Some more little info about JPEG2000:

"Motion JPEG2000 has a wide range of compute requirements depending on the end application. A video surveillance application for a 640 x 480 30 frames/s video stream requires approximately 4,200 MOPS; medical imaging 1,024 x 1,024 at 60 frames/s lossless coding can require 29,000 MOPS; and digital cinema with a frame size of 4,096 x 2,048 at 24 frames/s requires 93,000 MOPS all using JPEG2000."

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/wcs/frm/nea/200311/inst_274496.html

Lookin for more info I 've discovered some other codecs called EZW, SPIHT, and some others I don't remember.They seem to be very fast on a PC. 256x256 image in 0.02 seconds on ! 1GHZ CPU
EZW is supposed to be a part of JPEG2000 standard.

Some implementation:

http://pesona.mmu.edu.my/~msng/EZW.html

Original Matlab:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/polyvalens/clemens/ezw/ezw.html

Wavelet image constructor Kit

http://www.geoffdavis.net/dartmouth/wavelet/wavelet.html

Thanks Juan. Can you or someone else bring me up to speed on
matlab? I assume it is a program (or mulitple?) to do something
with math and algorithms? Where can I find it (if there are more
which is the best) and how does such a thing work? It might
greatly help me with some things I'm trying to figure out / test.

Thanks!

Juan,
Jpeg2000 looks good. Do they support 12 bit color depth in there?
'Regular' Jpeg does , I use it all the time.
High bit depth is mandatory for this project.


Rob: Matlab is an app for manipulating matrix structures. A lot of scientists and engineers use it. I forget who makes it, but it's easy to search for.

-Les

high-res microdisplay for viewfinder app.:

http://www.crlopto.com/products/

i'm not expert on this, but... maybe someone will know.

if this is the lcd display (see the link Obin mentioned above: http://www.crlopto.com/products/)

- does it means that some of the models are not fully transparent (i mean - just the "screen" part)?

if yes - is it possible to use it instead of GG?
if the resolution is 1024x768 this means that this is 1:1 corelated to CCD, so maybe we can use this (just screen part, not the whole electronics etc.) as GG?

yes?

or i'm completelly wrong?

filip

wrong - it's a LCD for a viewfinder not a GG !

Yes guys, again, Jpeg2000 supports 16 bit and down, LOSSLESS and LOSSY, any combination possible in the same stream.Metadata is included.So you could store info about color balance etc, focus and anything else.

BTW, any news about how to eliminate the rolling shutter artifact.
Any development of a Mechanical shutter?

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : wrong - it's a LCD for a viewfinder not a GG ! -->>>

obin,

sorry if i'm boring :)

i understand that this is lcd for viewfinder, but let's "pretend" that you have JUST that rectangle (which is used as a screen for the whole lcd viewfinder "module"), nothing else, no electronics etc.

- let's "pretend" now to use just this part of lcd "module" as GG.

- if this "screen" is not transparent - mean - if it's frosted, and as we know - this is lcd screen which can "project" HD resolution picture on itself - means that smallest pixel is just in 1:1 ratio to our CCD pixel - right?

what i mean is following - will we SEE any "grain" if we use that very lcd screen only as GG?

does this make ANY sense or i'm again lost?


filip

lost.

the lcd is not a gg and is not "frosted" at all but is the same thing your computer has - TFT LCD..it's just TINY

ok.

Juan: last I heard Steve and his team are going to look at it this
week. So I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I'm pretty busy myself
as well since I'm going to TechED here in Amsterdam. Yay.

Two of SiS's new south bridge chips will enter mass production this month. The first of these is the 965L, which features eight USB 2.0 ports; two ATA/133 controllers; two Serial ATA ports with RAID 0, 1, and JBOD support; two PCI Express x1 interfaces; a 10/100 Fast Ethernet MAC; and AC'97 audio.

To complement the 965L, SiS is also rolling out a 965 south bridge that adds a Gigabit Ethernet MAC and two more Serial ATA ports. With support for a total of four Serial ATA drives, the 965 will also be capable of RAID 0+1. Both the 965 and 965L use a 1GB/sec MuTIOL north/south bridge interconnect.

