I see waht Ben was saying.
http://www.altasens.com/products.html#2

Altasens 3560
anyone know the price range.
thanks

What is the difference between AltaSens ProCamHD 3560 and ProCamHD 2560 Looking at the 2560, it seems that this is well beyond where these chips have been before and I assume it's smaller file sizes as well on footage. Will the 3560 do the same as a 2560 , but if you ever need to use higher res shots for effects work it's always there to shoot with. Or are these two chips very different. What will the price be on a ProCamHD 2560.

What about the KH-F870Ufrom JVC. Or is this way over priced?

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?tree=&model_id=MDL101390&itempath=&feature_id=01

Michael Pappas

Some random stuff:
The Altasens is real - we have had working cameras for about 2 months. Production volumes of the parts is the big problem. They are going through another mask revision (fine tuning) but that can add as much as 8 weeks of delay in shipment. *sigh* Keep in mind that if someone buys an Altasens from us now, we will ship a Micron now with the same interface and package and swap later for no charge.

The good news is that we will probably be releasing the gigabit version at the same time as the production units are ready. This is a sweet spot for transmission - 1920 x 1080 x 30fps x 1.5bytes/pix (packed) = 94MB/sec packed or 75MB/sec at 24fps. This will be fine on both camera link and gigabit ethernet. Anyone know for sure what continuous video rate firewire 800 can sustain?

On the IBIS5A lines, have you tried slowing the clock down a lot? Like in half. If the problem is the speed limited analog stage, the lines will go away at lower speeds. What we saw was the amplifier slew rates were low so as you shifted from a high level on a green to an adjacent red with a low level, the amp would move slowly and look like there was a partial red value. Really messes up the colors.

Anyone know for sure what continuous video rate firewire 800 can sustain?Uh... 800 Megabits a second. Unlike USB2, all Firewire standards have sustained bitrates.What is the difference between AltaSens ProCamHD 3560 and ProCamHD 2560The 3560 is the only chip worth looking at in my opinion. The amazing thing about this chip is that it has the ability to shoot at both 1080p and 720p, while maintaining the same FOV. It does this by skipping pixels on the sensor. So if you want the ultimate in quality, you can shoot 1080, but if you want to conserve disk space or increase your frame rate, you can shoot 720p!

- ben

Only 80% of Firewire's bandwidth is dedicated to isochronous transfers (what you would be using.) For this type of data the theoretically maximum transfer rate is 80MBytes/s over 800Mb/s Firewire.

Ben did you say the this Cmos will allow powering of the camera from the bus?

I'm aiming for 720p for production and for effects work I would go higher. What are we talking in ballpark prices for these.

The Altasens model that Sumix is developing is bus-powered. The gigabit ethernet models could theoretically be powered by PoE (power over ethernet), but that wouldn't work for laptops.

I think the ballpark for these cams is US$4k - 5.5k. I haven't heard price info from Sumix, but that's the range Steve/Silicon Imaging has quoted...

The amazing thing about this chip is that it has the ability to shoot at both 1080p and 720p, while maintaining the same FOVNOT according to the datasheet from Altasens. The 720p-full-FOV mode is for monochrome only, or for a 3CCD camera that can dedicate each chip for red, green, and blue. Sorry about that, if you look back over the thread we were all a little bummed about that slight detail too.

Oh, busted. Nevermind. :)

Markus, when you said an optical solution for a 35mm adaptor, which solution did you use, a condensoe relay lense without projection plain, or are you talking about the Optexint angadaphd? With what ever adaptor you are using, are you getting true 35mm DOF and FOV, or only FOV, and are you getting more brigtness downconverting to 2/3rd, then with straight 35mm film?

Marto, when everybody but me answers it is ussually an indicatgion that it was discussed before a lot, and is in one of the 4 threads. The chip below is more costly, so nobody has built a camera on it.

USB has a large CPU overhead hit, it is better to check for cameras based on Firewire. Gige, Cameralink, or UWB (Ultra Wide band wireless standard for USB2.0 and Firewire, next year).

I have posted Philips firewire IBIS5 cameras in the technical threads too. Some of the variouse Phillips modles have multiple interfaces on them (including VGA preview).

<<<-- Originally posted by Marto Lautz : waht budget are we talking about for a setup like yours I'm maybe willing to spend the mony anyway and then change to some thing better if I can snik the cmos in the production budget. -->>>

I think I read somewhere or a reasonably cheap price for the Sumix Altasens. I forget but I think it might have been somewhere between $2K-3K.

