Jason, I know that VIA has lost a lot of initative to the Israeli Pentium M, and the new low powered Transmeta Rob posted. But they are improving their game, unfortunately the next version (64bit and much processing power) seems to be in 2006, with no improved version inbetween but only a revision or so (I was hoping the increased processing functions would be in there, but still a chance, but that would be mnore than a revision).

Still on the multilevel scheeme of things, the Pent M's I have seen in the past were very expensive (I don't know what has happened in price since). And dare I say it, the Pent M might be the best high end solution.

I think with compressed camera data rate, that should be on camera buffered and not require PCI-X (I hope somebody has told them to include some preview ability/ stream in it), 2Ghz+ chips, onboard decompression engine (that hopefully will have some compatible arcitecture to partly assist decompress), and cheaper costs. Also the architechture of the latest series has improved a lot over the last, but not as good as Pent M. I think there is still hope for the old VIA on the bottom end at least. But I would like to know what Rob's latest sustained FPS (not shutter speed) is, that should give a good idea on the power required (probably with a possible 50-100% improvement possible throiugh more very specialised programming optimisation).

So I hope to maybe see them on the lower end cameras, and I'm glad everybody has dropped the Pent 4 stuff for the Pent-M. Maybe sub 2Ghz Pent-M's will drop a lot in price now.

Steve,

a) The MT9M413, 500fps 10tap, 1.3Mpix 12 micron sensor with Truesnap (I think fillfactory also has similar one) is a big sensor, why haven't you built a camera on one of these, maybe even a cut down 24/30fps version. What would the light sensitivity compared to the other microns be like with these large pixels?

b) It is interesting that when you look at it, the sensor chip manufacturers could build in memory circuits to buffer the image while a new one integrates (which this one does, analogue style), or even anneal a memory circuit with matching pad contact to the back of a sensor chip (which is done in all sorts of processing circuits nowadays). Then run a simpler industry standard high speed serial interface out of it. All the camera manufacturers have to do is to build analogue interface buffering components to attache real world interfaces to it. That would be a win win situation, as most processing is done internally (and the pad contact not requiring pin wiring) only pins for the external interface and power are required. As these, now, integrated circuits are required for all cameras, and are being manufactured at the most cost effective stage, cost is further reduced. As it is buffered, frame grabbers are only needed for the fastest capture devices (above 100MB/s data rate), so cheaper interfaces are available. Control and signals can be sent via interfaces, and control circuits would be on chip, so filtering compression dsp could eventually be added (which results in better use of interface for higher resolution/data rate). If compression upto 50:1 (as well as lossless) was included then many could be strung on network applications (remembering the standard security/production line markets first) with lower powered, cheaper computers, using their integrated video decompression DSP's to view it, and disk savings.

Until they develop their own, there are many cell designs that could be integrated. ARM is the often used one (usually with memory) with many extra dsp like cells to the arm core, and I'm sure there are other dsp cells suitable for this sort of work.

Even if cheap sensors ($200) landed up costing twice as much (the real cost difference should be negligible) that would be offset greatly by big savings in the rest of the work chain.

Thanks

Wayne.

Found an interesting article "Heat wave: FPGAs confront increasing, evolving power consumption" at the EDN site. I saw somewhere that they are giving away a free years subscription. I used to read EDN at Uni, they are a top Electronic Engineering Journal for professionals and is well worth the reading.

http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/article/CA438310

Finaly found some information on format reading in that cmos sensor article above: Deciphering size

As you compare manufacturers’ image sensors, you’ll often find several measures of the sensors’ size in the data sheets. These measures include total package size, the dimensions of the active array, and the aspect ratio—typically 4-to-3 or, mimicking 35-mm film, 3-to-2. You’ll likely also encounter the “optical format,” an at-first-glance baffling number with values such as 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 1/1.8 and 4/3 in. The term harks back to the standard sizes manufacturers applied to 1950s-era TV-camera tubes; the specification refers to the outer diameter of the tube’s long glass envelope. This designation, clearly long obsolete in practice, is still in wide use. To translate optical format to the lenses’ projected imaging plane and, therefore, to the required diagonal dimension, multiply the optical format by a two-thirds scaling factor and, if necessary, convert from US units to metric units.

Lens formats:
http://www.siliconimaging.com/Lens%20Image%20formats.htm

Wayne on the MT9M413:
Sure we have discussed it. It is a tricky design - 100 parallel digital lines into an FPGA to be multiplexed down. Lots of data generated. Fairly high cost camera. Of course you could design it to run slow but all the same hardware has to be there except a simpler interface. We cover a similar high speed market with the much cheaper SI-640HF VGA at 250fps. If we found an OEM to justify it, we would do the design, but probably won't on speculation.