Later this year, SiS will add the 966 south bridge to its lineup. The 966 will support 10 USB 2.0 ports, two channels of ATA/133, four Serial ATA ports with AHCI and RAID,, Gigabit Ethernet, High Definition Audio, and four PCI-E x1 interfaces. To ensure that all those integrated peripherals have enough north/south bridge bandwidth, the 966 will sport a new MuTIOL interconnect that offers 2GB/sec of bandwidth. The new interconnect doubles the bandwidth of SiS's current MuTIOL link, and it will only work with upcoming 761, 656, 656FX, and 662 north bridge chips.Source: http://techreport.com/etc/2004q2/sis-roadmap/index.x?pg=2

Hallo There.
I'm new to this list, but have been reading with great interest. Hope I can help out with something...

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : high-res microdisplay for viewfinder app.:

http://www.crlopto.com/products/ -->>>

There are a few downsides to that panel:

- It's a monochrome imager. Colors are created by filtering the light reflected by the device. Either by a high speed color-wheel or by using three different LED illuminators taking turns. From what I've seen this filtering process can lead to annoying color flicker.

- The contrast ratio is only 200:1 and the blacklevel is rather high, making the blacks milky.


If we could find a highres OLED panel like Kinetta uses for their Viewfinder, things would be better, as the contrast ratio of most OLED screens are 5000:1, and the blacklevel is reffered to as 10 times better than transmittive LCD.

that would be good but as I see Jeff on the message boards for microdisplay looking for answers for the Kinetta I am not sure even he has the final viewfinder nailed down ;)

also don't be so fast to judge as this company is using them and winning awards:

http://www.accuscene.com/

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : that would be good but as I see Jeff on the message boards for microdisplay looking for answers for the Kinetta I am not sure even he has the final viewfinder nailed down ;) -->>>

I see :)

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson :also don't be so fast to judge as this company is using them and winning awards:

http://www.accuscene.com -->>>

Ok, you got me. If it's good enough for Panavision it might do for your project as well, won't it :)


Only 800x600 and 100:1 but very handy:
http://www.emagin.com/svga+.htm

cost - $11,000 ;)

Ok I am fired up now!!

WHAT IF

We could build a microatx/ITX computer running LINUX and put it inside the camera housing? Would LINUX be as stable as we need?

Why not write a UI for this system with standard menus for a touch screen on the camera...this would use standard off-the-shelf equipment that we could buy online. What stops this from working ? We could have sata drives that are hot-swap. This is nothing more then taking the remote computer and building it inside the camera right?

look at this!

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

it could be loaded on a flash card. No need for a 3rd disk drive for the OS

Hey, you wouldn't believe it, the guy that did that Bayer filter tutorial page, I think I might know him, I have one of his old Miminal Instruction Set Computer microprocessors here. I'm trying to contact him now, he is one very smart guy.

Wayne.

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : Ok I am fired up now!!

WHAT IF

We could build a microatx/ITX computer running LINUX and put it inside the camera housing? Would LINUX be as stable as we need? -->>>

I haven't got to reading the last 40 or so posts yet, but yes, Linux would be m,ore stable than Windows.

I still suggest looking at the Toas intent/relate environments under linux, they are likely to be more efficent.

Oblin about the Shuttle PC, there are other low niose alternatives, and lower wattage P4's coming out. I drafted trhis before I got to the Shuttle site:

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson :
OK I think I am going with a Shuttle computer system! check them out at : http://sys.us.shuttle.com/

It will cost me $900 for a shuttle, 2.8ghz p4 CPU, 512megs 400mhz ram, 2 7200rpm sata disk drives at 200GB each, a dual head graphics card and a 40gb OS disk drive..then I will use firewire to transfer all the footage from shuttle to video server after shoot..I am hoping to get 60fps 8bit on this system and 48fps 12bit all 1280x720p

if anyone has an idea of a much better system for size -speed - price please let me know soon!-->>>

I should have mentioned this in an earlier post. A lot of high speed systems produce fan niose, but there are some small systems that are nearly niosless. It looks like Shuttle has it, I don't remember which other systems there are but try looking up reviews, and news links to reveiws, in tomshardware.com, and anandtech.com. Nioseless, low niose are good search phrases, and their systems reveiw section. There are two types, quiet fans and large heatsinks with thermal liquid cooling etc. I also think there is also new low powered versions of the processors coming out soon (if they haven't arrived). They use half the power, probably upto 4 times less processor fan niose, or you might get a faster version. digit-life.com also has a good news section for struff like this.

