I'm not exactly sure what the benefits of an optical viewfinder would be, outside of resolution.

The downside of having to split the image with a prism is that you cut the amout of light that hits the CCD in half. Which basically says you need twice the amount of light on set.

Seems to me that that might cost more in the end, than a decent video viewfinder.

And I'm not sure why you're referring to Kreines when you bring up the optical viewfinder. The Kinetta uses a video display for it's viewfinder AFAIK.

And what exactly would be the benefit of 4 smaller chips compared to 1 Altasens? If it's just the imager size...

Bar3nd

Steve look at their news section instead, they haven't been keeping their parts section up to date, they announced 3 or more new models in past months (they also didn't respond to me with details) and only some chips have the data rate. I looked at the first 2MPixel?? announcement, and even if it can be programmed for video it is no Altasens, but for visually loosless video/doco probably better than any single chip HDV coming out. I think these had (long time ago have pricessor engines on board). The thing is how do they compare to the IBIS5 at a fraction of the price. The whole idea was for a low end model of the camera, I thought that would also be a significant advantage for the security and machine vison markets?

Anyway the Samsungs are only thrown in for good measure, the real "potential" prize is the other manufacturer I think.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Wayne, I went to their website and banged around the sensors a bit. The largest 1.3MPix is still only 1/3" If you do that, you might as well take a known clean sensor like the Micron 3.2Mpix (no smearing, 1/2") and window it down to 720p. We have that now - Obin is working with it. The Micron 1.3Mpix advantage is the larger pixel size (more sensitive, shallower DOF). -->>>

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese : Dear Wayne: dektop graphics machine in a SUV, Van, Volkswagen-bus sbaop the array in Cinarella on Linux is not bad free and HD ready !! -->>>

I have had no success in getting people here to talk to them, or them to talk to us.

With the 4 CCD thing, I have brought up this idea in times past, withg the Olympus SHD (that uses this technique as an example). I am now of the conclusion, why not have 3 chip camera with pixel shift for each chip to get higher than 2Mpixel resolution.

I have had an old Palm Pilot they could do around 30 characters, and the newer ones around 60 characters accross you could just keep the lines to this, or better you could just do continuose text (within the paragraph) and allow dvinfo do the line wrap.

We have talked about the Porro arrangements in the 35mm adaptor threads before, and I think I suggested it for the 4 CCD arrangement before. The problems are that even though it is cheap, you have to protect from dust and grime, miss-alingment, thermal expansion (as it heats up it goes out of allignment, a real pain unless you design a automatic system to track and realign it). So If you start with a solid prism you aviode all these problems. Never the less I have been considering a personal 3 chip prism like alternative, along with an 35mm adaptor.

About the cameras, this is really a SI Micron/Altasens camera like thread (until something better comes along). People got bored of talking about other cameras a long time ago, but feel free too, I would like to see it discussed, even if others wouldn't, so maybe if people post and discuss these cameras in my technical thread everybody might be happy. Obviously Rai is reaping rewards from finding a better IBIS camera. This reminds me of speaker threads I've recently been on, just because company A hasn't been better than company B, every new speaker from company A must be inferior to B, even if the 'fanboys' haven't listened to either. Which means that who ever does the research can have speakers that walk over the elitest fanboys favourites (to their continual hysterical annoyance). My research suggestion above are just meant to do that at the bottom end. We started these threads with the idea of cheap, under $5K digital cameras (raw but now visually lossless as well) versus expensive Viper, Sony and Kinetta, that has slipped a bit. But if we are going to have $5K+ systems I think we should also have $1K+ system (which includes $2K+), the quality difference is such as to have a suitable two tier market. I have a really cheap system in mind but keep it to myself to stop interference. I've basically decided against doing it by myself, but will be after suitable volunteers when the time comes, which will be next year when the finale components come within price range.

Wayne.

Re: Barend Onneweer
a Romboid Prism ist not spliting an image or beam so it takes, it has no light loss depending of price and quality a beam deviation +- up tp 30 arc seconds it take the picture out of center taht"s all.

Re : Wayne merci....as Hifi has been my hobby time ago I know a lot of this behave, funny for recording and productin I work with speakers they regard as srap .... Mirrors or porro - there is a way to avoid themal shift, vibration, etc, working with trihedral prisms, they are used with laser and as mirrors are realy a pain to set up in resarch well known.

ronald

<<<-- Originally posted by Joshua Starnes : Obin, you had mentioned going back down to 8-bit because 12-bit was causing too many headaches. Are you still thinking about doing that, or are you going to go ahead with the Altasens chip at 12-bit. Is the 3300 of a high enough quality to shoot a good picture with? -->>>


Yes the 3300RGB is a really good chip and it will work..it's the datarate and preview update while captureing that we are working on now..we have a live preview in full color working fine but when we go to capture things really slow down and start skipping frames. Once this is worked out I will have "firmware" that works and we can start to build the entire case design and camera system....I hope this will happen very soon.

the 1300rgb is not a chip that can be used becuase of smear. Silicon Imaging's 3300RGB 1/2inch 3.2megapixel camera has great images and will run at 1080x1920 8bit and 10bit as soon as we get the framerate on preview up

I will post some images soon from the faulty captures we are getting now. They will be 8bit

Gabriele: Obin's RAW clips aren't readable by any normal program.
You will need programming skills to read them at this point in time.