Welcome Michael:

Before you use a laptop, remember that many laptop drives are small and very data rate limited. This limts the max frame, bits, and shutter (if the camera does not memory buffer it). You would have to pick a laptop with a drive and drive interface with enough datarate, or with high interface and replace the little slow drive. 108024fps is likely to be beyond many laptops. Also you need to get a laptop with the right chips to run Giga-bit Ethernet and Firewireb at full speed.

So for laptop it will be much better to get a firewire or Gige (Gigabit Ethernet) camera with on board lossless compression, buffered, packed, to reduce this data rate, and size on disk, to under half. As you can see we are still sorting out what to do with non buffered, non packed, non compressed desktops. But Sumix is supposed to introduce (and SI) an compressed firewire camera eventually, and with the right preview software (they are doing their own capture) it would be a perfect solution for laptops.

We have discussed the KH-F870U from JVC. the original reference article said the price was to be under $2000, and we speculated that it must be $20, 000 instead. The only problem is that I've contacted JVC and they say it doesn't exist, or don't reply. The camera deosn't seem crash hot in range compared to the new altalsens, do you have any information on it?

support denies all existence of the

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Pappas :
What about the KH-F870Ufrom JVC. Or is this way over priced?

http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?tree=&model_id=MDL101390&itempath=&feature_id=01
Michael Pappas -->>>

<<<-- Originally posted by Michael Pappas :
First question I have:
What would it take to get 720P 10bit at 30fps and 24fps. Can a laptop be used for this? What brand cameras are out there that are proven. -->>>

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : NOT according to the datasheet from Altasens. The 720p-full-FOV mode is for monochrome only, or for a 3CCD camera that can dedicate each chip for red, green, and blue. Sorry about that, if you look back over the thread we were all a little bummed about that slight detail too. -->>>

I thought they used some sort of complimentary/primary hybrid colour processing to get over this problem with bayer cameras, from the pdf posted here (or in the technical thread) sometime ago?

Hi Barend!

That's exactly what I was thinking about too. How long could the cables be with GigE? And how "thick" would they be? Eg. for using it on a remote head on a crane or perhaps even on a steadycam... if the cables are really long and flexible this wouldnt be a problem at all.
And although the image quality with 8 bits can be or is great too the posibilities of what you can do with the image in post are quite limited in contrast to what's possible with 10 or better 12bit!
This is a much more "film like freedom" imho... (and that's why I'm still interested in the DVX100 mod from another thread here too ;o)

Cheers

GigE or 1000baseT over copper cables has a listed maximum cable length of 100 meters (CAT6). The cables tend to be very flexible and not much thicker than your usual UTP cable.

Another solution is to use Fibre Channel. An Ethernet to Fibre converter goes for around 150 dollars. You'd need a Fibre card in your recording machine, but then you can use up to 40 km of cable ;-) Should be enough to get to the nearest wallsocket... (That's a joke of course).

Bar3nd

Hello Wayne!

My requirements are pretty low compared to others on purpose. All I need is:

720P
8-bit
24fps @ 1/48th

On purpose I am keeping my requirements at this level. My personal feeling this is perfect for narrative story telling. And since the video won't be compressed when first captured like Varicam-Cinealta does, there is a little room to work with it.

I would have to assume a laptop would work at this level? Am I wrong?

Michael Pappas

I recently spoke to a guy at Norpix (they make the streampix software). He claims that you don not necessarily need a raid to store the images. You can apparently use scsi hard drives that run at 10,000rpm.

Also could anyone tell me if the imperx 1920*1080 camera would be suitale with its 1" interline transfer CCD, it has a "c" mount. Would the optics be good for this since it has the bigger sensor?

The camera has minimum illumination of 1 lux and has a electronic shutter. www.imperx.com

Markus:
I believe that what you are doing is correct, for you. A well informed decision is in knowing where the steep price steps are and finding the level that is right for you. If you can run your recordings over USB 2.0 or firewire into a laptop (maybe you already have it) you are there for a cheap price. If that level of performance is unacceptable and you go to 10 bit or 1080 or both, you need to know the system costs and increase in complexity - the total cost of the decision.