Thanks

Wayne.

About the reflected Microdisplay panels. There are many, with devices that can run over 180fps, to give true 60fps sequential colour (not sure but top speed might be over 300fps). Hopkins had a link page to many of the microdisplay products, I think. www.microdisplay.com was the only one I know of working on a non sequential colour LCD version (using broken reflection I think). They also claimed integration advantages like the Emagin.

OEL have a problem with uneven primary colour deteriation with age, and might need to be replaced every few years until worked out. Check out the halflife spec on the Emagin to see where ever it has the problem or not.

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : cost - $11,000 ;) -->>>

Is that for the panel/controller or for the accuscene viewfinder?

Jim Lafferty wrote:thanks for the wiki update -- it's a fun read so farYou're welcome! :-) Thanks for the encouragement.
Eliot Mack wrote:
I've been reworking the project WikiThanks for taking the time to do that, Eliot!

I've updated my development blog (http://www.obscuracam.com/wiki/wiki/run.php?iRequest=wiki/ViewPage&iPage=DevelopmentBlog), but I'll be traveling for a while, so I won't have any more updates until next week sometime.

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn :
Sorry about my error saying '' without affecting image quality" I forgot to add ''too much''.
I guess I don't know what you think are the results of a lossy compression like JPEG2000 on an image.Anyway
-->>>--

Hi Juan, welcome.

I am one of the main proponets of lossless, but the different projects accross the different threads, are not exclusively lossless, I have advocated lossless for high end, high polish work, but also advocated lossy/near lossless for other work. The main problem with splitting the bayer pixel into sub channels and compressing them
seperately is that it is hard to gaurantee that the compressed pixels will still match up in each channel unless it is true lossless.

Rather than FPGA/s check out the clearspeed links I posted over at the viper thread, they should be much simpler and cheaper to implement, and probably faster. There are also links around here to the russian work that did FPGAs for camera comrpession, the FPGA files were also open, I think he had links.

If we go for clearspeed/FPGAS eventually we might as well go for highest quality compression than speed, but in the short term quality high speed. The situation is only temporary as computers will get fast enough to handle it. So we should keep it open and universal in nteh long run so we can adopt better routines as needed, for now we only need to get it working with the best fit codecs.

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn :
Lookin for more info I 've discovered some other codecs called EZW, SPIHT, -->>>

SPIHT is the one Silicon Imaging is involved with, I asked Steve about it in one of the threads.

Were lucky Juan P. Pertierra doesn't join us, we allready have more than enoogh ROB's, Steve's etc. ;)



<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Jason on RS readout:
Wayne:
Camera link does not limit the max clock rate - the on-board A/D and shift register do. This means a local buffer won't speed up the readout. -->>>

Sorry, I was referring to it's use where the peak HD data stream bandwith is above the interface bandwidth (USB2, Gigabit Ethernet, or normal 132MB/s PCI).

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser

There is a definite split here on completely lossless and "virtually lossless" because no one is willing to lose anything too early in the chain but the gains in reducing system complexity are high if you can compress early in the chain.

Steve -->>>

The problem with lossy compression is I think the more you compress the more horespower you will need, which will outweigh other benefits. But Rob's idea of pause processing would be the way to go, because during pauses the computer could perform the slow lossy comporession at 6:1, or 50/100Mb's, and still retain a great advantge over HDV (not to mention that wavelet comrpession produces higher quality at the same rate). There is still the problem that you have to convert to 4:2:0, 4:2:1 or 4:4:4 before you compress, as lossy compressing the subpixels seperately will result in sub-pixel mismatch.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : You have more vertical pixels. You could do image stabilization if you record 820 vertical and use the top and bottom 50 rows to debounce the image. It is free once the software is written. -->>>

Yes, good idea. Does anybody know a cheap way to do optical image stabilisation to get rid of motion blur, I was thinking of a glide cam?