Obin,

BTW, are you finding out if the problems are programming-related or are problems with the chipset? If the chipset, I'm still quite curious what chipset you're using, i.e., processor speed, northbridge, southbridge, integrated graphics, etc.

This info would really help us out here to know what's necessary for these camera systems.

I am buying a MicroATX board and shipping to our programmer for final work!

things are looking up again...I have seen the "light" and captured 1080p images! i'ts not at full 24fps but close...

Hm
a bit sarkastic, have a look at
http://www.dynebolic.org/
,it is a live CD you can nest on a pc, open Mosix What does ist do for us ? Run on two PC it will build easy, dump easy a cluster. It has Cinarella just ready to start, Jahshak, Gimp, it is the only LINUX out there for video or streaming music.
I've been far too long working for Intel, but only realtime. So we used Sun, embedded and strange hardware but all documents were written with Framemaker or Quark. look to any 200 or more pages Microsoft documentation, never written with Word !!

Will sayCinarell is not bad at all, I do use KNOPPIX, the easy way to get a full Debian not tested, unstable - rocksolid, as rocksolid as my beloved bi-pro SGI Octane from 1999. So Jahshasa is not Combustion but free, Cinarella can do HD even know by the big's in film biz.

As Linux is in set-top boxes, Cellphones, etc at all is GNU the Camear board coul run it as well, as the code from doo google some video for Linux is free, not Cinarell the way would be with Epix to have a Cameralink oot and an Gig Ether in. For me the only doing the job today.

Oh a bit more sorry
Ther is DV out and for consumer ther will be DV tape or maybe blueray. Interframe compression but never ever wireless or Gig ether. why.

Me strated music with five, break jump in the recording biz with 16 part time. We did Charles Mingus and much more like ECM in Munich but from a small village in the black forest. MCM gone far ago. It was easy, we bought an old famous mixing desk, tube gear nobody wanted anymore, 1972, and so on it has been a great time.

Today the entry level for live recording is very expensive, and look to http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=34533 it's like all the time with music, no answer only how to mic this, what to take and is X realy better than y.
Why writing this, there is a lot of software out, running most on Windows, RME card are fantastic, but Windows is no way to have it on the road, ask the DOD. Army is the reason that somebody as SGI is still alive.

What is my love with film?
Well ist's my Eclair modded for S16 with an Acl 2 motor running up to 75 fps. Angenieux Paris f 10-150, 1:2,8 and converted from a russian Kinor F-6 mm wide angel. 1:1.8.
I do use film that pasted the date and know somebody who precesses DIY. I did it with color and Dia all th time DIY.
Than I do scan it with a scan unit out af a Pentacon Scan cam
on an old huge cutting desk, producing zillions of tiffs. scropping the image and it looks great.
It's not cheap, takes lot of disk space and so on.
But I do have no Pixel, no bayer no artifacts nothing, it only takes to scan a real a day or even more and has to be dust free. I do have the film allways as a eternal backup, well fire or moisture can eat it away.

To Wayne
you had the idea with the 2 CMOS setup on in the place of the penta prism and one in the film plane. So why not use 4 all the setup in some high tech plastic, carbon or so sealed, glued together, most airplanes are "glued" together nowadays.
Why so crazy, one Altasens is even not the S16 format
The Foveon with the low resolution can group pixels together, thats not bad, he is 3 layer, and four of these would give a real nice DOF could be $$ but ... reolution ? but low light and so on, no bayer 3 Cmos in one chip.

Think of it, on a 35mm camera ther is, ok shutter speed no way to have another setup no gamma no look no no no.
Why the hell to have it on our baby, the viewfinder issue is not easy and religion. All the rest is lunatic, go out and look to a S16 or 35mm shooting. That's Film and needs a crew, that's not video, and now we have the force that drives us mad, cost of production. You can do 35mm or better S16 with team of two and even some ambient sound, the rest is post roduction and why change this. A lot of indie, documentation and even drame was shot this way. The price of Kreines cam drives me mad that's a fact.
What is the issue with me?
Well I do need to adjust speed, to have exposure shutter as with an Eclair, Aaton , Arri, toged rid of noisy motor and cumbersum expensive film, but have S16 DOF at least, nicer would be nera 35mm DOF. Relolution could even be 2x blown up in post, why not
but no Argus, ground glass or so, as it takes light away and there is never too much light in film

merci

Ronald.. are all your messages translated from french into english by a computer program? It kind of sounds like it? or i mean.. um.. sound of kind like why not.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman : Gabriele: Obin's RAW clips aren't readable by any normal program.
You will need programming skills to read them at this point in time. -->>>

Thanks Rob, What softwere i need?

Best regards
Gabriele

Obin's .RAW images, if they are in sequence (I mean one .RAW for every frame) can be opened with no problems on Photoshop.
You just need to know resolution and bit depth.

Hi juan

i have tryed with photoshop but the pictures is all Black!

I think before we must use a softwere wich "read"that raw file and convert it in tiff ecc.....

Rob.........?