Ben:
The Altasens 720p mode is an odd varient on subsampling. Normally, if you just subsample, you get every second, third, fourth line. The smallest step would be 960x540. On the Altasens, there is a 1.5x subsample. From our manual:Subsampling can be used to readout fewer pixels in the imager at increased frame rates. Four subsampling modes to provide 1.5X, 2X, 3X and 4X lower resolution in each the vertical and horizontal directions:

Due to the use of bayer patterns, only the 3x subsampling cab be used to produce a color image

SUBSAMPLING xF3 00 bits 7-4: vertical subsampling modebits 3-0: horizontal subsampling mode 0 = reading of all rows/columns (full resolution) 1 = not reading every third row/column (2/3 resol.) 2 = reading every second row/column (1/2 resol.) 3 = reading every third row/column (1/3 resol.) I have suggested that a custom Bayer algorithm *might* be able to be used in the 2/3 mode. A serious amount of work would have to be used to see what artifacts you would get since the lines would be:

RGGRRGGR.......
GGBBGGBG......
GGBBGGBG......
RGGRRGGR.......
RGGRRGGR.......

It seems a bit for ripe for color problems (blocks of 4 red and blue and no others nearby) but it *might* work.

Steve Nordhauser do you have systems that can do very good good 720P 8-bit - 24fps @ 1/48th second cinematography?

Michael Pappas

Michael, yes. Email me off this list steve@siliconimaging.com and we can talk about the options. I try to keep sales separate from information to the list. Thanks.

Hi Ben... Thanks for answering my questions.... And everyone else too!

How much bigger is a 10bit 720 capture @ 24fps.. Just curious? vs my setup I would like?

Ben I would love to have full res at 12bit 4:4:4, but it wont be a portable system and it must be 100% portable. Until the higer res 1080P 10bit+ can be portable, the 720 8 bit will have to do....

In studio it can be full res, and that's why I wondered about Altsens since if it can do 720 8bit for portable and when in studio go to the higher res for effects etc work if needed.

For HDTV work 8 bit is good, since all the broadcast content are not anywhere near as good as they could be.

Michael Pappas

Michael,

Yeah -- the idea is definitely similar to the Viper workflow, where you shoot RAW, and then have flexibility later.

720p @ 24fps in 10 bit == 26.3 MB/sec. Still possibly within the range of a 7200rpm laptop hard drive.

Also, keep in mind that with such a low data rate, you can simply capture to RAM. With 2gigs of ram, you could record about a full minute of footage in 720p 10bit. Then it doesn't matter how fast your hard drive is.

The amount of footage you can capture at 1080p in 10bit is much less -- about 30 seconds. Whether or not that's a deal-killer depends on your needs...

I'll be investigating bus-powered RAIDs -- I think it should be possible to bus-power a few mini Firewire800 HDs and raid them together to achieve 60MB/sec.

- ben

Hi Ben

<<<720p @ 24fps in 10 bit == 26.3 MB/sec. Still possibly within the range of a 7200rpm laptop hard drive>>>>>

Gainging two extra bits is good thing... That's not much more data rate then 8bit. So it would be better to go to 10.

There are small mother boards that can be built into a camera body and run on batteries. Then I could instal either an IDE or sata drive if the board supports sata. The camera inclosure would be in the size of a Panavison 35 Panaflex range. So there is room for components. Ofcourse this is putting the carriage before the horse.

Will the Altsens 2560 or 3560 support 10bit 720p?

To Steve Nordhauser
Hi steve I would like to know price of the Altasens over gigabit ethernet and if you have a option of start with IBIS5 and then switch to altasens
you can email me at martinlautz@yahoo.com
I'm looking to work at 1080 12bit 24fs 75mbs so I can go stright to pos.
I think you also where talking about multiple interface taht would be very nice.
I think wath you where saying was that the soket/interface is going to be the same to both cmos IBIS5a and Altasens so you yust have to swap sensors.
also how woud you decrive silicon image software?
thanks very much
Martin Lautz

Director of Photography
Filmverlag Productions
www.filmverlag.com

hey all,

I have been sifting through the pages, and a lot of this is going right over my head.

Would it be possible for someone to setup a webpage outlining all the different config's people are using, and maybe the pricing it cost to put one together ourselves.

I just sold my camera and really want to take a step up into something new.

So these seem like a great way to increase my aquisition and picture quality.

It would really be great if someone could outline it all, because atm i am totally lost as different people are all talking about different stuff and i don't know who's config is who's, which clips i am actually watching and so on.

Thank you,

Zac

Hey Markus,

Looking at your latest uploads and I'm very impressed. Looks like something out of Lord of the Rings :)

If you're making a feature out of this stuff, I'm sure it's going to look really good (although I like the non-clipped highlights stuff the best)

About the Altasens,

You should easily be able to have a silent hard-drive array that can acheive over 100MB/s sustained at RAID0. I'm planning on using the new Seagate Momentus 7200.1 series of drives with the SATA configuration. They're not planned for release till 1Q05, but they're going to be very fast. If that doesn't work, then IDE drives at 7200RPM from Hitachi (7K60) will work great too. On the fastest part of the disk they have read/writes of 38MB/s, and they small, silent 2.5" drives.

