Obin Olson wrote:
streampix ...workflow from stream pix is hellThat is a nasty workflow for sure, but at least it works.

The new software we're working on will implement the new streamlined workflow, but until it's tested and debugged you might need to use the StreamPix workflow. Erg .. that's the software that costs $1500 isn't it?

it's around that price, yes

HEy it DOES have realtime preview of framerate WHILE I capture..this is a very good thing! and it's at 1280x720 full res

I discovered last night that my 22 fps limit wasn't because of the hard drive or disk-writing thread. The frame generation code was not running at full speed for some reason. I am now getting 25-27 out to disk frames pretty consistently. See my updates here if you're interested:
http://www.obscuracam.com/wiki/wiki/run.php?iRequest=wiki/ViewPage&iPage=CaptureSoftwareStatus#Operational%20status

Obin Olson wrote:
HEy it DOES have realtime preview of framerate WHILE I capture..this is a very good thing! and it's at 1280x720 full res That's good! Despire the nasty workflow, it sounds like you should stick with that while we develop and test our new software. I am sure you'd prefer to save the $1500, but Rob Lohman is right -- this is not going to happen overnight.

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman :
>David: is 10 or 12 bits always left justified? Is there a reason for it being left instead of right? -->>>

The issue is the editing or compositing software. Pixels stored on disk can be packed anyway you like (compressed or uncompressed, YUV or RGB etc), yet once the application sees the data is most have the format and white level it is expecting. For most 16bit compositors the white level is 65535, for After Effects the white level is 32768 (not 32767 -- so still using 16bit but with lots of headroom.) So the data must be left shifted is it less than the target applications bit depth. Note: 10 bit data for After Effects only needs to be shift by 5.

new windows media clip coming soon, RAW no white balance no color work 8bit

Steve, again why do I need to set gain at 3db for the whites in the image to be true white not grey?

David: thanks... weird that this would be different for different
applications. That's gonna be an issue in the second phase of
the capture process. But the good news is that it is easy to do
anything in that stage/phase.

Steve: Thanks for the PC/104 note.

All:

Personally I was not planning on having the OS on a fixed drive.
I've opted (to Rob) to go with Windows XP Embedded. It is
designed to be small, fast, configurable and able to boot of a
read-only device. So this could fit into flash memory. I'm not sure
how large it is fully.

It allows you to select which component / drivers you want to
include etc. so it should have a pretty small foot/memory print.
I have it lying around here (due to my work) and was hoping to
take a look at it lateron. Our attention is first on getting it to work
before working out on how to make it all small and portable.

The only problem with WXP Embedded is that you can't buy it
in the store. I'm not sure if you can buy this from any company
or Microsoft self as a consumer. An OEM who builds these camera's
should be able to buy those licenses, though.

We'll see where this goes!

Rob: ofcourse you can use my list and other details we talked
about through e-mail on your wiki page. Do put my name next
to it so we know later who said what and why...

Obin:
I'm guessing a bit since the analog stages are internal to the sensor. It sounds like the output of the amplifier without any gain is not large enough to reach the full scale input range for the A/D. The are a bunch more registers internal to the Micron chip that are not documented in our manual - that is only for the basic information that most people will use. We do allow access to all the registers (5F-64 provide black level calibration). XCAP lets you write serial strings to the camera if you want to experiment sending commands. This is a very helpful tool for a programmer to manually try out register commands. They may have done this on purpose to allow the auto black calibration some headroom in shifting the black reference before saturation occurs at the high end.

before after gama work 12bit file 1/2 resolution/size from photoshop jpeg

www.dv3productions.com/test_images/12bitexposure.jpg

still encoding wmv HD!

Hey Obin,
Can you post two consecutive raw bayer pix for us to see the noise on? 10 bits?
Thanks a bunch!

it's going to take 45min to upload but the address is:

www.dv3productions.com/Video Clips/RAW-8-bit.wmv

this is UNTOUCHED footage no white balance no color work jsut converted from 12bit to 8bit and compressed

ouch! the Bayer filter in Streampix hurts my eyes! it looks like a VERY basic filter

guys what is this:

1 Connector for LVDS module (Optional)

the ITX board has that...is that fast? do cameralink cards work on that?