Best reghrds
Gabriele

It is all black cause you need to apply gamma correction of at least 2.6

Hi
or good evening as we have 22.08 here near Bordeaux, 10 miles from the ocean, 70 miles of free beach , surfer's paradise and not only, but very good red wine. I've been with the local Linux-video group, French. German, Uk, Irish and Down Under mix, Chateau Marbuzet 1997, talking english and french, hacking live in my wi-fi palmtop a new mix, maybe a phonetic version, of fernchlish or so.
Fact is this year in Montreux I got in hold of a JVC box cam with the altasens in, an PL/mount adaptor and an angenieux fitted to it. Swiss television doing tests to use it with cycle races like Tour de France together with france 2. Really nice pictures, crisp, fantastic, wonderfull but so sorry, sounds so stupid, anlog magic was missing and even not the DOF, still not S16 and far, far away from any russian cheap rugged 35 mm.
As I told all the world here, my eclair and my aaton they are heavy, rugged rocksoild, they have no gain, no fancy switches, nothing to setup, only shutter, speed and that's okay. The zoom alone takes all my brain, the scene, the actors and light the rest, using a staement of the big-ones: it is painting with light. A retired , sorry but true, russian cameraman doing DIY processing, and I use an old cutting desk, with a Pentacon Scan cam going on SCSI producing zillions of tiffs. aAbatch procedure take of the perforation and a friend wrote with the http://www.montivision.com/products/
free SDK a batch procedure that takes the tiff's out of a folder and buiilds an avi out of it. Mplayer on Linux will do so too I guess. Cianarella pops up that's it, real low budget, only hunting for cheapo 16mm material is not easy at all, and my home scan saves $$ does a good job as any photo scan but it's not the fastest on the block.
So I do think have a look at www.dynabolic.org it's open mosix, a linux that will build from two boxes, dead easy a cluster, has Cinarella,Jahshaka and much more allredy ready to run and it is the only Linux for video and music streaming. One new AMD and two older one's 2500+ and the Cinarell render farm, is up running, that's low indie budget. Linux is not more tricky than Windof any more, I'm using Knoppix too a live CD you can install and the easy way to have a full rocksolid unstable Debian running, openoffice even open's all word files so dual boot you have it all and with ext3 or reiser or SGI file system your are much better as Fat or any windows file system.
Dynabolic can hack any windows disk ands sending the files to a box next to it. FilmGimp is a bit kodak and just fine, low budget free. Google for Video for Linux = Cinarella, Mainactor, free with Suse, Kino there sure not HD the last ones but the code can be hacked there are even some not mature basic ones but all the code is GNU, the code for the gig ethernet should be anywhere out in the www linux world. maybe you have found it already.

good night
and merci

So in the Cam-Computer shuold as in set-top boxes cell-phone run an open OS why not any flavour of Linus, the code is free
with an epix camarlink to giga converter i do guess a lot of problems are gon. Kinetta idea of i-pod-Toshiba 2.5''disk as an array is not bad, nt expensive anymore as 1.8'' are out but the Kinetta price tag drives me mad.

DynabolicThat's http://www.dynebolic.org/ in case anyone is interested. It looks interesting, from what the web site says.

I am buying a MicroATX board and shipping to our programmer for final work!

Obin, glad to hear everything is working, but what board did you have before???

I want to avoid that chipset, or at least be able to deduce what might have been wrong. I hope you don't feel like I'm getting on your case, but for the sake of the rest of us here, so that we don't repeat your mistakes, please, please, list the specs of your current board-set.

This means:

Processor,
Chipset (Northbridge, Southbridge)
Memory Type
Graphics (or embedded graphics) chipset.

I do not believe that this is such a difficult question, and it's quite annoying that I've had to ask it so many times. If something's not working (and this goes for everyone here), please list what it is that's not working so we can all avoid the same mistakes and not constantly re-invent the wheel!

I will try and get that info for you in the morning Jason/// All I can say is STAY away from SIS onboard stuff!! and DON"T buy the cheapest mother board you can get your hands on ;) IT won't work.


I will try and get a few 1080P frames for everyone to see in the morning also...it will be 8bit as that is all that is supported on the EXPORT from my SOftware at the moment...

Ideas from artists:

The technical side is not all. As Ronald say: The JVC altasens work well, but has not the spirit of Movie pictures. But why?

Video Camara Producers create cameras to shoot the best pictures. Technical datas of the top modells, like Sony HDW-F900 or Panasonics Varicam, sounds perfect, but why are those "best pictures" all time look like video, and not like film? Why?

This is a point for all people who wont shoot movies, not for TV docus, or news. There are worlds between HDTV (TV) and filmmaking (cinema). The JVC altasens is create for (HDTV) TV. 60fps is HDTV, it´s not movie like.

But there are a lot of things more to have "Film Look":

DOF, motion blur, fps, resolution, Colors, etc.

And it is not only one of this. As Markus said: Don't see one technological element isolated. Not the DOF, not the resolution, not the bit depth of the image. When everything does not lead to something that you can put on a normal tripod with the workflow of a super16 (or35mm) camera engeneers might be happy, but cameraman and directors wont.

Since 1984, my company made also parts and solutions for filmmakers and movie productions.