Another option is the Seagate Savvio 2.5" 10K SCSI drive. Three of these should do the trick as they have read/writes of 52MB/s on the fastest part, and dip down to 40MB/s on the slowest part.

So again, I don't see recording RAW 1080/24p or 1080/30p @ 12-bit as a big problem. If you want faster special-effects frame-rates (slow-mo), then go down to 1280x720 for 60p recording at 12-bits.

With the Varicam, the A/D converter is running at 10-bits, and on the Cinealta it's running at 12-bits. So what's coming off the chip is at 10 or 12 bits, and then the color-controls in the camera are taking that image and processing it down to 8-bits. With 8-bits your dynamic range is severely limited without causing banding. Again you mentioned 8-bits in your digital still camera, but that camera has a 12-bit A/D converter. I've played with the RAW data off the D60 before (not the non-linear RAW's from the file converter, but the black and white Bayer footage, use Dcraw if you want that stuff), and there's A LOT of room to mess around with. That's what the camera has to work with and then it's finally creating a gamma-corrected. compressed JPEG file for output that you're saying creates no problems. But what you're getting of these cameras is a true linear RAW file, and you'll need more than 8bits of information to really work this footage to get those "professional results" that you're talking about. You either have to have some on-camera controls pre bit-depth conversion (like Markus and Sumix do), or you're going to be recording in the top 5 or 6-bits of the image, which will translate to clipped highlights and not a lot of room to fix them (and if you try to color-balance you'll get some sweet banding artifacts, especially in the shadows ;-)

Another note on the JPEG'd Viper material. That's a LOG encoded file, giving you at 8-bits the same visually perceived bit depth as a 10-11 bit linear image (at 10-bit LOG you have the same visually perceived bit depth as a 14-bit linear image). So to say that you can "work" with that nicely is an understatement. An 8-bit linear file will NOT treat you as nicely or be as much of a joy to manipulate.

Jason Rodriguez, how would this spec be then 720p @ 24fps in 10bit?

At this level it's 26.3 MB/sec this still would allow the use of a portable PC or a built in PC mini mother board into a camera rig.

Michael Pappas

A lot of these questions have previously been covered in the threads, and as an old hand here I would like to answer them for everybody.

Zac:There is a web site that Rob.S has setup with an updatable wiki to keep track of components and configurations, so you can ask Rob and he can give you access to update that:

http://www.obscuracam.com/If anybody wants to go through all the threads and update the wiki with all the factual information (products, systems, workflow and software solutions) and separately theoretical, your welcome, just email Rob.

My Technical discussion thread has links to all the threads in the first post.

Markus:What you said about large storage requirements of 12 bit 1080 is true, 8 bit just requires a person on the camera to set the cameras up for the scene, like any normal movie camera, and as I understand your camera is already reducing 10bit log to 8 bits. Personally I would prefer to use 10bits+ myself for Film and do a lot in post, and ride the settings live for on the spot television (I am one of the few interested in high quality documentary). Theoretically the scheme I would like to use instead is record straight footage (maybe adjusting to maximise range) but riding the image settings in the view finder and then recording those settings with the straight footage as a suggested reference. This then can be used as an quick automatic reference for post image processing, where the expert operator (in a nice calm environment) can interrupt and further adjust it where it needs to be enhanced.

Viper is an old system now and the economics and what can be done has moved on from when it was introduced. There has been solutions suggested for the large amount of storage, one alternative was to back it up on server backup tape, expensive but probably cheaper than X amount of damageable hard drives hanging around. The fastest drives will do over 70MB/s sustained (can somebody verify that??), two drives are not going to kill the bank, a mini motherboard, battery and a sound proof case still adds up to something that can fit into a PD150, smaller than a large movie camera. But with in camera lossless compression your data rate drops in half, allowing 1080p on cheaper drives. The interesting thing now is that visually lossless codecs (which I would use in everything that doesn't require special effects, or some IMAX like resolution upscaling) will do 4:1 on bayer (though they did do 6-10:1 on non bayer)(Avid also has a low compression rate codec that it used on the new Ikegema camera). If we get computers or FPGA that can process that than storage can be further reduced in future.