LVDS is the older camera interface, before cameralink.
RS422.
My Atmel 8M's use it.
Is that option expensive?

16bit tiff file

http://www.dv3productions.com/test_images/12bit-24fps1835.tif

pre-Bayer filter black and white image:

http://www.dv3productions.com/test_images/pre-bayer.tif

Wow ... there is a lot of the "zipper effect" left over in that one. (But PaintShopPro is all I have installed on this laptop, so perhaps it's not displaying it right.)

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Scott : Wow ... there is a lot of the "zipper effect" left over in that one. (But PaintShopPro is all I have installed on this laptop, so perhaps it's not displaying it right.) -->>>

Like I said Bayer plugin is bad in Streampix

<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Lohman :
Wayne: I did my first programming in low-level assembler before
moving to C(++) and then on to the Windows platform. I'm pretty
sure I know exactly how a PC works internally and how Windows
works as well. I've written assembler boot-loaders and some
low-level Windows stuff. The only thing I ain't really good at is
anything with Unix/Linux on the PC. Oh well...
-->>>

Well your two levels up on most other app programmers, most of which wouldn't realise much about these timming issues, let alone how to handle these hardware timming issues, as ussually only highend 3D games need this much performance. But I thought it might help and provide nice reading for everybody else. I'll delete it then, no use cluttering up the space.

Thanks

Wayne.

Thanks for the two frames. I might try the variable gradient software on it and post the color result. That seems to be the best demosaiking method right now.

Can you post two raw 10 bit black and whites to allow me to evaluate the noise component? That would be frame N and frame N+1 from a capture.

-Les




<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : 16bit tiff file

http://www.dv3productions.com/test_images/12bit-24fps1835.tif

pre-Bayer filter black and white image:

http://www.dv3productions.com/test_images/pre-bayer.tif -->>>

Just for 5hits and giggles, here is a few seconds of media9 compressed output originating from my JVC HD10. Of course it is hampered by the 8 bits of color depth, and it's non-manual modes, etc, but those who are used to looking at DV footage should take a look.
This camera is a single chip 1.1 Mega Pixel sensor. It records to a 19 megabit mpeg2 stream. About $4K for this camera.
The detail is good, look at the thread details in the backpack label,
they seem to have survived the media9 compression!
The file is about 13 meg, it's a 5 megabit data rate.

I shot this yesterday in a park.

http://s95439504.onlinehome.us/park.wmv

-Les

I must say I'm pretty disappointed with the rolling shutter
effect. It is quite noticable, especially lateron on the movie
when you pan pretty fast along the fence, Obin.

Obin: could you perhaps do some testing with smaller resolution
files?

Capture 640x480 at 8 bit and do this at 24, 48 and 60 fps
(Your computer should be able to handle this in the lower
resolution) and do some similar sweeps along side the fence.

This can show us how much the effect changes at higher
framerates.

Thanks for testing!

Rob it has nothing to do with fps it's all in the mhz of the camera sensor...if you shoot high enough mhz it goes away..well almost goes away

Obin Olson wrote:
it has nothing to do with fps it's all in the mhz of the camera sensor...if you shoot high enough mhz it goes away..well almost goes awayHmmmm ... I wonder if it would be possible to capture at a higher frame rate and *average* two frames together in real-time? If done properly, it would reduce the rolling shutter effect and -- I would think -- simply produce more motion blur.

(This method would also work on a very-high-frame-rate camera like the other Micron chips we've discussed. Of course, at a 450 fps frame rate we'd have to do a lot of real-time averaging! But it would be an integer operation, assuming you're doing it pixel-by-pixel ...)

Hey Obin,

Just curious, how come there's no motion blur on any of your footage? It looks as though everything is shot like the opening of "Saving Private Ryan". Especially the shots that show the rolling shutter artifact, it seems like the main reason they're even apparent is because there's no motion blur to hide them.