Thats why we started with a desire list, from cameramans and directors, to build our HD indi filmcamera DRAKE. Sorry the web side is not online yet, because Markus (the director of the movie) and his team continue shoot his fantasy film "Drachenfeder" (Paladin) with our camera.

www.drachenfeder.com (german infos about the movie)

more about the DRAKE camera you find here:

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

In the past we build working HD 35mm Adapters, but for drake we found a other way for the DOF solution. (Its mutch more than other 2/3", also more than S16mm. Its between S16mm and 35mm, lets say like 25-27mm).

I found, the first real "film" like digital camera is the ARRI D20.

Our final goal is also a camera with a real 35mm CMOS Sensor. Now, after we found a (relatively) inexpensive CMOS Sensor, the timeline for a 3 chip camera with build in HDD´s will be autumn, next year.

In the meantime we will test also a altasens solution, but only with additional film funktions (external shutter etc.)

Ronalds idea is not wrong. A Cameraman, who worked day by day with 35mm film cameras, dont like menus with thousends of submenus. Those cameras have a optical few finder and you have no preview of that, what you shoot. The only thing may be is a little video camea (why not a HD camera), mounted on the view finder.

The way to handle our max data with 3chips (3 x 2Mpixel, at 24fps with 12Bit = 225MB/Sec) will by a FGA System with 3 HDDs (75MB/Sec for each HDD). But, if you wont you can switch down the resolution and Bit depht. Maybe we will have a optical view finder.

75 MB/s per harddisk SUSTAINED? That sounds a bit like magic
at this point in time. Personally I'd much rather have an electronic
viewfinder with histograms and zebra patterns personally (which
also happens to be far easier to implement than an optical one!)

Hm
hm can be
there is one bord out it on the si imaging page listet, Camaralink and SCSI 160 controller it can do this with the right number of drives, with scsi 320 you can do this even on a board with only one slot,. take a riser card and have two 2 chanel SCSI controler no you have 4 SCI chanels. Maybe there is a card that can do three chanels. I do guess everything exists in the pc world, there is only no easy way to get hold of it.

SATA I do not believe, but maybe somebody did the trick.

Firewire Disk could be, sounds cool to me, who knows about, cheap easy, but native Firewire and not a rewired ol IDE please.

Ronald: the card is not the problem, SATA or UDMA 5 can do this
as well. I'm interested to see a drive that does that sustained
when WRITING. That would be 10.000 RPM drives then? If so
that would be interesting in regards to heat and power
consumption.

with a PC or embedded system, its not easy possible, but with a FPGA direct to disk writing. You must know, the PC bus, are the problem, also if you use a raid system. Bit write direkt to disk (and the good thing is, HDDs writes intern 16Bit, not only 8Bit), you will have the max. speed a HDD can handle. Since CEBIT 2004 there are a lot of HDDs with this speed over 70MB/Sec. CEBIT 2005 bring more news with low power. If not, why not 4,5 or 6HDDs?. We had testet the direct writing thing together with a company who made digital high speed osziloskops with build in real time HDD memory. They have a FPGA with direct to disk writing, no buffer ram. You must know, the HDD have no file systems, because there is no window, no linux, no CPM, nothing, only a smal MC with a 500Byte ASM init prog. They can write with max speed (82MB/Sec to one HDD) till the HDD is full. For a camera, its will be like a film roll.

Okay, our Drake camera have now an electronic realtime color viewfinder with histograms and some other functions.

But the "big 3 ship solution" will come (maybe) with a optical fewfinder, but maybe someone found a solution to handle a preview screen in realtime also for this data speed

Fine sounds realy promising what you are doing. Today it's still morning and my writing an a 24'screen much more easy. Me German living in France in hackemovies known for my haiku style brain dumps as fast-ronald, would like, even if I'm more than 1000 km south to be usefull to your projext if there is any use for me.

It,s fine to have a zebra and all this in a viewfinder, I've worked 20 years, not fulltime, never having one in my viewinder, so I'm old fashioned, but I do know that a S16 or even russian 35mm viefwinder can be bright...bright, you have to close it, but reading a smalish lcd with the, we call it sun, we are waiting for all the time to shine.. s puire pain.. Something like a DIY steadycam rack and a small monitor is wokable you need a nice belt with cells so a bit training is never wrong at all.

The difference film even documentation and Video,-ENG is with film you have to be patient, and if it is indie low low budget you have not only to be patient with your crew, be patient with youself. A HD cam shuold be dead easy to operate, it has to work even in rain and ready to shoot when this magic sunlight with a rainbow pops up. An S16, 35mm if loaded can do this and nobody is craying for cama, Smartcard, configuration,no, after 60 seconds the magic is gone.