With the other portability and size problem, you can use Giga Ethernet as suggested, but the new Ultra Wide Band can run standard USB2.0, and Firewire A, wirelessly over 30 feet, so there is another possibility (in future, it would probably need to be adapted to suit camera data, or cameras built that suit it, because of more errors in wireless data) the option to have a small head wirelessly linked to a remote big computer.

But you have done the right thing, and used the most balanced 720p solution that can be currently put together (maybe there will be a super version B of the IBIS one day (though the A version is significantly better than the first one).Michael:Your configuration for 720p camera is good, and what Ben has said is good, but here is the rub. Whatever hard drive your laptop has you have to check for sustained data rate, which is the fastest rate it can guarantee to do all the time without overheating the drive head or unit. There are many things that cause a drive to slow down from it's maximum data rate even going from the inside disk track to the outside will have to different speeds) (the OS and system being very big culprits too, that is why capture software has to be programmed around them for lower speed systems). Big ram and fast drives is the way to go (the ram is used to buffer data and the system software, to allow the capture to have the maximum efficiency). Now sustained is going to be a lot less than max, and the max is usually a lot less than the interface (all that 133MB/S interface stuff doesn't help very much when the max and sustained are less than 50MB/s). So carefully check, I assume that the numbers Ben quoted are the sustained values, older drives are a lot slower. There are storage sites that reviews these figures on drives (but I don't know about laptop drivers) that have been mentioned in the threads before (storage.org is one, I think).

Now with how much data 10 or 12 bits has compared to 8 bits, and I'll throw in the shutter for everybody. If you are using a memory buffered capture device then shutter doesn't really effect capture, but if your not then twice as fast shutter doubles the amount of data that has to go across the interface or capture card. Also the frames are read out slightly faster than the shutter. Now if the camera doesn't pack data properly (particularly cameralink) any pixel over 8 bits in size will occupy 16 bits instead. On a, cheap, unbuffered interface of PCI you get max 80-100MB/s Sustained , USB2.0 and Firewire A around 50MB/s Sustained. Now on an unbuffered/unpacked camera, an approx 24MB/s (+ slightly faster frame readout) bayer 720p, 24FPS, 48th/s, shutter 8 bit needs approx 48MB/s+, you just about maxed out the USB2.0 (also processor hog) and Firewire A interfaces. If you use 10 bits, you have approx 96MB/s and maxed out PCI. So there is no question of using faster shutters. If you get a camera that buffers, packs and compresses there will be some cpu loss to unpacking and decompressing for preview (but if you have the right preview software much better decompression hardware are on machines than compression hardware). So many people are going for 64-bit PCI Cameralink capture cards, that have at least double the data rate of normal PCI/Giga Ethernet, but on a laptop you are limited to 100MB/s Gigae (with specific Intel Gigae chip and driver) or 80MB/s expensive cameralink cardbuss framegrabber (I think they are as much as a laptop, anybody??) . But as far as disk space and data rate goes, you can pack and compress before you send it there.

Proven cameras, well apart from what is used mainly by the broadcast camera companies, Altasens. The IBIS is nice and cheap but I would imagine not as good as the expensive, compressed, HD broadcast ENG. The SI micron camera that Obin was using has better pickup/colour, but smear etc and global shutter :( (new version please). Actually a question for Steve, are they going to release a new version or 720p capable camera? The 3MP 1080p Micron camera from SI is problem free, but requires a lot more light. Now there are a lot of cameras out there, they usually are Micron, IBIS, or CCD chips from the major broadcast camera manufacturers, or now Altasens, so choice is limited in cmos.

If your looking for everybody else's clips they have previously been posted, mostly here. You could probably search for them (select search by page option, feed in thread title and do www OR ftp OR http OR whatever extensions). I think Obin and most of the usuals must be busy at the moment. I currently am working on/finishing some political stuff, and am just feeding in some stuff before I pack up and go on a long break from all this, so I won;'t be around for to much either.

Anyway with compression/packing/buffering I think that you can go 12bit 4:4:4, 1080.

We have discussed mini-PC boards in time past (P4, PM, VIA, Mini ITX (17cm*17cm) and nano ITX (12cm*12cm/8cm??), all the Intel small formfactors, and FPGA (there was a thread for that even).If anybody would like to do something, please do, and discuss it with us. If anybody wants to summarise on the Wiki, Laurence you might like that, so that everybody else can read it instead of the threads, please do. Otherwise read the threads and discuss. The problem at the moment is the threads are too big to read and the same issues get asked so many times that I guess it is too tiring for most to answer them again, if only there was a faq post/or link available at the start of every technical/Alternative imaging thread over 80 posts ;) ?

