New Video from SI-1920HDVR

[Jason Rodriguez]

There's always room for improvement :)

[Wayne Morellini]

Re-edit: Whoops, appears that I was replying to posts several hours old, apologies, for the duplication.

Originally Posted by Glenn Gipson

I wanna be impressed by this camera, but I'm just not. The image quality doesn't look THAT much better than an HD100 to me.

You have got to be joking ;) If you are a very skillful cinematographer and have very good lighting I suppose it is possible to get them close to similarly well composed shots done on the Altasens.

I've read past posts from other threads. A grave yard test was mentioned last year, so it could be from an early prototype, apart from being told that a less then desirable lens set was being used in certain shots. I have noticed some queer stuff on the grave stones stills (I can't afford to keep downloading footage) but I don't know if that is from the marbling of the grave stone themselves, or Bayer's reaction to it. But if these are early prototype images (that should be marked and dated as such) then they may have not been properly debayered and handled (not to mention problems from compression for the web listing). Maybe they should move the earlier prototype images into a separate area, and show the best.

But I have also noticed that the images seem to be coloured in a less than desirable style, maybe it is to appeal to the film market, but this should have a modest mildly superior to film look. They should not be overstated like HDV, but some very nice colour graded versions of a few images, too show customers what can be done, would not go astray . For instance, why is everybody so Yellow, I know that this was a problem on old NTSC TV, but now we can render it good.

About the HD100, look at the latitude in the Altasens images, how the really bright areas are not overly stressful, and the dark areas have detail, turn the colour, contrast and brightness up or down to get an idea of what can be done with it. Though I do think that more could have been done with the images here. I am not overly impressed with the HD100 images I've seen (colour and tonality) I would have preferred if it was a notch above what I've seen, I prefer the sultry quality of the 1/2inch XDCAM HD (off yeah, I like that).

Being here, and on the 35mm SLR adaptors and the digital cinema projects, has taught me a lot, and changed the way i view image quality, still only half way there though, maybe less.


Showing the benefit:

But this is the problem they will have with selling to video people. They are used to various video looks and feel that they are preferable. But some really well composed example frames rendered in polished pro video and cinema styles would give them a good idea of what can be done. I personally would go through all image issues, blow them up and circle out the problem areas compared to the SI, so they can see the benefits.


Have a good day.

Wayne.

[Wayne Morellini]

I take some of that back. I've just been viewing the stills enlarged on a black background, and mucked around with brightness etc, and they look a lot better than I thought (though still too much yellow in a few).

The problem is that the stills are surrounded by a bright white background and are small, and the lights were on here, this causes the iris of the eye to close down and makes them look a lot darker etc. I forgot, doh.

[Glenn Gipson]

The daylight stuff looks really good, though. That, I will say, looks better than an HD100. Maybe the interior stuff just needs better lighting.

[Wayne Morellini]

When I viewed them on a black background with lights out, everything came out, and when I turned up the brightness on the monitor I could see completely into the shadows, pretty amazing, would love to know what the readings were.

I don't know what they were aiming to do, but it looks like they turned off the fill lighting in the interior to show off how it handled difficult lighting.

[Jason Rodriguez]

That early prototype system's color rendition wasn't as good since we hadn't nailed down the color matricies for that sensor . . . we are not using those shots to show off color, but dynamic range. And I think the dynamic range is pretty impressive for what you're seeing.

[Mark Donnell]

This camera sounds interesting. The website did not have any photos of the unit, which I understand is still in the design stage ? Any idea on a very rough cost ?

[Jason Rodriguez]

BTW, We've done a quick update to the front-page of the website with some photos of the current working prototype (which is in South Africa shooting a feature film called "Spoon", so yes, it really does work). We'll be re-working some of the mechanical design for the final production model, but at least this gives you an idea of where we're at.

The final price will be $20K with editing software (Prospect HD and Premiere Pro).

[Steve Connor]

Very impressive for a pre-pre model. Will there be a route to get the files on to FCPro? or will you be limited to Premier Pro fro editing?

[Jason Rodriguez]

Full Quicktime support is scheduled for 3Q/06, so you will be able to edit in FCP too.

[Steve Connor]

Can you disclose what codec that would use - could we finally be getting the excellent Cineform codec on a Mac.

Q3 is when the best guesses are at the moment for FCP 6

[David Newman]

Steve,

Yes the CineForm codec is porting to QuickTime and the Mac for FCP integration.

[Steve Connor]

David, that is very, very good news, if you can keep even half the efficiency of the codec in the Mac port then I will be a very happy man.

Now I have no reason to consider going back to PC based editing.

[Wayne Morellini]

Yes, very good news.

Are you guys going to take advantage of GPU acceleration?

I am thinking of getting a MacBook (Ibook replacement) if it is not too bad. What sort of configuration are we looking at for cineform?

There is 965 chipset coming out with more full hardware GPU features then normally, and support fro DirectX 10. I don't know where ever it will get to Macbook, but I will probably lend up buying a machine with that chipset. Would cineform be able to get much GPU acceleration from that chipset?


Thanks

Wayne.

[David Newman]

Intel 965 is excellent. For codec work there is no GPU acceleration needed.