It's like photo, a Nikon F4 with a back for 70 meters fire it up like mad, no time to write high dev raw on disk. I do DIY processing here, scan it in and have my magic. Working with my still in love Mamiya Rb67 and scan it in via Umax mirage II two it even dos enot fit on a 24''screen and can be 260 MB that's way cool.
Umax Mirage II need no driver wit Knoppix Debian, just works.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese : Hi
I've been with the local Linux-video group, French. German, Uk, Irish and Down Under mix, Chateau Marbuzet 1997, talking english and french, hacking live in my wi-fi palmtop a new mix, maybe a phonetic version, of fernchlish or so. Yes, that will explain it, it sounds like the gramma of a foreign language applied to English with some alternative vocabulary words. English people, about the most, understand Yoda, is ;)Fact is this year in Montreux I got in hold of a JVC box cam with the altasens in, an PL/mount adaptor and an angenieux fitted to it. Swiss television doing tests to-->>>Hrrrr, I've been trying to get them to tell me the price of that product for the last x months, but they say it is not on their product list. I originally intended to use one of these with Cineralla, these projects went off the rail (in price direction or performance). So which model box camera and how much is the JVC box camera?. I have heard of an optical angenieux Film lense adaptor, would you know if that converts to DOF optically, or just FOV.

You talk about using Linux, and yes future pocket computers will have over 1GHz, maybe this year or next, then dual core, media processing etc etc. Clearly superior to PC is size and power consumption, if you can use it at cheap enough price. I have allways advocated Toas Intent and Elate VOS system, it will run under Windows or Linux, or many other embedded systems, very fast for an VOS (even their JAVA engine (the competition) has been the fastest PC Java system for years) very superior to other systems. (new Amiga player VOS and QNX OS use it). I design my own OS, and his is the only OS who's spec sheet comes closet to mine (please note, my OS is clean roomed designed, my reference texts ussually go back before 1980's). So I say why not use Toas product to make something works accross many systems, instead of Intel.

Glueing chips to make a big sensor, the problem with gluing them is that the chips has boarders with circuits etc and so you can't make the sensor area match up (ussually) so using a prism (which is what I meant) is the best way to reallign. Prior to the 2CCD idea I also talked about 4CCD like Olympus. But the problem is these manufacturers don't want to spend time on 3chip let alone 4 chip, but I am working (secretly, next year) on a way to replace PRISM a fraction of Prism price. I was originally looking at introducing cheap home made camera (<2K) that will beat any camera on the market. I work on (too) many optical ideas, but now I take a break and see if that job(??) I've been offered, comes through.

On LCD's, LCD's are getting very good, I have been very familiar with new LCD in the past. So direct suunlight is no problem with direct sunlight, or no light (not to mention OEL), also can be made cheap now Manufacturers want to charge big money, but truth isrecent LCD technoclogies (in recent years) are making them fast, clean, clear bright, and cheap (veiwfinder LCOS type LCD could do 300+ frames per second, panel is now competing with TV on refresh).

Hi Rai, I think Juan found fast sustained drive before, but low capacity and not cheap, so if many new drives like that, then that is very good for pricing.

Everybody:
People mention Kinetta IPOD drives before, for them it maybe cheap for the rest of us probably not. The IPOD drives are likely to be a new breed of super cheap consumer electronics drives manufacturered in new cheap ways, and cheaper when bought in lots of thousands, or tens of thousands, which we can't do. I am familar with these drives and the original pricing objectives. The space requirements of three real drives is very small for a real film camera (even six drives is not too bad). Your one problem is backup, backingup everything until the finale edit is advantageouse, but number of drives canbe expensive. So the commercial enterprises out there should look at cheap tape backup, using cheaper computer industry tape systems. They can use quick convient Disk, wiping any disasterouse scene on the fly, and then backup after they finish each disk (so you only need 6 disks instead of 60), I wrote about it before on the technical thread if (I think) if anybody is interested.

I think to go along with Rai, Ron and Rob/s ;) that it is possible to have a simple digital film camera, but also a TV doco camera at the same time. All you simply do is build in modes: Simple film, Pro Digital film, Handy cam, and Pro Video. Each mode has complexity level for extra features, user selects complexity they need, and forget the rest, on the fly swapping if they wish. If they don't select it they don't ever need to see or think about extra features, simple, calming, relaxing. Rob, I was suypposed to be sending you a list of my framegrabber GUI design, sorry I have been delayed but you don't need it for first version of the software.

For Rai, if you use FPGA then you can also include a processor core to offer user mode level selection for GUI's menues etc capture. Open Core has many, www.ultratechnology.com, has links to interesting ones (extra small, extra processing efficient) under chips link. Once you get to FPGA you can totally toast PC. Now you only need serial cable (Firewire or USB)/and or Ultra Wide Band wireless, to support most IO devices (PCI Express desktop/portable bus will give you even more), and in this case maybe SATA's. So drivers for this emmbeedded system are siimple and small. My original itnention in suggesting PC systems here was to reduce cost, but also to enable the camera to run any realtime editor/processing software, so no need to be near a PC, just connect to USB hub with IO devices.

I think 3 chip is good, but just as much I think 8Mp single chip is good.

On film look, apart from DOF and range etc, in many ways the Film Look is creative, and also technical setup of the camera/capture. Manufacturers make cameras for market and price, they want video look so you will spend more on the digital film model etc. So by setting camera and capture up and then processing we can have film like look, we don't have to be bound by the video industry. So the Altasens should be able to deliver reasonable film image.

