Delivery formats
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Laurence Maher :
Are delivery formats usually not 10 bits? (Don't know much about delivery specs). -->>>

I don't know if it's the right term, but by "delivery" formats I was referring to MPEG and typical codecs used in delivering QuickTime, RealVideo and Windows Media to the end-user (consumer). These codecs are always 8-bit (unless I'm greatly mistaken).

8 bits can certainly deliver a great picture -- just take a look at a DVD on a widescreen HDTV. In the case of films, however, those 8 bits were downsampled from a much higher bit-depth source.

Starting with a 10-bit (or greater) source gives you enough "headroom" to process the images (color-correct, darken, lighten, etc.) the image without losing detail and adding noise.

<<<-- Physical Resolution: 800 (H) x 480 (V) -->>>

Yeat, that listing was confusing. It is compatible with higher-resolution signals, but then downsamples to its physical resolution.

I haven't seen any small 1280-wide LCDs either. However, there are some interesting developments in OLEDs (Organic Light Emitting Diodes).

Note -- there don't appear to be any commercial products yet. OLED appear to be still in the development phase.

They are very flat, can be flexible and can have very high resolution. Since they are light emitting, they don't need the separate backlight that an LCD would. They can also be placed very close to the eye and "project" the equivalent of a 21-inch monitor, which would make it perfect for an "eyepiece" viewfinder. I understand that the Kinetta (www.kinetta.com) camera is using one for exactly that.

The display described in this article is 0.77" diagonal and displays full RGB in 1280x1024 resolution.
http://www.elecdesign.com/Articles/A...4577/4577.html

The company (eMagin) has a developer's kit available (http://www.emagin.com/kitsale.htm) but it would probably be expensive.

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson : Rob and Rob need to program the the capture software so that it's using video overlay to display the live camera image. -->>>

Just a note -- I would love to do this, but I have never worked with DirectX before. I think the initial requirements of the software will be ...

1. Properly read raw files
2. Apply Bayer filter
3. Write to 16-bit TIFF

... and then ...

1. Set basic presets and read real-time images from card
2. Write images to raw files
3. Provide real-time preview of images

... in that order. Does that sound reasonable?

(And as the other Rob was saying, we definitely need to pace ourselves. I have a very demanding full-time job, a family with three small children and various other commitments. I'm going to carve out as much time as I can for this project, but I can't make any promises.)

wow, that would be really great as a viewfinder! looks like you could hook that up to the 2nd port on a dual head graphics card and have your HD resolution overlay display output to that OLED device and mount that thing in the viewfinder!

cool.


I sen't them an email asking about price for the unit

Rob, I think your close but maybe it would go like this:


1. interact with card and camera to setup camera settings

2. display color images into video overlay

3. record raw file to keep datarate down

4. bayerfilter raw file to full color tiff with a highquality bayer filter remover

5. do your color work in Combustion or AfterEffects

6. edit your HD project!

7. make HD or SD master tape for client!

8. watch client smile as he thinks he is looking at a project shot with a 100,000+ camera rig ;)

9. note to self --> we just shot TRUE HD at 4:4:4 10bit and did NOT have to spend $6,000 on camera rental for one week!!! or get a loan for the rig and hope we use it enough to make it worthwile!

10. take the extra 6 grand we saved and spend it on a higher megapixel camera from Silicon Imaging! <--that one's for Steve ;)

<<<-- Originally posted by Obin Olson :
1. interact with card and camera to setup camera settings
... -->>>

Yeah, I think the order will depend on when I get my hands on a camera! :-)

question for Steve, does the 1300 fit into the standard cameralink spec? if so what would stop it from working with ANY cameralink software or hardware? I have been looking at capture boards and it seems that even the "cameralink" spec boards only work with certain cameras....why is this? seems like it's a far cry from USB or firewire compatibility

why not use 2 usb channels for the camera so that you could get the datarate you need for this camera? or better yet use firewire 800?? that way it would be much more plug-and-play it seems to me can't firewire 800 support the datarate we need?

or build a cameralink-to-firewire800 converter box?

The IEEE high speed serial connector is known as Firewire and i.Link (Japan). The IEEE 1394a-1995 specification provides up to 400 M bit/sec and uses either a 6 pin connector (PCs/Computers) or a 4 pin connector (camcorders and AV equipment). The latest specification IEEE 1394b provides up to 800 M bit/sec (but is slated for 3.2 G bit/s) and uses a 9 pin connector which may operate in 'biligual mode' (will connect to either a 4 or 6 pin IEEE 1394a connectors) or 'beta mode' (will connect to another IEEE 1394b system).

this looks like a good camera also but I bet it's using the ibis5 chip...

http://www.prosilica.com/cv1280F.htm

seems like it would be easer to use because of 1394 hookup

Camera Link
 

The standard camera link transceiver is rated for something like 65MHz. With just one or two exceptions, all frame grabbers will run at this speed (I think there is a 40MHz grabber out there somewhere). Some will run as high as 85MHz with the newer transceiver chips. All camera link cameras should be able to work with all the grabbers. Most of the time you need a configuration file - every grabber company has their own format. When a camera is "supported", it means that the format file is already made. Most of the time, though, you don't get a GUI interface for controlling the camera.

USB 2.0 is not appropriate for lots of streaming data, especially multi-channel. Firewire is better but fairly slow. We are doing 800mbps on gigabit ethernet - cheap PC interfaces and laptop compatibility right now. Firewire 800 is only marginally interesting. We get 100m distance, use commercial switches and hubs.