Can someone please give me a link to the summix web site?

Thanks!

P.S.

How's that SI camera coming Steve?

Didn't realise they didn't multiplex down on chip etc, that would add significant cost.

Laurence, it's http://www.sumix.com/ there is a camera section under optical.

Wayne on that Micron:
I just checked my notes from when I looked into it. In moderate volume, the sensor alone is >$1K, my cost. Do you really want to buy a 720p camera for over $5K? It would be an excellent price for a 1.3Mpix 500fps camera.....but.....

Thats OK, some people want that sort of thing, I thought it had good machine vision advantages, but I can do without it myself. Somebody mentioned to me a price around $850.

Well, "Collateral" is out today, and it was shot on Viper (and another camera) so I'm hopefully getting to see what the quality is like.

Wayne.

Wayne, if you see Collateral on digital projection, that´s okay.
I saw it in a 35mm transfer and the quality of it wasn´t very good.
I would say it is because of the transfer quality.

Typical, they spend all that money to use digital and then they skimp on the transfer for an a-list movie. I'll have to re-affirm light and range from the normal DVD. Saw Alien VS Predator last week, and the cinema had turned the brightness up, lots of grey shadows, so that didn't help it try to live up to its A grade trailer (note: a lot of the A grade bits of the movie hint hint, think the other 5 people in the audience agree). So stuffed again in less than 8 days.

Have you seen this one:

http://preview.millimeter.com/mag/video_building_collateral/

Good shooting info. They used 35mm for interior and daylight scenes, Viper cab and night, F900 (I think for running around).

Juan, as you know about these things, I would like to talk with you about Collateral.

The print in the local cinema was good. Most things looked fine in it, but everytime something moved on the digital shoots it was hard to see what was happening. Did they shoot in 60i/30p and try to do a poor de-interlace or something (or was it just a 24th/s shutter)? The digital camera in the cab was not isolated from the vibration and shock of the cab (or in moving scenes) so this made the problem worse.

The look is good, almost real, except there is too much of a blue tint. And inside the cab there is also a strong green tint (probably caused by the flat panel lighting they used) was this a deliberate colour correction style chioce.

Otherwise great movie (except usuual unrealistic story line) with and ironic ending. Liked the look of the Viper (except they made it look too handycam) compared to 900. Impeccable performance by Cruize (and James), but most of it was lost due to vibration and movement problems above (hope they clean it up for special, non-carsick, version).

They used an open shutter (1/24th of a second), so that's where the blurry motion came from. This was to gain an extra stop of light without trying to boost the gain.

I thought it might be, but the movement looked broken up as well as blurred. It was 24th/s at 24fps, not something strange like 24th/s at 48i/50i/60i? I also noticed on one scene that lamposts had an even large ghost edge both sides around the hard edges (not like being out of focus).

It is just a CCD and not a CMOS...

And they wonted a Video-look. But i think most of us wont more a movie-look

I think most of the problems you mention come from a heavy/poor noise reduction filtering.I heard they had a hard time because of noise.
In many night shots you can see clearly the underexposure noise.

I mention this because if you pay attention you could notice the actors faces have some kind of "wax dummy" look.That denotes the use of some heavy filtering.

I made a whole movie using 1/24 shutter (completely at night without any more lighting than the streets one) and it doesn't look the same...
The ghosts you talk about could be an optical artifact, a filtering problem, or anything.I don't remember them,sorry.

I guess it was 24 fps 1/24s.
Anyway you could use interlaced combined with 1/24s to gain another stop.I know the Viper isn't so sensitive so They could have done anything :)

The color tints should be an aesthetic issue cause it is completely correctable in post.

Otherwise great movie (except usuual unrealistic story line) with and ironic ending. Liked the look of the Viper (except they made it look too handycam) compared to 900.

The Viper and 900 aren't really close enough to compare, the Viper is much better. The Viper and the 950, that's a much closer comparison.

Why do you say that?
What are you based on?

Hey Ben,

What model was the camera you said summix finished recently? Do you have the specs and capture method?

Thanks!

Joshua, they used Viper, 900 and film, and tried to match the Viper and 900 in look. I was just comparing the Viper shoots with the surrounding 900 shoots (still a difference even after being matched).

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan M. M. Fiebelkorn : I mention this because if you pay attention you could notice the actors faces have some kind of "wax dummy" look.That denotes the use of some heavy filtering.
..
The color tints should be an aesthetic issue cause it is completely correctable in post. -->>>

Thanks, I thought that was because of the limited light frequencies and tint that these flat panels give. I have many dark friends, but I have never seen somebody with green tinted skin.