Dear Wayne
primo
The JVC people send it once to my stupid aol adress, due to the fact that I'm writing sarkastic articles for a major German newspaper sometimes, and General Motors will put the German Opel on hold, ... a region where all steel biz has gone will be death , I got a strange thing called arbeit.png and my windows 2K did never ever start again. So I will call them again, but's not cheap at all. That's the reason doing email only from Linux now.
secundo
It changes LOF the Dof does not change, the lens is better, but the size of the chip is not schanging sooy so stupid. It's like Super 8 it's not even S16 but if you can stbilize the film tranport it has his own charming appeal.
Terzio
to produce a cheap HD that will beat anything on the market is very hard to do.
Sony does HD on DV tape, compression as dead, who is crying out there Sooooony!!! Nobody! It will be a X-mas gift and used manly for fun shooting, Grandma on the beach and that's OK.
Some Eng for lections or so Ok It has no PRO image so it's not for the big-ones.
Further on
well DOF mainly is the CMOS or CCD Surface and not so much resolution the reason for Hasselblad or my goody the Mamiya RB67 are never used for speed shooting but in technical documentation, where in a gone era the only way to pull attention was playing DOF and Fashion shooting DOF is the one and only way to go. Look at TV L'Oreal or something ,the product is not the message it's the magic in the picture, that sell beauty products. 35mm rulez. They have no facts they can sell, nothing will make look you better as only your joy and satisfaction, maybe a haircut helps.
But back again, mirrors could do the trick to create multiple Cmos and create 4xquad imagers maybe with the microlens trick as bright and lowlight capable as CCD's for a fraction of cost, and a fraction of the Pana 8M chip still a dream.Would be bayer but thet's a resolution theme and a software issue,
Crazy, well flame me the foveon on 25p is lousy, but huge compared to an altasens. No Bayer due to pixel groups with low 25p res lots of light 4 of them would be , not even thinking of.
Mirros and lenses projection on each a 4th picture not to have more Dof only to have an acceptable resolution.iIso stop writing here, drives me mad.

But competing at the bottom line, you need sales forces as Sony, competing at the level of Kinetta is much more easy. And I'do believe more fun.

ronald

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Obin, glad to hear everything is working, but what board did you have before???

I want to avoid that chipset, or at least be able to deduce what might have been wrong.-->>>

Jason I have a SIS type board and problems, many in the music industry experienced more problems with integrated VIA boards. Any integrated board is a potential problem. The problem was this (apart from BIOS programming on some boards) that chipset designers, or the end main board designers took cheap or sloppy shortcuts with available resources. So what happened say with VIA integrated boards, for example, is that the interrupt request lines (or was that the DMA lin es) were loaded up with too many IO circuits at the same time, that caused interference and timing problems for realtime applications/cards like music editing/processing, so trying to record a live analogue signal became difficult, and I think also synchronising the variouse sound processing elements. This can gum up IO, processing, and the programs depending on it. Now you can see how this can stuff up capture. Not all boards are going to have this problem, VIA and SIS should have solved many of these problems in newer boards (but I wouldn't assume this for the cheapest integrated baoad). Standard windows drivers are not nessacarily going to properly in controlling all hardware either, and that could greatly wreck capture (like the recent Firewaire driver debarkle and the Gige ethernet driver that SI replaces for much more performance). So it is needed to find out the best main baords that work here.

I had to dig in a pile aol papers, so sorry I mixed something up
the JVC I was allowed to touch and smell it was a 3x altasens.
the Ikegami http://www.ikegami.com/br/products/hdtv/pdf/HDL40HS.pdf

was the beast France 2 and so like to use for the Tour de France and live sport etc. It's a lot of bucks as it is in fact only a box like the one from Steve with a not cheapo but for broadcast=as keep indie out we still have the money...dual link Hdi SDI out.
Look at the picture the cheapo shoulder pad at this time

there was an asking price as 14K Swiss Franc only the box maybe dropped a bit but Ikegami is not a cheap one anyway., I do know the german sales geek very well from time dating back to the Avid or Edit cam and the docking station, called transport.
They say the HDL-40HS is THE eng cam only to have an apple, pc or Unix station with a HD SDI dual card and some 320 SCSI disks as backpack and go for the next dessert war, but have an eletric power station next by.

I do know, TV is using this from the balcony of a heavy truck so no problem at all.
ronald.

p.s. DOF well it's a small chip, color anything way better than DV a bit cold but with software Filmlook could be there why not,
if not resolution wise a DVX 100 will do and is way cheaper.
merci

Wayne, thanks.
You know, i not on the way: "lets wait for better things coming out". Makus shoot his movie now with our DRAKE camera, because we made it with parts from now, and not from the feature.

If someone wont all datas from 3 x 2MB Chips, 12 Bit, they know it will be not a cheap solution, so they can also archived the HDDs like film rolls. Otherwise they can switch down. Compressed is not the way we will go.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese : Dear Wayne

to produce a cheap HD that will beat anything on the market is very hard to do.
Sony does HD on DV tape, compression as dead, who is crying out there Sooooony!!! Nobody! It will be a X-mas gift and used manly for fun shooting, Grandma on the beach and that's OK.
-->>>

I have a way to investigate, I am reasonably sure it canbe done cheaply. If anybody wants to partner with me, pay money, patents and manufacture I talk, otherwise I not say much. Often I sit down to figure out problems and come up with unique solutions. Sometimes others will bring same solution to the market years after. Even when "expert" say no. I like writing German style, so frugal, no need to use all those "the"'s and over useless fill in words ;) I often have the problem, when emailing with German, Russian, and Asian people in english, of starting to copy their grammar style.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ronald Biese : I had to dig in a pile aof papers
so sorry I mixed something up
the JVC I was allowed to touch and smell it was a 3x altasens.-->>>


I am not familiar with Swiss Franks, how much is that in Euros or American dollers?

