboard, considering the functional aspects, such as "strongest spec" will say the configuration, and also very unique products based on GeForce GT 430. Performance features, as well as a small PC screen output if you want another example, the product is likely to miss.

I've commented on the Atom spec's before in this long thread. Over 12-months ago 1.6Ghz dual Atom would encode 1080p at 16-17fps, with 533MHz FSB. The memory bus is faster now and clocks up a bit, but otherwise that haven't change much in a while. The missing feature to Atom setup is a single PCI-Express lane, so we can feed HDMI in without a big hardware effort. If as can get to 20fps with a PCI-E lane, we can do 24p/30i through SSD buffering -- it is really close.

I wonder if this new motherboard from VIA with a NANO X2 1.4GHz processor might be fast enough. It supports DDR3 memory:
VIA offers $89 processor and motherboard combo for custom HTPCs -- Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/14/via-offers-89-processor-and-motherboard-combo-for-custom-htpcs/)

I downloaded the manual which states using 1066MHz DDR3 memory ,the FSB operates at 533MHz with a single channel. I couldn't find out the power requirements for the board.

Seem it has the same speeds as the dual core atom CPU I mentioned in the quoted text.

Seem it has the same speeds as the dual core atom CPU I mentioned in the quoted text.

What it does have is a PCI card slot which theoretically could accept a Black Magic Intensity card which back in 2009 the Atom did not seem to have.

Just wondering has the Gopro acquisition of cineform provided the necessary hardware partner for a Gopro Cineform HDMI recorder to be made?

Now in a bigger company, I also can't really discuss the possibilty of future products.

Of course. l look forward to seeing what you guys might come up with.

I've commented on the Atom spec's before in this long thread. Over 12-months ago 1.6Ghz dual Atom would encode 1080p at 16-17fps, with 533MHz FSB. The memory bus is faster now and clocks up a bit, but otherwise that haven't change much in a while. The missing feature to Atom setup is a single PCI-Express lane, so we can feed HDMI in without a big hardware effort. If as can get to 20fps with a PCI-E lane, we can do 24p/30i through SSD buffering -- it is really close.

I wonder if the upcoming Intel NUC might be a successful candidate:
AnandTech - Inside Intel's Next Unit of Computing (DC3217BY) (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6444/intels-next-unit-of-computing-hands-on)

It uses 1.8GHz CPU with DDR3 memory.

The DC3217BY version has a thunderbolt port.

I wonder anymore if it is worth the hassle of a standalone recorder which requires tethering as opposed to transcoding to the Cineform codec after capture. Anyone care to comment?