Steve Jobs takes a jab at HD camera makers

[John DeLuca]

“True HD” is a loosely held term (much like “broadcast quality”). IMO when people say “True HD” they are talking about cameras that have full ‘on chip’ resolution (as in they don’t rely on tricks or over sharpening). They are talking about cameras that can go through layers of effects and manipulation without a degraded image (as in something you can use in a professional environment). God Bless Steve Jobs for being honest. I could go into why people push ‘hd’ handycams as ‘professional’ solutions, but my post will probably be deleted (sad).

[Steven White]

Bah to Jobs.

The problem isn't really with the imaging systems, it's with the codecs. I've seen HV20 footage blow the socks off XL-A1 and HVX200 footage in terms of resolution and lens aberrations.

What consumers should be demanding is higher bit-rates, 1.0 pixel aspect ratios and 4:2:2 subsampling or RAW at a minimum. The extent to which this will clean up the image quality is astounding. Instead, we're getting more and more cameras with LOWER bitrates and the crummy AVC-HD codec.

Honestly, how hard would it be to implement a consumer-level camera with a 1920x1080 RAW or 4:2:2 wavelet based codec like Cineform's? I'd take the HV20 sensor and lens combination, add in a manual shutter, aperture, gain and focus ring, record to an on-board 100 GB hard drive or flash at an appropriate bit-rate. Boy would I be a happy camper.

-Steve

[Gints Klimanis]

Originally Posted by Ray Bell

And then I remember a sales guy asking me why I'd need a still camera capable of 22m pixel, he said, you can only print so big... and I replied,
its not the size of the paper, its the ability to crop the pic down to where
you want the pic... its like, take the pic, if you have enough resolution in
the orignal, you can pan/zoom and crop as you please and the quality stays the same....

You answered the sales persons question well. It useful to add that a 22MPhotosite camera is still a 22MPhotosite/4=5.5 MPixel to 22MPhotosite/2= 11 MPixel camera given the Bayer sensor. Today's HD displays deliver about 2MPixels. It's likely that, within our lifetimes, we will see a 16 MPixel TV standards. And, it would be nice to view our portfolio in full resolution on those mega displays.

On the other hand, higher pixel density translates to smaller photosites. Do you really want that many pixels if you have to trade them for dynamic range ?

[Steven White]

Originally Posted by Gints Klimanis

It's likely that, within our lifetimes, we will see a 16 MPixel TV standards.

Ugh. What a ridiculous waste of bandwidth that would be. Seriously - broadcast HD isn't even close to "1920x1080" when you start to consider all the macro-blocking and chroma subsampling.

I think you'd be amazed by an uncompressed 4:4:4 1920x1080 image played back in real time. There's really only so much information you can absorb at once, and the amount of storage for that amount of data is just plain silly.

-Steve

[Greg Boston]

Originally Posted by Steven White

I think you'd be amazed by an uncompressed 4:4:4 1920x1080 image played back in real time. There's really only so much information you can absorb at once, and the amount of storage for that amount of data is just plain silly.

And the amount of storage we gobble up today would have seemed silly by the standards of 20 years ago. What's the resolution of film? How many grains on a frame? That's the holy grail of video. That's what technology is striving for.

20 years from now, the amount of storage we use to day will seem primitive and what you deem as silly will be the norm.

-gb-

[John C. Chu]

I could have swore that Jobs answered that question to fend off questions about iTV being just only 720p?

Heck, Jobs was even "dismissing" DVD as a format for sharing your home movies.

Instead, he encouraged putting higher than SD quality on the web..with no worries about whether it is Blu-Ray or HD DVD.

I wouldn't take much offense at what he said..

But Apple is sometimes "crazy" ahead of time.

I remember when the first blueberry iMac came out...no floppy drive! [It didn't have a cd burner either and I thought he was crazy..but guess what..he was right!]

Maybe he really thinks that our broadband high speed network is going improve exponentially in the next 5 years?

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

Jobs doesn't consider any of the current consumer HD cameras to actually be HD.

Maybe he said that because he's sitting on a RED reservation? Just guessin'

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by John DeLuca

I could go into why people push ‘hd’ handycams as ‘professional’ solutions, but my post will probably be deleted (sad).

Sorry, not deleted. But it's the *people* who are professional solutions, not the gear.

[Bill Davis]

Originally Posted by Pat Griffin

So Apple should make their own 2k camera! iFocus
(as long as they use lenses made by someone else)

Perfect.

The Red 4k iChat AV option!

[Chris Hurd]

I don't want a camera on my cel phone. I want a cel phone on my camera.

[Heath McKnight]

I just pictured someone using a RED in full 4k resolution as their iChat camera. HAR HAR!

heath

[Kevin Shaw]

Originally Posted by Tim Dashwood

I found it interesting that Jobs doesn't consider any of the current consumer HD cameras to actually be HD.

Yawn. Wake me when the iPhone is a real phone and not just a glorified iPod... ;-)

[Serge Victorovich]

Originally Posted by Steven White

Honestly, how hard would it be to implement a consumer-level camera with a 1920x1080 RAW or 4:2:2 wavelet based codec like Cineform's? I'd take the HV20 sensor and lens combination, add in a manual shutter, aperture, gain and focus ring, record to an on-board 100 GB hard drive or flash at an appropriate bit-rate. Boy would I be a happy camper.

-Steve

Yes! CineformRAW 4:2:2 must be standart for semipro/pro.
HDV and AVCHD 4:2:0 8 bit only for consumer camcorders and cellphones.

We need ask this solution (CineformRAW 4:2:2) every day from greedy monsters:
Sony, Canon, JVC, Panasonic, Samsung...

TrueHD=CineformRAW for tapeless camcorders with cmos image sensor at least 1/3".

We need a camcorder like HV20 with ability to record CineformRAW onto HDD/SSD at $1,5-2K

TrueHD=CineformRAW is possible NOW!!!
Talk about every day on every forums if you want result!!!
Do not support with your wallet these greedy monsters, but
support Cineform and Elphel: our good friends and talented developers
David Newman and Andrew Phillipov!!!

P.S. We want to see collaboration between Cineform and Elphel:)

[Wayne Morellini]

I was thinking of leaving an comment on that webpage, about supporting low cost Digital Cinema Camera attempts here, but realised he was talking from an completely different angle. Still, for the most quality for bandwidth, Cineform's RAW achieves that, I have advocated about this in the past. An 720p25 image is probably going to be around 24mb/s with editable visual lossless, and resultant accuracy closer to 4:4:4 than 4:2:0 is (personal opinion). I could probably get this into an cigarette sized camera. Cineform stands to earn many times more than it does now, from an camera/video standard like this. CineformRAW can be used on existing video, by simply converting the video format to bayer.

[Serge Victorovich]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

CineformRAW can be used on existing video, by simply converting the video format to bayer.

CineformRAW is 5:1 compressed BayerRAW from sensor.
You want use CineformRAW to convert mpeg2/h264 4:2:0 back to Bayer RAW ?
Result is GiGo (Garbage In - Garbage Out), imo:)