Is the camera this one:

JVC's KH-F870U:
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/press_res.jsp?model_id=MDL101390&amp;feature_id=08

We read $2KUS, but doubted it.

Rai:

Yes, I was talking about future cameras, not the present camera.

Dear Wayne in Europe the told me not giving any price as there is no need for such a camera as no TV station does HD.
HUUUH
It's the camera I could touch and smell.
The Ikegami I did send yoo the link is a single altasens and they are not so crazy as JVC even not in France.
JVC in France asks for telling you the price, a company letterhead, the company registration, and a bank contact. Than they will communicate the price maybe. The dont need the adress of grandma or so hopefully. The swiss franc is a bit less than Euro
so it will as $ is less than Euro be the same 14K bucks here plus sales tax that's not a matter for you.
But HD dual SDI out its even worse than cameralink.
Just phoned the European head of JVC pro. This camera will not be avaiable in Europe even has been on Show at IBC or Montreux only Noth America or Japan, that's politics...we are ol Europe
ronald

Thanks Ron. If it is the same model as above that is good enough confirmaation, so not $2K or $20K.


Guys News,. Juan has got his DVX100 raw capture modification website up!

http://www.reel-stream.com/

Dear Wayne,
hm that is great, a bit more resolution but no compression at all and 4:4:4 out that is just perfect for PAL or NTSC. With an Argus or so great, the Tv indie cam up to now...Hurra..voila.

Further on. There is something I do not understand at all. Slowly beginning. 35mm ist scanned 2k rarely 4k to disc , color correction and all this, 3d work is done, Flame Inferno Shake Maya, and then "flashed" to 35 again. That is usual.

Next reel. Animation, dreamworks, is made totaly with the big 3D tools and 'flashed" to 35 mm ok Next door. Film has NO pixel structure even the color structure of film has no mathematical model like Bayer or RGB, there is no and film is very forgiving this way. Proof DV blown up with a tool and with Argus a bit film-look plus a lot of post work flashed back to film can work
maybe a bit soft,shallow but there is no pixel structure.

Last take. I have never up to now seen any Barco beamer in a cinema theater, so I do not know how many Pixel resolution I do need to have my short beamed there. 1K 2K 4K or what? I've seen my own 3D out of Maya 2300 a bit plus to 1900 a bit plus pixel, but it was 3D and no real trees, no real faces, no real hairs blowing in the wind and fairly big but not theater big. A 3d tiger and stuff like this, a lego 3d short-murder in the coffe cup fun but no reala film, the pizza gang strikes back.

What do you think, as I do know, to have my short in the local Cinems is quite easy way more easy as in TV, If it goes than to a -if only one time big cinema-even for free entrance and there will be a big beamer, there no forgiving film anymore - how ill it look.

If this seems strange to anyone, please do re read and griil me later.
ronald

Rob S.

Just checked out the update to obscura cam. You say you are going ahead with development on the 1300, and will then move ahead to the 1920. What bout the 3300? Will your 1300 software work on that, or will it skip it totally? I only ask because I've been thinking about passing on the 1920 and just getting the 3300RGB, mainly because of the cost (as I understand it, the 1920 is about 2x as the 3300).

This is amazing to see. Nice to see that Reelstream made this work. Good works guys. Are there any video clips from this setup?




<<<-- Originally posted by Wayne Morellini : Thanks Ron. If it is the same model as above that is good enough confirmaation, so not $2K or $20K.


Guys News,. Juan has got his DVX100 raw capture modification website up!

http://www.reel-stream.com/ -->>>

sorry guys for not posting today..I have been working hard..I did get to capture more frames...they are captured 12bit then converted to 8bit...not the best as all the image info is in the bottom 1/4 of the file..not sure why..but when I shoot really dark and pull the gamma up in post it looks VERY film-like and soft....

can someone tell me what the quality hit would be if we captured 1/4 quad pixel RGB at 960x540 edited with that then blew it up to 1080p later on after the edit?

I did this in photoshop and I can't tell any loss in quality..this would allow for mch less disk space for storage of long projects

http://www.dv3productions.com/pub/
look at the 1080p image it's from an 8bit tiff file and has gamma 2.4 on it with an S-curve

Check the quicktime MPEG-4 video also

that is about the MAX framerate I can capture in 12bit at this time..then it's converted to 8bit ;(..will have that fixed soon

I can preview full framerate allday long but we have CPU overload issues with RECORD at the moment

but we have CPU overload issues with RECORD at the momentNot meaning to sound like a broken record, but . . . . . . . . ;-)

Also another quick question: What was the shutter (pixel clock) you were running at. I'm noticing a little bit of stretching when you chang directions from the rolling shutter, so I just want to know what the shutter is now so that I can contrast that with the older settings you've had where there was a lot of stretching.