Rob, I notice that you have been really busy on the Developement Blog, how's things going?

Thanks

Wayne.

Hi,

I'm following this thread with a lot of attention and clearly I would like to develop my own HD camera solution.

As a software engineer, i'm not afraid by doing bayer filtering or handle this amount of raw data. (May be I'm wrong !)

My main question is about which sensors/implementations to use (I'm a little bit lost) ?

If I believe what Markus (nice job man) said, the global shutter seems to be not the best solution, indeed.

Can we go now with the existing sensors/solutions provided by silicon imaging for example or is it better to wait for some months.

ps : I could be interesting to join a starting project. My goal is to shoot a movie much more than doing homeworks after a full day of programming for a living.

BTW, if you adobt the DNG format from Adobe, you won't have to worry about bayer filtering (let Photoshop, Phase One, etc. do it for you in a very nice interface)!

Also Wayne, while the 16-bits for anything over 8-bits is true with the EPIX cards, with the GigE adapter, there's a buffer on the adapter that now supports packed bits, so you can transfer only 12-bits from the adapter over the gigabit ethernet line, which can give you up to 30fps @ 1080 with 12-bits (800Mbs transfer rate over GigE).

Also for the preview software, instead of decompressing the 12-bits, either use a look-up table to map it to 8-bit, or just clip off the top 4 bits and look at the bottom 8 bits (or say the middle 8-bits, chop off the top two and bottom two bits). The "clipped-bit" setting shouldn't take much processor resources at all.

Another thing to beware of is the fact that the Pentium M is a very fast little processor. It's SPECINT2000 scores are 1500+!! SPECFP2000 was a little over 1000, again, nothing to sneeze at for such a small little package and plenty of horsepower to do what we need.

Thanks for the infos Jason.

Will you go for IBIS or SI solutions with for example the upcoming 1920.

Btw, I was looking for a dual proc. mother board.

BTW, if you adobt the DNG format from Adobe, you won't have to worry about bayer filtering (let Photoshop, Phase One, etc. do it for you in a very nice interface)!Really?! How would that work? I've never used the DNG format before.

All of this really is amazing. I can't wait until we get a fully functional Altasens cinema camera working with the bugs worked out. I'd buy one in a heartbeat.

Where do you guys think we will be two years from now? Will you guys still be working on improving your cinema cameras or do you think some of the larger companies will actually give in and give the public what it wants? I'm probably not going to need a camera for another year or so and I am very excited about the prospects!

The images look great Rai and Markus, thanks for sharing them.

So for now we know that:

Chip: IBIS5A with some unknown (custom?) D/A converter
Resolution: 1280 x 720 x 8 bits @ 24 fps
Media: harddisk

Are you guys going to put up any pictures of the camera? Would
be interesting to take a look at how it is together with a RAW
frame grab either in uncompressed BMP or before bayering.

Michael Pappas: it's great to have you onboard!

Flax: global shutter IS the BEST way to go. The other option is
rolling shutter and that gives you a skew on the image if either
the camera is moving (fast) or your subject(s) is/are.

Steve: did you say in an earlier post that you guys have
implemented your own A/D converter on your IBIS5A product
to insure a better SNR?

Aaron: DNG is like RAW file format from Canon (basically). So yes,
photoshop allows you to do a debayer. The only issue is that it
will (I assume) only do this one frame at a time. That's not good
for movie work...

Jason: you can't easily clip 10 or 12 bits to 8 bits. I tried that and
got strange results. Here's why, consider the following 10 bit value:

11 0000 1101

If you strip the top two bits you get 1101, which is a much, MUCH
darker pixel than the original color, so you would at least need
to make sure the high bit is set on the 8 bits if the 9th of 10th bit
was set.

Rob:
We use a 12 bit A/D so statistically you get more dynamic range, if you clean up the image (offset and gain correction). You also get better response than the sensor A/D at higher clock rates SNR at 24fps (depending on the actual clock rate) might be the same.

The issue with the global shutter on the IBIS-5A (OK there are several) is that it can't overlap integration and readout. This means if you run the clock at 22MHz (1280x720x24fps), you would get no exposure time (about right for flash applications). If you want 1/48th sec exposure times, you can expose for 1/48th and readout in 1/48th (45MHz clock) to get a 24fps frame rate but that is really pushing the internal A/D - that is why we do the external. Of course 30fps is only worse. The first thing you will see is color impurity - pixel level smearing that gives the sensor a washed out, low contrast look.