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser :
I've been wondering if we are busting our butts trying to emulate film and all its ecentrisities. Is the rolling shutter stuff objectionable or just different? Does it add a feeling of speed? It would crack me up if Lucas adds this effect in a feature film to be different from film effects. Just a thought. -->>>

The problem is that if a person blinks (and they do a number of times) or just shifts what they are looking at (which happens several times asecond) it can momentarily freeze frame the image inside their heads and reveal the slanting bus rolling shutter effect, or if they track the image. If the effect is very slight and motion blur is used it should hide it. I think that as long as you have long integration and fast readout (240th a second), maybe using a buffer, it will be of no effect, isn't it possible just to leave it integrate and read it every tenth 240fps frame or something, some sort of chip reset to get past the one frame integration restriction (they used to use these sort of tricks to tweak computer performance)? George would use the rolling shutter effect if his Starwars characters accidentally fell into a slanting universe ;) what about it George, good idea for a script?



<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Scott : OK, now that the dust has settled a bit ... :-)
Recently I've also run across the Dirac project which also uses wavelet compression (but I'm not sure if it supports more than 8 bits per channel). Dirac is apparently designed to be un-patent-encumbered.

If it's high enough quality, and possible to do in real time, I'm all for doing "lossy-but-visually-near-lossless" (LBVNL?) compression at capture time. The commercial companies like CineForm (IIRC) do this, but they have lots of full-time developers, hardware, tools, money, and know-how. Given our resources, we can't possibly compete with them -- and I don't want to. I think we can do some cool things, but a fully embedded FPGA/DSP system is a long way away unless someone comes on board who has a great deal of experience with it.
-->>>

Don't let the 8-bit restriction fool you, the basic structure should be the same, but the upper limit and packing would need to be adjusted, so Dirac might be good. I personally think we should have lossless down to 50mbit/s lossy, but extra compression requires more processor horsepower, and lossless would be the most portable balance (due to processor power consumption and heat issues) for the moment. Within a couple of years this will change as processors increase in speed, but clearspeed is here today and probably much much faster. When you go into high compression extra horsepower would produce better realtime results. As far as I know a hardware compressor from JVC will cost many times more than the whole HD!) camera, and be bigger for this reason. The clearspeed is a revolutionary solution, I have been involved with people wanting/trying to develope simular products, and I know that this really is probably the solution for the future, programmable in C.

Your other comment. I had previously shown interest in a commercial solution to save you guys the trouble, or to allow you to do a wordpad/write edition with good camera controls, while the commercial company offered the Microsoft Office solution for anybody with the money.



<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : Ok I am fired up now!!

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/

it could be loaded on a flash card. No need for a 3rd disk drive for the OS -->>>

Look for embedded linux over at Transmeta processor site, it was made by the Linux founder. www.qnx.com and Toas (also now used by www.Amiga.com Digital Entertainment environtment who have extra front end and interface tech) can be measured in hundreds of K. I am a bit biased because I know these environments could outclass Linux in performance in the old day and efficency and Toas tech will run unmodified code under Windows, Linux and other systems.

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : I found a guy that says he can help design and build a stand alone camera using DSP and FPGA stuff with NO computer..like the Kinetta camera..has has been doing DSP and FPGA for years and really knows that stuff...will keep you posted -->>>

I have too, see below.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Gosh, I hate to sound like a broken record on this, but that's basically what the Kinetta is.

I'm not trying to say, "don't bother, it's already been done", but if you're going to sink that much cash into a project for all the R&D it's going to take to do FPGA's, etc., then you'd better think of a way to make your solution either much cheaper, or fulfilling a specific niche that the Kinetta doesn't. Because IMHO it makes no sense to spend $20K on a camera that can't do half of what a $30K camera can. That's just the nature of competition. If we can keep the FPGA "hard-disk dumping" solutions below, say approx. $7K (with bundled bayer conversion software), then I'd say very, very nice, you've got sales. -->>>

Eventually it canbe done at a fraction of that price, but at the moment we can bypass the need to do that, and in future it will be even better without FPGA's. I personally have been in contact with somebody that would like to do simular FPGAS later this year, but I havn't mentioned it because the person hasn't annopunced any commitment to it here. So be patient, it may or maynot happen, but still I recommend clearspeed for performance, power and cost advantge. There is also FPGA comrpession designs on opencores.com anyway. We are covered and not with the overhead of Kinnetta. I personally am interested in a low entry piont (3 chip though, or 16:9 8Mpixel bayer) for myself and anybody else, and anybody can add what ever they want to it. When I was in college, and since, I came up with ways to cut production costs down to figures like one tenth. So one day I would like to see just how much canbe done on how little.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Once we start including ProspectHD/Boxx dual Opteron/big RAID's, etc., then we're talking $$$$. Of course nothing agaist any of these products, I'm just saying that you will quickly find by incorperating these products into the system, the cost will quickly climb.
-->>>