Base camera link provides either 3 channels of 8 bits or 2 channels of 12 bit. If you run them at 85MHz, you can do 1920x1080x60fps, 12 bits on a single cable. Now. What you do with 150Mpixels/sec is another story. But, I am not convinced that another interface is necessary. Just more complete support for the existing ones.

Prosilica camera
 

Obin,
You are correct, that must be using the IBIS-5. 6.7 microns, extended dynamic range, 10 bit 40MHz. That is the internal A/D converter. We use an external, faster 12 bit converter so we can clock it higher (up to about 38fps) with less roll-off - their internal A/D is the weakest point. I still wouldn't suggest it for this application unless a global shutter is required.

WOW got your lens and shot some stills! great quality! I will try and psot some pics today

Hey Obin,

Looking forward to seeing the pics!

lost power at work today from storm, will post when I go in in the morning! the images are VERY RAW - and at 10bit they look alot like a highres dvx100 with Juan's mod for 4:4:4!! VERY exciting what can be done in post for color work! can pull blacks way up untill you see everything in the details

Hey guys, I'm sure you all know this from Juan's thread, but just in case you haven't and it could be a factor, I thought you might find this helpful for codec design or whatever . . .


Randall Larsen
Regular Crew

Registered: May 2004
Location: Honolulu, HI
Posts: 48
more on file systems
Its probably a rehash of our previous discussions on FAT32 etc. but I found this discussion on Slashdot informative:

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/03/08/13/2211230.shtml

FAT32 seems to be the only systems readable on all 3 commonly used O/S. The question is raised: what file formating tools exist to format larger than 40gb FAT32 partitions. Some disks come preformatted in FAT32 with much larger partitions. How do we format (or reformat disks) with large Fat32 partitions.


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June 6th, 2004 12:28 PM



Randall Larsen
Regular Crew

Registered: May 2004
Location: Honolulu, HI
Posts: 48
more on files systems 2
There is according to the discussion on slashdot a $40 tool from Paragon that allows you to mount ext3 files everywhere. ext3 has advantages over FAT32 so maybe Juan should consider ext3.

see the august 13th post of Dougmc.

Not sure whether Paragon allows read and right of xfs from windows.

Paragon's Mount Everything [mount-everything.com] also Ext2fs Everywhere [ext2fs-anywhere.com]

There is another tool that allows reiserfs from windows.

The main objection to FAT32 (in the long run) is that since its not
a jounaling file system. There is a good chance a power outage or a tripped over firewire could cause data to be lost. Other objections to FAT32 are mentioned in the Slashdot discussion.


I add that the max 4gigabyte -2 bytes file size could be a problem with long takes if all the frames go in one pile.

You can make large fs32 disks from Windows Xp from the command line interface: format d: /fs:f32 So thats not a big problem.


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June 6th, 2004 01:14 PM



Jason Rodriguez
Regular Crew

Registered: Mar 2003
Location:
Posts: 52
Doesn't work on a mac though :-(

<<<-- Originally posted by Laurence Maher : Valeriu & Wayne

I agree with keeping the signal as high quality as possible. I think 1080 is much more important for those of us looking to do theatrical realeases. 720 is pushing it.

Also, I'm curious, there was mention of "doing the final encoding at 8 bit". Maybe I'm not thinking straight here (I'm assuming you mean final encoding of footage into a format one can edit with . . . yes, I'm a programming layman) but I think if it's possible it should stay in 10 bit. 8 bit, just like 720, is pushing it for theatrical release. Both 720 and 8 bit are MINIMUM most professionals consider for going to the screen, not hardly preferable, and would make quite a sacrafice when considering a finished product.

Another thing is that you were talking capture rates of 50 Mbps? I heard rumors Canon is coming out with a 50 Mbps HDV camera by the end of the year under 10 grand. If that's true, we all surely would have wasted some serious cash, for what the canon would deliver, complete with lens, would probably be so much more worth the convenience of an extremely cumbersome, and not nearly as feature-filled system. Again 50 Mbps is not theater screen quality really. Might get away with it, but . . . you're pushing it.

We must remember that if we want MEDIUM quality (somewhere between TV and theater movies), that's not too far away for a price similar to what we're talking about drumming up here. If we're going to all this trouble, let's do it to compete with the BIG BOYS, not just to go to the next category closer. Otherwise, somewhere between 2 and 5 years from now we'll realize we're back in the same place . . . wondering why we AREN'T making hollywood level films.

Just IMHO. -->>>

Just lost an hours of typing again.

Summary:

Bayer cannot do true RAW 4:4:4 as the filter looses the relastionship between pixel and colour/intensity that 3 chippers have. So we are loosing resolution and need a higher res to start with to match the target resolution (from my iunderstandaing), So we should not compromise in quality or res comapred to $5K HDV's. So 720p 3 chip, or 1080+ Bayer (to get trueish 720p 4:4:4, at 50Mbyes+ per second) should be our objective for cheap ($21K to 3K) camera. 1080 3 chip, or sub UHD bayer (sized to get true 4:4:4 1080) for $4K-5K camera. I personally only wish to buy one camera until UHDV (speculative) or something comes oput in 5 years time. So what do you think?

When 720p RAW 4:4:4 is resolution upscaled it should look acceptable on a cinema screen. When 1080p 4:4:4, or bayer UHD, is upscaled it should tolerbalky on an Imax screen (I hope).

The human eye sees about 8 bit at any one time, the 10-12bits is for picture processing and post production effects. Most good cameras do 10-12 bits then save in 8 bits.

The Canon 50 Mbits camera will be close to RAW, but RAW 4:4:4 should give better data for resolution upscalling to Cinema, motion, and special effects. So those are the only real uses for RAW 4:4:4. Apart from this the Canon camera will probably be much more in price (my opinion, among otehrs read).