Again, I'm wondering, since SLR's, digital cameras, etc. have electronic shutters that have chips with rolling shutters, how come they don't exhibit these motion artifacts?

because the shutter speed is high, it's outdoor light have to put the shutter speed high to get a nice DOF

Obin Olson wrote:
because the shutter speed is high, it's outdoor light have to put the shutter speed high to get a nice DOFSo, you could reduce the "Private Ryan" effect by using a slower lens or using a lens with an iris?

I added a 'Platforms' category to the Obscuracam Wiki under Hardware.

I spent some time looking at potential processor solutions. We are processing a very large amount of data, which places us at the top end of the embedded market. I would like to have the system be at least somewhat portable, with an ability to run on battery power even if for a short time.

Opus Solutions is working on an automotive mount chassis for a Mini ITX motherboard that looks like a perfect fit for our needs. It has a built in high-efficiency DC-DC converter so power is not wasted, and is ruggedized to handle shock and vibration found in cars.

http://www.obscuracam.com/wiki/wiki/run.php?iRequest=wiki/ViewPage&iPage=Platforms

RAID is really hard to find in a portable system. The motherboard on there has support for 2 channels of IDE, but I don't know if it can be striped to RAID 0--I'm checking on this. Looking at Rob's calculations from a couple messages back, it appears that we can capture a 1280x720 24 fps stream with a single drive, but not 48 fps. There will have to be some experimentation here, but I can see a situation where a laptop/lower power drive is used for portable applications and the big RAID is used for studio applications where high frame rates will be used.

Eliot

Camcorder users, as I'm sure Obin knows, use ND filters to keep the Fstop open for less DOF.

Throwing a few stops of ND in front of that lens would slow the shutter way down to avoid the short shutter angle look.
But the rolling shutter would look much much worse.
Until camera firmware is developed that allows longer integration time with a fast readout, the camera will only be good for that 'Saving Pvt. Ryan' shows.


Is that firmware being worked on, Steve?

-Les


<<<-- Originally posted by Rob Scott : So, you could reduce the "Private Ryan" effect by using a slower lens or using a lens with an iris? -->>>

I am not sure your right about that..I think with ND you can still keep your mhz fast..I am only using hugh shutter speed so that the image is not blown out in the highlights

OK, maybe I need some education here, but this is what I think. There are a number of ways to control the light integrated by the sensor. All of these can be independent of the frame readout time which should be the only variable that matters with rolling shutter artifacts.

First, the sensor has an electronic exposure control. The rolling shutter cycle is read, reset and start integrating for each line. What maybe I didn't say was that if you shorten the exposure time, there is a delay before the line is reset. This means that you can reset the line as short as one line prior to readout giving very little integration time. This does *not* change the rolling shutter artifact because it didn't change the readout time - time from the top line to the bottom. I suppose this is the equivalent of shutter speed since less integration will have less blur, but digital camera people call it exposure control.

Next, you get the iris on the lens, certainly influencing the DOF. Then you get NDFs which I don't think influence the DOF but only give the same effect as the electronic exposure control without the change in exposure.

You also have analog gain controls within the camera that let you integrate for long times but set the gain to a minimum. I think that if you start with a NDF and some gain, decreasing gain is like adding a NDF.

Now that I think about it, if you have separate color analog gain controls within the camera like the SI-1300 does, by changing them inidvidually, you are applying different color filters prior to digitizing. This means that you still have the dynamic range in that color as opposed to applying them in a post process step. I don't think you need color optical filters at all.

Photons are photons.
If you want to have motion blur, it means keeping the sensor 'on' for a longer period of time. To do this longer exposure, or 'integration' as the electronic cam people call it, you have to limit the number of photons hitting the pixel well to avoid overload ( blowout, clipping,etc )
There are only three ways to do this.
1> reduce the photons with an ND
2> reduce the photons by closing the aperture down
3> Darken the scene

Film people like short DOF. That leaves us with method 1 and 3.
Method 1, the ND filter is the easiest. Unless you can ND the sun!