Jason, that is top of the line sort of indie equipment, we are talking of using bottom of the line equipment to do the same thing, that's the advantage, but anybody can use the more excpensive equipment if they want, that is one of the flexibilities we are looking at, an open staggered capability going from low cost levels upto Kinnetta cost. This will all need volume, but even not, there will be people who will take a industrial/security camera and use it for video anyway.



David your bayer compression idea, spot on, very good suggestion from an expert understanding. I still don't like the fooling human eye techniques, I think they mainly work because we don't take much notice of them, but for bayer it is mostly that way allready anway. There are simular things in audio, you don't notice what the difference is, but you defintely can feel it, so I would still like to see 4:4:4 someday.



<<<-- Originally posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn : Just a thought.Wouldn´t be useful to have a sticky thread with a compendum of all this technical things to be accessed in a simple way?

I mean chips, software tools, codecs, camera sensors, shutters, raid cards, source code, etc,etc.
-->>>

I have suggested a solution to Bob a few days ago, where the first post of a thread can be continousely updated to contain links to the wiki and other info. Rob is looking into it.



I stumbled accross a D-Link 802.11g Wireless card in a local shop it said it had a turbo mode of 108Mbps, I don't kno wether it uses some compression or not, but it raises a question, can multiple channels be used at once to transmit a compressed signal to base? I say this because I would like to use some form of wireless standard to trnsmit a HD signal from a remote controlled model aricraft to a base station. Does anybody know of a wireless standard that can do this at raw 720p/1080p rates?

I was also down at Big W (Australia) and bought McGraw Hill's "DTV Survival Guide" by Jim Boston for $6 from a clearence table, which is probably less than a tenth of the price. So anybody over here next to a Big W check it out.


Obin, I have just located some ITX boards with gigabit Ethernet:

www.digit-life.com/news.html?106173#106173

www.ibase-i.com.tw

To answer your question on PC in your camera, try nano-itx or one of the other suppliers of small formfactor I mentioned in the Viper/10-bit threads. If they have Giga Ethernet, then that eliminates the space of a PCI card, though youal need the adaptor instead. Then you'll need a notebook or smaller drive, to give you more space you could tac on a case with main baord or other compoinents outside the camera on the side or back. If anybody uses clearspeed in the future it should be very possible to fit everything in except extra drives.


Forgot to mention, I am just about to update the sound and battery possibilities over at the Viper thread. Some substantial information.

Thanks

Wayne.

More interesting links about FPGA, microcomputer....

SUSAKU PROJECT

http://www.atmark-techno.com/en/product/suzaku.html

http://suzaku.sourceforge.net/index.php/SuzakuHardwareInfo


@Wayne

BTW, if you have read all the posts, you would have noticed that I'm not only talking about lossy but also about lossless (mathematically lossless compression).HDCAM SR also uses compression and it is supposed to be lossless (I don't know really).
I've been working with HDCAM since January 2000 (I guess that feature film was made before Starwars, and was the first in Latin America shot with Cinealta Camera) and seeing how good it looks once on film, and knowing (and suffering) how crappy HDCAM is, I believe that anyother kind of compression, even lossy, would give far better results (I'm talking about several compressions discussed in this board)

Anyway I think that at this moment an uncompressed solution against a lossless compressed one would be far costly in $$$.

I don't quite understand why everybody thinks FPGA are so expensive.The only thing needed is people with a decent knowledge.

Folks, I have been having troiuble with my health and even though I have felt a bit beter in the last hour, it is likely to be persistent for a while. So I will be turning up weekly at the most for the foreseeable future, though there are some things I will be emailing the Robs on to do with sponsorship. My case projects will have to be put on hold/slow mode. Continue on the good work you guys are doing great.

Juan

I'm not saying your not, but I was saying that not all of us here are lossless only. I do think there is some missocmmunication here, as I was a bit confused as well as to your meaning. Which movie was the one before Starwars, that you were talking about.