Thanks.

Good Obin!!!!!!
At last you started to expose this thing more or less correctly....!
Also really nice colors and It seems good DeBayer too...
Are the colors corrected on a CC aplication?

Well, the most noticeable artifacts of the rolling shutter will be on horizontal panning not vertical...

thanks obin for posting some footage. keep it coming.

I was thinking about my idea of using one computer for preview purposes and one for capture. Obin I am sure that you guys will get your program optimized and preview during capture no problem, but would it give us more leeway to design computers with dual processor and then just have one box with a processor each for capture and preview (or is processing not the issue)?

hmm..pixel clock is or was 60mhz and shutter I think was 1/120 sec or maybe it was 1/60 sec.. gain was about 3db

that is a really bad bayer filter just the basic linbayer type

One problem is that when you expose like I did and then BOOST the gamma in post the range of CC in Combuston is very small because of all the gamma boosting that has happened..this is why we need over 8bit for an image that can be pushed really hard for color "looks"

not a bad idea ROb....so have 2 main boards one for capture and one for preview inside the case? split the CameraLink signal that is coming into the systems?

Why do you need two computers, one for digitizing and another for preview?

That is totally cumbersome, and very impractical IMHO.

Might as well just lug a big cart behind you with everything in it.

Of course we have no way of knowing whether the problem is performance or whatnot since I have absolutely no clue what Obin is running.

If he's got a Pentium II 400Mhz with 128MB of RAM and a couple PCI slots, then yes, there's going to be performance problems.

Pentium M 2.0Ghz with 1GB of RAM, PCI-X, Intel Extreme Graphics 2, etc., I'm not really sure there's going to be problems, especially since all we're doing is a data dump to hard-drive, not compression or anything else like that.

Frankly as of right now there's no way to tell what the problem might be because nobody's willing to list their configurations here on the board.

sob sob jason ;)

Hey I have a 3.06ghz P 4 with 2 gig ram and 2 IDE disk drives one 7200rpm and one 5400rpm both set as capture disks running the Epix 32bit framegrabber card on standard PCI 32 slot and a ATI AGP card with 128megs ram on it

I will be capturing 8bit from the framegrabber later on today..I will post results when that is done

I think I feel the same way as Jason about it. It just should be
possible to do it all in one system (even with some basic lossless
compression) for at least 720p.

Obin: do you know if your programmer is working in just C(++)
or is he also doing assembly/MMX/SSE etc. (ie, handcoding for
the CPU)? We are for Obscuracam for some important routines.

I did some demo coding back in the days that 386 was a hot CPU
and a LOT of speed can be gained with carefull handcrafting of
processor instructions, algorithm optimization and whatnot.

Even in the case where full resolution preview might be not too
good to do you could think of the following:

1. display the preview at the maximum framerate the extra CPU cycles will support (so it might be lower than the real frame rate which is not too much of a problem for preview, Rob S. is doing this now for example)

2. do a full resolution de-bayer when the camera is not recording (so you can more easily set critical focus) and switch to half resolution (ie, you don't need to do a de-bayer) as soon as you hit the record button

3. do the preview during recording in black and white (no need to de-bayer)

4. check multiple ways to construct 8 bits from 10/12 bits (without loosing the ability to see the dynamic range), see which is fastest for preview

You can combine all of this together ofcourse to get some very
critical speed increases for the viewfinder system without getting
a camera that you can't work with and hopefully gain a bit of
cycles to do things like zebra striping / histograms (although these
could perhaps be a pre-recording check only function as well)

Hmm . . .

Thanks for the info Obin.

Seems like a pretty good system to me. Maybe the 5200RPM drive isn't enough for capture, but processor-wise, you should have plenty of juice for 12-bit 1920x1080, especially now with that ATI card.

So you're only able to get 8-bit? Or is that a problem with the program?

edit: Nevermind, 12-bit is too much for that framegrabber, in fact 10-bit is probably too much also since there's no framebuffer on the card, so each 10-bit frame actually takes up two bytes per pixel rather than one.

Isn't the 32 bit PCI bus the problem here Obin? You are getting
a massive amount of data in at 1920x1080 *and* need to shift
this data to the harddisks....

Ofcourse in the end it all boils down to programming efficiency
(which is the major component here), which we ofcourse cannot
see for your program Obin (I'm not saying your programmer isn't
doing a good job, but basic programming has nothing in common
with hand crafted speed optimizing for example).

check multiple ways to construct 8 bits from 10/12 bits (without loosing the ability to see the dynamic range), see which is fastest for preview
Wouldn't the easiest method be to chop off the two LSB? A LUT would be ideal, but I think that would take too much time for each image, especially if it's 1920x1080.

One other thing I'm wondering is if you could do a 1/4 preview, and then apply a LUT to just those pixels for display, so you're not trying to do a transform on 2 megapixels @ 25fps. I think that'd be too much for any system (my dual G5 can't do real-time HD effects like that either, so I definitely wouldn't expect that out of a small computer). So with the 1/4 preview, you now can see what's happening dynamic range-wise with the LUT, and that's only performing an operation on 960x540, which should easily be feasable, especially on a new Pentium M or Pentium 4.