-Les

Steve,
Turning gain down works fine, as long as the photo site ( well) has not been saturated ( blown out , in photo terms ).
If too many photons have hit the sensor, you have lost image information, you can't bring that back with a gain setting.
I just wanted to clear that up.

So where are the two 10 bit consecutive frames?
Is the noise on this cam that bad that it's too embarrassing to post?
Is this really an 8 bit camera, for all practical purposes?

-Les

I believe the 8-bit capture problem was a limitation of Obin's computer right now (not fast enough drives) or something like that. He's mentioned it in past posts.

He can still just grab one still image, save it, then grab another right after that, and save it.
Two images, a few seconds apart, is all we need!
-OR-
Save a small window of the sensor, at speed.
-Les

Les don't make me angry!

do you have a LIFE?? I do and I spend EVERY waking moment doing the things I *must* do and the rest testing the camera and after that talking with you and the gang - calm down


tell me what you want 2 frames in 16bit? we do not have 10bit or even 12bit all we can get is 8 or 16 what do you want

check this:
www.dv3productions.com/test_images/studio-HD1.jpg

shot with blue gain at 11db and red-green at 4db in the studio with studio lights

NO white balance..just blue gain higher then the rest..did the trick
guess a better way would be to adjust the RGB when doing the bayer conversion

UPDATE:

I now have raid 0 drives and get 55MB/sec write speed I can capture 48fps at 8bit and 24fps at 12bit maybe more then 48fps at 8 have to try and see...

Obin, beautiful shot. I think you will get better overall dynamic range by balancing the color the way you did first using the analog gains. We know that the blue in the Bayer filter has less optical throughput - not just your lighting temp.

thank you Steve, I setup our lights and shot that how I would shoot a "real" gig and I am VERY happy with what that image looks like after we did some color work in post..as you can see the Bayer plugin is bad but that will be fixed ;)

the footage downsized to DV and played on a big TV set looks just amazing! it would pass as 35mm to my eyes onscreen...it's so much more organic then dv or traditional "video" and yet is super high-res looking..like watching a feature film on DVD

Obin, sorry for pestering so much about the two frames, I've must have asked about 4 times now !
This data, the noise, is one of the most important measures of the camera. As most of you know, CMOS has noise issues, both fixed pattern, and random. It's a big issue with CMOS. People poo poo CMOS because of this. I think Micron and the newer sensors have fixed a lot of the concerns.
I just wanted to see where it's at, noise wise.
The main reason to even do this project is to get more than 8 bits from a camera. And yet nobody has bothered to see if the image is any good in those lower bits.
It's fun to look at the 8 bit images, and >8 bits on stills, but motion ( as I described before ) shows a whole different set of possible 'gotcha's'.

I've been digitizing motion picture stuff from back in the days of working on 'Willow' where we did the first morph shots in a feature film.
I'm not a newbie. I'm not asking for unimportant useless info.
Sorry to bother you.
BTW when I say 10 bit, I don't care what file format it's stuffed into, or how the bits are shifted in a 16 bit word, it's 10 bits coming from that cam, irregardless where they are shifted to.
-Les



<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : Les don't make me angry!

do you have a LIFE?? I do and I spend EVERY waking moment doing the things I *must* do and the rest testing the camera and after that talking with you and the gang - calm down


tell me what you want 2 frames in 16bit? we do not have 10bit or even 12bit all we can get is 8 or 16 what do you want -->>>

Obin: please keep it civil. The reason everyone is asking you is
since you are the only one to have the camera yet. I'm sure we'll
be busting on Rob S's door when he gets one as well.

No-one is asking for shots 10 minutes after they post a question.
They are just asking (as I am/was) about certain types of shots
to understand how the camera works and wether it is good
enough to pay a large sum of money to buy a chip of their own.

Personally I'm not going to pay a lot of money and then have a
chip performing below what I was expecting. I'm NOT
saying that this performs below expectation. But we are all just
trying to figure out how well it works for movie making in regards
to noise, motion blur, rolling shutter and latitude.