The FPGA is expensive, because somebody has to design the FPGA and circuit board. Clearspeed is programable in standard C routines, so routines can be much more easily transfered over, and probably more powerfull and cheaper with lower power consumption. Nobody is really against these solutions they are just harder so we are leaving them to last.


Obin, I forgot about the keyboard thing. Those prices look expensive, if you buy Circuit Cellar Ink, you will find people advertisng Keyboards in the back. Some electronic parts stores (like Tandy) may also have non pc baords, I was thinking that we may be able adapt external Lanc/firewire DV controls.

thanks

wayne.

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.

what type of compression are you talking of Steve?

Obin:
GOOD COMPRESSION, SIR!

Either lossless or LBILI (my new acronym - 'lossy but I like it' - visually lossless or whatever we care to call it). Both have their place in this world. Either would enhance a camera. In a beautiful world, the FPGA would be loadable with either algorithm to fit the user, weather or color of your mood ring.

Sorry, went to a traditional folk music festival this weekend and seem to be have a problem adjusting to reality.

Steve "reality challenged" Nordhauser :-) wrote:
In a beautiful world, the FPGA would be loadable with either algorithm to fit the user, weather or color of your mood ring.Some of the cores on OpenCores (http://www.opencores.org) look pretty interesting -- they already have cores for: 8x8 fully pipelined parallel DCT. Provides a DCT result every clock cycle.
QNR. Quantization & Rounding Unit.
Run-Length-Encoder.
Huffman Encoder / Decoder.When this first project is done, I may have to look into FPGA programming. It looks very interesting.

ha! funny!

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).

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.

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.

Thanks, no rush.

Wayne.

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 fullGot 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?

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?

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").

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.
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.
[quote]Steve Nordhauser wrote:
There are two lens types that use the same threads- C mount and CS mountNuts, 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.

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?

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!

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.

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 (http://obscuracam.com/wiki/wiki/run.php?iRequest=wiki/ViewPage&iPage=DevelopmentBlog). 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 (http://www.openexr.org) Cineon...because they support high bit depths. I'm also keeping my eye on the Matroska container format (http://www.matroska.org/) as an alternative to OGG and AVI.

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

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...:(

No. I cannot figure out what's wrong with the Sheer Video download I have, I even downloaded pro and QT still couldn't read the file. Followed the download instructions, everything, I have no idea what's wrong.

The only thing I can think of is that the file is 10-bit, and all the Sheer Video stuff I've downloaded has an 8-bit limit.

Is there a place I can get the 10-bit for Mac?

BTW Obin,

Have you achieved sound-sync yet with your camera? I thought the frame-rate was fluctuating, that might spell trouble for the sound crew, especially during long takes.

On the editing front, with the tools in FCP and Quicktime, you have no concerns for loosing quality.

Basically use the new 10-bit RGB codec from Blackmagic. From there import the files into FCP, and using the auxilary timecode track, assign the files timecode (you can't do this in an Avid ;-) and sync them to the audio. Create offline versions of the file for editing. Once you've locked the picture go back to the original 10-bit RGB files and do an online version inside of FCP. Export that file as a quicktime reference movie file to combustion, color finesse version 2.0 (it will have an awesome stand-alone version that will like to FCP via XML, and is the best CC our there next to a Pogol or Davinci), etc. and do the final color-correct. Also do your final render out of THOSE apps, not FCP, just export a reference movie file or use the XML hooks from FCP into Color Finesse 2.0, since FCP is limited to 8-bit in the RGB color-space. From there import back into FCP for output on a Blackmagic HD Pro to HDCAM-SR, or take the 10-bit RGB quicktime file to Lasergraphics, etc. for output to film.

Of course this is a very simplified approach, but something that FCP will allow you to do, that no other app can. Premiere Pro/Vegas were not made for the offline/online workflow like FCP and AVID, nor do they have the years of experience doing this. In addition, you won't have access to the 10-bit RGB codec from Blackmagic, since neither Vegas nor PPro are Quicktime native.

In any case though, your workflow will be slowed-down by rendering, rendering, rendering, and there's a LOT of pitfalls along the way that could compromise the image. I'm sure the producer calling you up doesn't have the money for Cinesite, Technicolor, etc, people who are experienced in the digital intermediate workflow, so you're going to have to go through some of those pains yourself, hopefully there won't be any hiccups. But the good thing is that with FCP and the new Color Finesse 2.0, the tools are there to get the job done without any loss in quality.