Rai

I think they wrecked it a bit with the video look. With some very expensive long DSP processing they could clean it up. I think they should have gone for bright (outside, video like) film look (and isolated those .. cameras from shock and vibration). I would have given the film a near clkassic ratign if they did.

Just saw another film "All Men Are Liars" on TV last night, shot around 80km from where I live (used to work there at the research station) great country flavour (except they used a number of major city actors and themes). This is the sort of low budget film I think we can shoot as independents, one of the funniest I've seen for a while.

Thanks

Wayne.

Why do you say that?
What are you based on?

There are a couple of differences in how they work and store data. The color space of the cameras. The Viper was the first HD camera to do true 4:4:4 color space. The 950 was the first CineAlta to do so. The Viper had better latitude than the 900 as well.

Ok, thank you :)

Does ANYONE know what the recent 24p HD sumix model is and how I get a hold of specs? Can't find it on the site, but read on this thread one came out recently that's at least pretty good for what we want with digital cinematography.

thanks.

It is coming out according to the info. Ringing/emailing them is probably the best move. Tell them where your comming from, mention Steve I (not Steve N, he's their competition) and Ben's name, and off you go. I've been meaning to establish contact with them for months myself, never seem to get around to it.

Wayne.

I would like to know in witch stages the software for the hd project is.
and ho is working on it.
also here is alot of comments about a variety of cmos censors but witch is really working (decent latitude smear and sensitivity)
I'm actually ready to start my own camera please feel free to contact me with any advise.

Go to the first post and follow the obsuracam wiki link, Rob has a development thread there. Common consensurs is to wait for the Altasens chips to come (shortly) from SI and Sumix. At the mement the 1080 SI camera and the IBIS (Sumix and others) are the 720p ones with global shutter, but none of these cameras are really upto scratch (requires extra work that is why people are waiting for the Altasens).

Obin and Rai has got rival camera project going.

Thanks

Wayne.

I too would like to know some relatively solid dates on the HD box cams/ software coming out. I'm looking to shoot a feature soon, and need to consider the production timeline.

Hey guys, remember me? :-)

I have a (very) minor update on my development blog (http://www.obscuracam.com/wiki/static/DevelopmentBlog.html), but I haven't done any additional work on the software yet.

If anyone would like a username/password to help update the ObscuraCam wiki, please let me know and I'll be glad to let you in. I had to lock it down because someone was randomly deleting topics.

I tried to catch up with all the information, but I didn't see any recent updates about SI-1920 shipping dates. Any news?

Ronald pointed me to a minagp card and I found others, including DVI, HD, and the elusive LVDS.

http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/Peripheral/MiniAGP/miniagp.HTM

Real Drive performance
Here is an article on command queing, that thing I was talking about doing in software to Rob is available built in drives (including Raptor). The reviews also give some benchmark MB's tests that are interesting for us.

http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20041116/index.html

Wayne: I must say those results (especially in the MB/s graph)
look a bit weird for the command queing. Also the 10K drive
seems to make some weird jumps? What are your thoughts?

I assume these are read speeds as well (or did I miss something)?

I notice that too, but it is a bit late at night for analysing them, they have read and write tests. Not conclusive for our apps, but good pointer. Now those jumps, if I undertstood the bencmark (I.E, searched looked up and read) I might have a better understanding. I'm assuming they are not some weird design flaw (I didn't look to see if the article noted that). I assume it might be something to do with the track data size on the drive compared to the size of the file being written to, this would also interact with rpm speed. The size being written to might leave the head at a sufficent distance to cause the next command to wait for the platter to turn and head to move to location (is that right anybody) if this is sufficently missed, the drive has to wait for more than one rotation of the drive. On only sequential writes this maybe a problem compared to mixed commands (that command queing tries to optimise). For us we are trying to burst out sequentially as much as possible to aviode minor gaps needing the info to be stored non sequential sectors or waiting for the sector to spin around again. I'm interested do you guys get unexplained drop frames from this?


New 400GB drives:
http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20041116_130520.html

Technical Curiosities for the cash strapped:

http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/20041113/index.html

Please note, there are other ways to do this, such as reflection (omly on the best Pannels). As far as Panels go I have seen amazing hi resolution panels lately. So maybe good cheap HD projection is not too far away.