Those are fair question. If you are busy and need time to compile
these requests that is very fair as well. But we would be great
if you can supply us with the information we need. No need to
get angry about a simple request. Just indicate whether you
can do it or not and we'll wait for when you have the time.

Again, no-one has requested HD frames in a movie. We are only
look at still frames which can be deliver at 640x480 for all I
personally care. HD is nice, but we've seen that. We are interested
in other features which don't care about resolution. So if you
have trouble with high data rates / frame rates / resolution just
lower some stuff.

Again we approciate what you are doing on this and I'm greatfull
for your last movie because it actually showed what we all have
been thinking about lately.

Now it is time for some more tests. If you can do them, do them
at your own pace and time. That's fine!

As Les indicates he his very knowledgeable and would only ask
the questions if it is important to ask them.

No offense to you at all Obin.

Thanks Obin, Steve, Les and all others that contribute!

i have lots of stuff on the disk drives now, I shot a bunch yesterday and have it all. It's all 16bit tiffs tell me what you want - frame number 1 and frame number 2 from a scene? in what format? what size? and waht bitdepth? I will extract what you want from the raw files

everyine should not forget that I have a very cheap lens on this camera..it will effect the image

Steve how do you adjust analog gains?

I need help in the edit department!

anyone care to poke around and try to find a codec that can be used to edit this footage on a standard pc?? sofar I can't edit on my 3.06ghz p4 with premiere pro at all....we all need to pitch in and find a codec OR NLE software that a standard computer can edit with...I am not sure if it's a datarate issue or a cpu load issue or both and more..SheerVideo can play fine on the system if you open the file in quicktime but can't play in premiere pro..how could this be? it's only 15-18MB/sec datarate!

Premiere Pro is no longer Quicktime native. It'll work with Quicktime files, but it's not like FCP anymore.

SheerVideo will playback fine on a Mac.

I think Avid's the only NLE other than...something obscure like Razor or Linux's Cinelerra...that would cut 10-bit.

Vegas does YUV 4:2:2 and can import/export all Avid 10bit codecs -- but internal processing is all in 8 bits (not that anyone's cared to check if this matters in real world tests...)

I'm of the opinion that, for the moment, we should be sticking with 8-bit, 4:4:4 uncompressed or realtime lossless compression -- downsize the data stream, and the project's needs become simplified.

Personally, I think the idea of lugging a PC around is laughable -- if the project's not portable then it's of little use to anyone looking to shoot: outdoors, on the run, rougher conditions, etc. What everyone's proposing so far is a good studio cam, and for those of us without studios...

That said, anyone know of realtime hardware encoders that we might use? Looking for something small, fast and cheap :D

I think we need to invite Dan Vance in on these talks. He built his system from scratch -- not around a pre-built camera core -- and did it all for under $3,000.

- jim

Have a look over at the Viper thread, I've summarised some new technologies, and potential camera configurations. Steve I also found some good fast cheap interface information and camera network compression idea that may help with your camera line. I also found reference to big tape backup, and low powered processing arrays that can be used for camera head compression, that canbe reprogrammed in C.

I forgot, MiniFlex motherboard form factor.

Thanks

Obin

I was going to ask about the lense, it is doing a reasonable job, the footage also has very little washout compared to the HD10 park footage, it is doing well.

I think Les was just after some standard stationary shots with reasonable lighting contrast in your normal bayer pattern tiff. Frame 1 then 2 then 1-2 seconds after another (though he only asked for two). Your existing outside shoots would probably be good (with some plain surface to really show trhe niose).

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : the footage downsized to DV and played on a big TV set looks just amazing! it would pass as 35mm to my eyes onscreen...it's so much more organic then dv or traditional "video" and yet is super high-res looking..like watching a feature film on DVD -->>>

Cool, that's what we need.


Steve

Actaully the HD10 uses some sort of complementary filter hybrid to get more res than Bayer.