The IBIS-5A also runs in rolling shutter mode and can overlap the integration and readout, but then all you are gaining over the Micron is the larger format (2/3 instead of 1/2) in trade for noise and sensitivity with the Micron cameras costing less.

Idealy though I would want a LUT to map from 12-bits to 8-bit for the screen, but I'm not sure how long that would take to map out.

What if you just took the top 8-bits for preview, is that computationally easy? What are other software that are packaged with frame-grabbers doing? I remember at NAB going over to the Altasens booth, and they were showing an HD image on the screen playing back in real-time from the camera (in this case a 3560 demo unit) in 1920x1080. So playback is possible, but I'm not sure if they're throwing away bits or what to get the real-time fast playback.

Also I guess playback only needs to update at around 24-30fps, anything else I think is overkill for playback preview, and it has a comutational cost on top of "typical" playback speeds.

The only issue is that it will (I assume) only do this one frame at a time. That's not good
for movie work...Photoshop can do batch conversions (you have to set up an action), as well as Phase One's DSLR Pro (which has very nice interface for tweaking colors, white balance, sharpening, etc.). The nice thing about DSLR Pro is that it can also do background conversions while you operate on new scenes in the foreground, so it maximizes the efficiency of your machine while still giving you great images.

Do you think some small company will be selling 1080 24p systems in the next 3 or 4 months? Ballpark, how much are we looking at for the whole kit and kaboodle, including the hard drives, assembled camera, etc.?

I know this is a long thread, but to prevent mass repetition, please look over at least the last couple pages before posting.

Sumix, Silicon Imaging and possibly others will be releasing Altasens-based 1080p cameras whenever they get the chips in. Steve has said there may be an 8 week wait for them to get chips, so you can probably tack on a month or two to that date.

You should contact Steve or Sumix directly for a quote, but I believe the ballpark for these cameras will be US$4k -- 5k. That doesn't include a computer to capture with. Depending on your needs, you could get by on as little as an upgraded laptop, for about $2k.

thanks for the info, Ben, I did read the last twenty five pages but even reading that many it wasn't clear.

Can I ask you guys who have used streampix why it is such a bad workflow? I know everyone agrees that it sucks, I am just wondering what features don't really work well. Also as far as the Gige interface is concerned, would it be possible to use a switch to send the signal to 2 computer one that handles recording and one that handles a realtime full res preview? Would that be something that was worth doing or does the preview not really take much of a toll on the system?

Preview should be fine. I've seen it done before, such as the Altasens booth at NAB. They were previewing 1920x1080 on a monitor, and it was working fine. So I don't see why there'd be any problem, especially with fast processor.

BTW, Obin, did you ever figure out what was hampering the performance of your capture app?

Good day. Vance did this (he is on this board too):

Why not use a mechanical shutter? We could use the best Chip
regardles what shutter is implemented

still my dream to convert an S16 or 35 mm

ronald

I've split off most of the posts on this thread on the new "Drake"
camera system by Rai & Markus to a NEW THREAD. This
for the following reasons:

1. this thread is already pretty long
2. with a working camera out much attention will go to this new camera system and thus a lot of posts
3. since the camera is working it is no longer in primary development (it is being futher developed) and thus is not really at place in this thread

You can find the new thread at the following link:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34339

Please continue conversations on this camera there. We understand
that sometimes technology and discussions go from one subject
to another, but please try to keep them in their respective threads.

For the same reason it was a pretty hard job to split the threads
correctly but I believe a pretty good balance has been found, but
some pieces in both threads might read a bit strange with some
pieces of a conversation missing (I've tried to avoid this as much
as possible)

Thank you for consideration!

Rob, common, can't we go for a world record on the web ;)

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob LaPoint : Also as far as the Gige interface is concerned, would it be possible to use a switch to send the signal to 2 computer one that handles recording and one that handles a realtime full res preview? -->>>

That is an excellent idea, you don't even need a second computer, all you need is a simple FPGA based circuit to pick up the second stream and convert it to monitor output. Steve, that could even cheaply be included in the camera with monitor port (like Phillips does with it's industrial cameras). Or you can get a faster computer (once the software si fully developed slow down from preview will be a small fraction).

<<<-- Originally posted by Flax Johnson : Hi,
My main question is about which sensors/implementations to use (I'm a little bit lost) ? -->>>

Flax, the truth is that the Drake is probably the closet to a working commercially available cinema system, with all the IBIS-5 drawbacks. The cameras for Obin and Rob's systems are available, but the software maybe soon, but the real performance prize of Altasens is, as said, months off.