Dear Wayne I've done this
it fun and work's

Yup, I've been down this pathway also. I bought a couple of the projector panels, an overhead projector and was going to first start there and then build an integral unit. There is a group of people here:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumid=20

I ended up buying an Epson projector on sale for $600 - it does what is supposed to. I'm sure eventually I will upgrade but for now, I think everyone should invest in a simple projector and a good screen. Sometimes there are too many projects and not enough time.

Would a Lilliput 8" be suitable? It has an odd resolution of 1440x234 pixels.
I am thinking to replace the 400W halogen globe of the projector with a board of 100 white LEDs... Their lumen/watt output should be greater than the halogen light and will run much cooler. Any thoughts?

Is this related with LCD proyectors or with cameras?

Just an aside, but if anybody is cash strapped, they can get 720p (maybe 1080p) going cheap for their camera workflow (I wish a $600 Epson could do 1080p, over here the projectors start around $1100US). I actually wouldn't mind making my monitor into a 1080p one.

I have hundreds of pages printed out from when DIYaudio started doing it (I think there was one or two others on the web). I figure I can earn the money to buy a projecxtor quicker than reading the pages and making it.

Well, I I stopped watching most of these threads because it seemed more likely that a company like summix or SI was going to come out with a decent 1080p cam before October, but now it's Novemember and as far as I know . . . nothing. What happened to all the cameras coming out, or was that just a bunch of bunk?

Please email me at laurencemaher@hotmail.com

Thanks

No Bunk, just delays :( , ussual in hi tech developements. See my reply on the Home made camera thread.

Here is a link to a program reporting on a new artificial photsynthesis by using dye. Works in "lowlight" etc.

Now this may appear bot to have anything to do with cameras, but all sensors collect light and converts to electrical charge. So anything that ups the conversion rate of light to power, improves the sensors efficiency.

As I have discussed with Ronald before, there are a number of new technologies reporting potentials of over 60% efficency. It might be interesting to note that silicon solar pannels have around 20% efficency (it starts under, and I don't knoiw how high it now reaches, but probably no more than around 27%). Now if you go to a cmos sensor, how much are we getting between 10 to 20% efficency??. So a jump to 30-60% (realistically somthing might get above 70-90% one day) might do wonders.

http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1241478.htm

It sounds familiar, but I believe there are some technologies that could get closer to 100% (not actually 100% because of inefficencies).

Here is an interesting page with lots of links on microsdisplay, wearable computers, programmable silicon and processors etc:

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:cVnCUl4aymQJ:handheld2000.hypermart.net/hard_dev/hard_dev.htm+handheld2000,org&hl=en&start=5

Fun Fun Fun for those itnerested in embedded stuff and electronics. Have alook at these:

http://www.devrs.com/e/
http://www.devrs.com/e/docs.php#docsmags
http://www.devrs.com/pic/
http://www.freertos.org/PC/

Wayne.

Dear Wayne
I"ve been for years in the wearable group of
Steve Man lot of fun ...

Would you believe it, attachable lens for Mobile phones (even a zoom ;):

http://www.amacrox.com/04english/p-camera.htm


And free Windows XP like Linux:

http://www.freedows.com/index.php?Lang=en


Low noise ATX poxer supply (22db):

http://www.amacrox.com/04english/p-fanless.htm

Actually, looking at the back of that power supply it looks very simular to mine, probably a latter developement and a bit quieter (it also states 22db, full load, so it must adjust itself too).

A word of warning with these low niose power supply, I regard anything above 17db as too niosy for close proximity work.

Also note that there was some extremely small silent embedded power supplies for ITX boards I mentioned previously. I don't remember but I think there was ATX versions. Good if you don't require big power draws.

Dear Wayne
I do have the catalog of a Frenc dealer www.edox.com
they do have a pc atx 350 W without any fan ...0 db

Having trouble finding that, do you have link to the product?

Thanks

Wayne.

Did anybody have a look at embeded SBC?
A sample here:
http://www.lannerinc.com/products/ac_em_sbc.asp

Nothing extra special, some new micron models, no Altasens yet.

http://optics.sumix.com/products/cameras/index.htmll

Wayne.

I emailed Sumix and they say their new Altasens based camera will be out next March

That is not very good, they were supposed to be out by December, so the Altasens manufacture delay should allowed them to have a design fully complete by the time the sensor became available. I can only summise that perhaps the altasens is further delayed :( . From a marketing point of view this does not bode very well for the projects here, are we going to have to wait for the Sony HDV cameras to go on discount before we get an Altasens. A few months delay in the release date for a silicon product because of manufacturing delays should not be counted as anything especially unusual, but this delay is much longer, and makes me wonder what's up.

Ronald, what do you think, you should have more upto date knowledge of general chip production problems?