I'm detecting a lot of light drop off in the pictures Steve, is it direct lighting or is it the filter squashing the blacks? It is like a strong ND filter, or 35mm adaptor, but the detail is still there when I turn the monitor up? Niose looks very good.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Wayne on speeds: Yes, buffering in the camera or grabber would reduce peak speeds to average. Not sure if it is worth the cost. -->>>

Yes but 4+ MB or relatively slow memory for a behind chip buffer, is a realtively small cost compared to system costs (real costs). Actually some mebbeded processors have more memory than that. Arms and NEC chip are probably the best chioce I can remember. With processors like that you could also reprogram them to do some on chip manipulation (like with clearspeed parrallel array processor compression). Actually using a control processor with frame buffer and a clearspeed would be a good programmable comrpession platform.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Now that I think about it, if you have separate color analog gain controls within the camera like the SI-1300 does, by changing them inidvidually, you are applying different color filters prior to digitizing. This means that you still have the dynamic range in that color as opposed to applying them in a post process step. I don't think you need color optical filters at all. -->>>

Robs:

Yes, I was going to suggest that, especially if that canbe computer controlled on the fly as well as with external controls. Those are other things we will need in the software eventually that would be desirable at capture: basic lite (too much gain will increase niose) clour balance, gain exposure control and shutter exposure control for field work ( I would add selectable auto focus, Iris (Through auto electronic slr lense), and image stabilisation but at lasss that is all upto us ;) and niose elimination (would help compression). Most of these would require analysis and control cammands rather than much extra processing, what do you think?

Eliot, Rob and Obin

Flash bootup, low power requirements (believe me a shoulder case with any normal CPU/fan is going to drive you or your sound tech nuts). ITX has low power, speed, Raid interfaces, and onboard flash. There are convertors also allowing you to hook a compact flash to a standard IDE channel.


The problem with flash is that it is really slow, you might be better off booting from disk. M-systems is also another place for flash drives. There are cheaper better alternatives to flash comming. Intel is trying to develope plastic memory, and Onvul or something is developing somethingn that uses material they use on Rewritable CD/s. There have been numerouse other scheems, but failed or normally do.


As somebody mentioned it works better if the OS is on a seperate drive, That's why I suggested 1GB or Ram and cleaning out the rubbish inbetween shoots, to keep most of the OS in virtual memory (or Ram drive, and use the same image everytime). If you do do virtual memory then USB2 external drive (to free a IDE channel) or flash could be used, as most requests should be comming from memory.

The embedded OS issue:
That is why I suggested Toas Intent/Elate platform, the emmbedded realtime virtual OS core is kB/s in size, very fast and efficent (but use/compile your C to their virtual code). These guys really know how to code (as I was trying to piont out a few days ago), it should be much better than windows. Both me, OAK (now Java) and Toas started around the same time on our VOS/s. Your code then can run (unmodified except for custom interface issues) unmodified on Playstation like machines, Mac, PC, Linux etc. As long as they have the VOS for that machine. They are light years ahead. It is used in many embedded consumer electronics, and actaully some of the consumer el giants are part owners.

ANother two OS/s of interest (they both use parts of Toas tech as well). IS QNX an old but very good Real Time OS with Unix capability, and Amiga OS (which is a rebadged version of Toas with their own custom libraries). These are among the best available.

You can goto the MS deevelopers website and check if you can download a exprerimental Windows embedded XP for free (there done that sort od thing in thepast with CE). Maybe there is information how you can strip down normal XP.

Thanks

Wayne.

And only a Meridian Avid or Symphony, or AVID D$!!

FCP will work fine at 10-bit. It's the cheapest 10-bit solution out there. Which means Obin that you could take your footage, render it in After Effects with the BlackMagic 64-bit (16-bit codecs), codec, and then export that 10-bit BM codec file back to FCP and play it back with no problems. It's a very nice solution.

You can see a sample of the codec here http://codecs.onerivermedia.com/encodes/result.htm?codecTitle=Blackmagic%20Design%2010-bit%20Trillions%20OSX&imageRoot=bmd-10tri_osx, and here's a description from Marco from the website:

This codec uses 16-bit technology, but doesn't create a 40-megabyte per second file like the Cinewave 16-bit codec. No wasted disk space, no extra bits thrown out the window. For CGI/animation/visual effects artists, this is your codec.