Alltogether I am pretty dissapionted with present CMOS sensors, with Alatsens being one of the turn around products. Recently I posted a link to a long electronic engineering article in the technical thread that questioned the reality of the inferiorities of CCD's, maybe we should have had a look at that too (what is the imperex like ??).

Jason:

No argument, I'm just listing all the possibilities new people should check out when looking at a camera.

About the preview thing. I think I was talking about the advantages and disadvantages of a lossless compressed pixel stream from the camera compared to an uncomrpessed one, that is where the decompression word came in as one of the possible disadvantages of using a compressed camera head.

Rob: actually I'm reconsidering it, maybe we will eventually need a "Home made & Lossless Digital Cameras & Mods" area, where Cinema, Documentary and Video people can talk it out. After we get 100 regular people all consistantly talking about this I think we will have enough traffic.

Wayne: I thought we crossed that mark already a while ago ;-)

yes, in the end it may be best to open a sub forum to talk about
the special homemade (HD) camera's. The time isn't there at this
point though.

As you know there are currently 3 major things going on in this forum:

1. making our own 35mm lens adaptors

2. Juan's project to adapt the DVX to RAW uncompressed output

3. and our HD camera project

At the moment this is a nice amount of traffic for this forum. No
need to split it up at this point in time. Ofcourse we will keep an
eye on how things develop. It is certainly a very interesting time!

For whom it may concern: I had a small talk with Rob S. and he
has been very busy (as we gathered) with other activities that
he had to do. He was confident he would return to the project
shortly. I myself am ready to start working at optimizing some
stuff again as well. Unfortunately we all need to juggle this project
with a lot of other things.

Two approaches here. We do support something called multicasting where one camera data can be broadcast to multiple computers - possibly one for preview one for record. Second, using the custom GigE drivers on an Intel Pro1000 interface card, there is almost no CPU overhead to move the data to system memory since it is all DMA driven. I would assume that a fast write to a RAID buffer would be the same. Other than bus bandwidth issues, preview should be easy. Now that I think about it, even the bus isn't a problem since the CPU will read data out of memory and send to the AGP - no bus traffic added on the PCI bus.

Hmm, some of the southbridge chips (ICH5-R) have built in two drive SATA RAID capability. This reduces the bus traffic to one pass. 32 bit machines could be enough even for 1920x1080 @ 30fps 12 bit.

Thanks for the relpies. I know most people are trying to get away from being to tethered to just one computer but for some reason I am intrigued with what could be done in realtime with two computers (if one was dedicated to only capturing.)

We all agree that 12 bits is the way to go for the latitude that it gives you in post. But when you are actually exposing for maximum color information the look of the raw image is bad before correction. I know some people were trying to figure out which 8 bits of the 12 to use for a preview when recording in 12 bit mode. Could a second computer do a rough realtime color correct and downcovert to 8 bits for preview? If the second computer could then store that color correction data it would be very similar to the tools panasonic has for the varicam (although they have to do it that way because they are trapped with 8 bits.)

This would obviously only be a nice accessory and not influencial to the working of these systems. Any DP worth his weight in salt can tell you what your latitude will be with some light readings and a knowledge of the camera. But on the same token for a director it would be nice to look at an apple cinema display on set with a beautiful image and toy with the color settings right there. Then if the settings were saved it would speed up correcting in post as only minor 'tweaking' would be needed.

Yo guys,

A second computer???

Are you kidding me??

Like one isn't complicated enough!! ;-)

Actually I do find it sort of interesting that you can "multicast" the data, one thing this could lead to is a computer for 1080/60p super high-res slow motion, and then the portable computer for 720/60p and 1080/30p (since hard-drives aren't easy to come by.

hmmm . . . .

How small is the smallest switch you can get (would it fit inside a portable app)?

Rob LaPoint:

My thoughts exactly, no second guessing, do it right on set and store what the director (or whoever) wants straightup along with the frames to speed up correction after. A good suggestion for a future version of the capture app.

Jason, that DNG format, as everything have to be batched processed, would it be possible to have a file with extra cinema data inbetween each frame (including multichannel sound), and have Photoshop pickout the frames, and maybe use the colour settings?

No audio in the DNG format.

But I for one don't think you need it. After all, Hollywood is basing their digital-cinema workflow off of DPX and OpenEXR files, and those don't carry audio either.

In order to carry audio you can't have a frame sequence.

One thing you can embed in the DNG format is timecode if you want.