Hi Jason,

I read your very interesting post. It seems that there is a very large amount of data and app switching required to make the whole system work. Would it be simpler to just use the Prospect HD system? It is a compressed system, but if one can do an initial color correction on the raw camera files based on color charts shot on set, and export those files into the Propect codec, the rest of the editing and final color correction could just take place in 1 app with full resolution 10 bit footage.

I understand that the system you propose keeps the full uncompressed quality of the signal, but I suspect many people would be willing to take a visually minor quality hit to avoid having to deal with swapping proxy footage, learning 3 apps, giant hard drive arrays, etc. I certainly would.

The $22k-$30k cost of the system is certainly significant. What I would like to see someday is something like a $1500-$2000 version of Prospect that just did cuts-only real time playback; that's all you really need for most narrative movie editing.

Is there more to it? I honestly don't know and would like to know.

Thanks,

Eliot

Obin,
Have you seen the Pipe HD family of products from Aurora Video Systems? They offer 10-Bit uncompressed editing for use with Final Cut Pro. Price ranges from $499 to $1,499.
Check it out at www.auroravideosystems.com

Are you pleased with the results you've gotten from your custom camera so far? I ask because I'm interested in building one as well. Your still images looked good, yet the lower resolution Quicktime file of the girl waving the sheet around had a strobe effect to it. Unfortunately, the sheervideo codec isn't out for PC yet, so I haven't been able to watch your uncompressed clip.

I recall you mentioning using a shuttle PC for portable image aquisition. You probably don't plan to edit the footage on that little beast, just record it. I'm sure if you dropped the right processor in that Shuttle, it would be faster than a G5, it's just that you wouldn't be able to use Final Cut Pro.

Jason, Premiere Pro 1.5 does allow you to edit offline versions of the original video, as well as export to AAF and EDL files for importing projects into Avid and Final Cut Pro. I believe this is a new feature.

Would it be simpler to just use the Prospect HD system?Prospect HD is good, but I have two problems with it-first it's a bit of a proprietary hack on top of Premiere, which I don't think is a good long-form film (24p) editor (having done film editing myself on AVID and FCP), and sort of tries to bypass the shortcomings of Premiere in the high-bit-depth, real-time HD department. There were solutions for FCP a couple years ago like this, and now they're gone, as well as their proprietary codecs. Proprietary codecs that are limited to one platform are also hard to share. And the second strike is that it's expensive. No one should have to pay $20K for a real-time HD system that is compressed, not anymore. Uncompressed yes, compression, no.

My post was based on the assumption that they are going back to film. If that's the case then you don't want compression. If you want a real-time compressed HD system (4 streams on a 2Ghz G5, then again, FCP is the hands-down winner with it's new DVCProHD codecs. They're 4:2:2, have around the same amount of compression as Prospect HD (Prospect is 8:1, I think DVCProHD is 9:1), and have the added bonus of actually being a codec used in a high-definition tape format, so you can simply firewire your project back to a DVCProHD tape deck like the AJ-1200A and play it back on the big screen without $20K worth of equipment. In other words a real-time HD system using the DVCProHD codecs will run you around $6,000 for the G5 (with monitor and some extra RAM) and FCP. Rent the AJ-1200A when you want to output (around $600 per day) to tape, and you're all set, and you're not using a proprietary codec that nobody else is using. This is not a slam against Propect HD, technically it's a good system, it's just that there's not much support for it, you're going to find much more support in a standard codec that comes with Quicktime and can be played back on any Panasonic D-5 or AJ series HD deck that's out there. While Premiere may look cheaper to buy, and PC's sound cheaper, in the end with the total cost of ownership, to do the same thing on the Mac and FCP versus Premiere and a PC, you're going to spend a whole lot more for the PC.

Just my $.02 based on real-world experience.

P.S. The only downside to DVCProHD is that it's an 8-bit codec, while ProspectHD goes up to 10-bits. But again, especially for editing a feature film, you're going to have to work around all the limitations of Premiere Pro, which is not nearly as mature as an AVID or FCP for long-form editing.