So you can see the the Mac here is nicely set-up for this type of work. Not trying to be one of those obnoxious mac-pushers here, or a "I'm-better-than-those-PCee's" type of attitude. I just think that some here are overlooking the best tool (and only think of it that way, not as a platform) to do the job of editing this stuff at the highest quality with the least amount of pain.

oh, Jason can you download a small sheervideo file and try to edit on FCP HD?? do you have FCP HD? this would be a great test..I really want to see if we can edit this stuff at all...what about Sheer being 8bit...that sucks right? or should we do our color work in Combustion and then output sheer codec at 8bit and edit FCP?

Jason do you think we would get any realtime stuff even a fadeout in FCP with our footage in SheerCodec? or will everything we do take hours to render?

problem is that Cineform could do it for PC NOW and we have all PC systems in the office running premier pro and a pc videoserver ..I don't really want to switch to mac ...I wish cineform had a product forsale now for this system.....

Jason do you think premiere can't edit because it's a quicktime sheer file?

Good cameras normally take in 10-12bits process it and store in 8 bits, because the image manipulation leads to accumulated chromma error in the reds and such forth in 8bits. It is stored in 8 bits because that is the resolution of human site (actually lower but it is not scalled linearily). But for post production effects and editing I think it would also be benefical (as Obin has allready demonstrated).

Which leads me to a question fro Steve, the response curve for camera and human sight is not the same, are there any on camera adjustments for this or do we rely on post processing and higher bit rate?

<<<-- Originally posted by Jim Lafferty :
Personally, I think the idea of lugging a PC around is laughable -- if the project's not portable then it's of little use to anyone looking to shoot: outdoors, on the run, rougher conditions, etc. What everyone's proposing so far is a good studio cam, and for those of us without studios...

That said, anyone know of realtime hardware encoders that we might use? Looking for something small, fast and cheap :D

I think we need to invite Dan Vance in on these talks. He built his system from scratch -- not around a pre-built camera core -- and did it all for under $3,000.

- jim -->>>


HA, ha ;), reminds me of a picture I saw over at Tomshardware (I think) of a guy with his portable system, a tower PC strapped to his back like a backpack and all the rest of it, including the monitor strapped to his front. Now those pro camera men are fairly butch (lots of spinach and weight lifting etc) they should be able to handle something easy like that ;). Seriously by the time we finish portable is defintely going to be possible. But when we are finsihed we should put together a system like that and all gather at a NAB/CES and show off it off, then after we have stunned them in disbelief, bring out all the sleek sexy models (I mean camera cases) ;).

Hardware encoders (the good ones at least) are very expensive, I have suggested the clearspeed parrallel array processor that is progammable in C mysdelf as a good alternative, and in the home made thread there is threads to a Russian guy that designed his own in open source FPGA.

Vance's been around on the Home made camera thread before. Has anybody invited Scott Billups, he might be interested, he's done this sort of stuff before.

Good having you here Jim.

Thanks

Wayne.

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson :
problem is that Cineform could do it for PC NOW and we have all PC systems in the office running premier pro and a pc videoserver ..I don't really want to switch to mac ...I wish cineform had a product forsale now for this system.....
-->>>

Yes we can do it. We are experimenting with real-time compression of CameraLink data, but our editing products are fairly mature. The problem is we have a mid-range real-time 8bit product (Aspect HD) and a high-end real-time 10bit product (Prospect HD). What this (indie) market needs is a mid-range 10bit product with a price to match. We need to work out how to make a suitable product without creating price pressures on our high-end solution. That means we need to be convinced of the market and the feature set that works for you.

There might not be a market here, as the constant pressure from user adopting free tools to kludge together a solution seems to drive a lot of the discussions. But I would love to be convinced otherwise as this seems like a lot of fun.

i would pay $$ for that system now

Just so you know Obin, that Boxx system starts at $22,995. Not cheap, and again, we've bought systems from Boxx for our 3d-guys, and they're nice, but often the base config is never enough, and addtions cost $$$. In othewords, you could easily be north of $30,000 very quickly.