4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

[Obin Olson]

on-board is fine for the graphics as we are only using 2% cpu for display!

[Keith Wakeham]

asus makes an intel pentium m to socket 478 adapter so that you can use a pentium m in a regular p4 board

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_cont...ookie%5Ftest=1

It means you can use almost any p4 mainboard, and pick and chose one with pci-x for your framegrabber.

Hope this helps

[Obin Olson]

not so much help..that is ONLY for ASUS boards and they don't make boards that have PCI-X that work with that adaptor...bummer

anymore help anyone?

[Conor Ryan]

I hope these links are of some help to you:

http://www.advantech.com/local_inc/s....x=0&image.y=0

http://www.advantech.com/local_inc/s....x=0&image.y=0

[Rob LaPoint]

Hey Obin, this can't end like this!! I don't know if this will work but here is a link

http://www2.computeruniverse.net/url...urlmapped=true

After looking around it seems that there may be a suitable ASUS board for the pentium M adapter just not in North America, I think there may be boards available in Europe. Look half way down the page on this link and there is a socket 478 board with PCI-X, hope it helps!

[Keith Wakeham]

I tired searching some more, but pentium m chipsets are limited in number and then finding one with pci-x is also limited.

The advantech aimb750 is also based on 855.

I think you might be better off finding a p4 or opteron based computer with pci-x because i've gone through almost all major manufacturers of mainboard and haven't come up with any pentium-m mainboards with pci-x except the dfi

I guess that doesn't help at all - sorry

[Obin Olson]

How do people feel about the limits of Gigabit @ 30fps 1080p video?

I may change direction with this project and tackle the Silicon Imaging Gigabit camera setup instead of CameraLink...the market does not seem to have the perfect board for us at this time...but we can use Gigabit on many many boards..

Future updates could include fast PCI EXpress cards and cameralink systems for higher framerates...

thoughts??

[Rob LaPoint]

I think that is a great idea, I have been behind the Gige since I first heard about it. Remeber you can always drop down to a lower RES for higher framerates. GO FOR IT!

[Obin Olson]

looks like we are going to stick with cameralink because it's more flexible with the datarate and it's more of a direct path to the disks..I am going to get a Coreco board in and test with that on the DFI mainboard ..it has 32MB/ram on it to help smooth the data out before it hits the pci-x bus..lets see how things go

[Axel Mertes]

Hi Obin,

I am going to test a fast camera by monday or tuesday, using a PCI-X framegrabber and CameraLink. Just to let you know...

For the Gigabit approach:

I wonder if the link will be fast enough. Is this Gigabit stuff just using the interface, but running a proprietary protocoll, or something like Jumbo Frames on TCP/IP protocol?

A typical Gigabit ethernet connection will not be able to transfer more than ~40 to 50 MByte/s using TCP/IP protocoll. We have server style Gigabit cards from all kinds in use (3Com, Broadcom, Intel, ...), and NOTHING is really so fast in real life situations. In a pure peer to peer connection the situation gets slightly better, but then its just around the 50 MByte/s as we have seen it.

At least the Gigabit approach is nice, because you can have a long cable or even a fibre optic converter to have really long distance between camera head and recording side.

Be aware: For recording 1920y1080y Pixels @ 10 Bit/Pixel you need to record about 75 MByte/s. I have no clue if the Gigabit camera connection really works that fast (from hardware side its possible, I simply doubt that if the protocol would be TCP/IP, which I really don't know).

So, Steve & Obin, could you elaborate what is the protocol and possible speed on the Gigabit camera connection?

If it would be TCP/IP there could be convenient small NAS systems around for compact storage, using Linux or the like.

Regards,
Axel

[Axel Mertes]

Obin,

you may written it somewhere in the thread, but I ask as its quicker than searching:

Is your aim to have a small mobile computer with as few power consumption as possible?

Should the camera man have the PC "attached" or should it even have been build into the camera itself?

You need PCI-X for the grabber card. Which one do you use and what is the price level?
I've info that the Leutron PCIexpress cards will be around 1500 US$ (which is quite much given you aimed total price), just to let you know.

I've just visited Steve's company homepage and following part seems to be the important one on GigE camera link (IMHO):

"This configuration offers a fast, easy way to extend distance between cameras and PCs. The GigE-CameraLink and the PC are connected by ordinary, low-cost Cat-5 LAN cable. The links extend up to 100 metres, and are fully bi-directional. The GigE-CameraLink converts image data into Ethernet packets for transport to the PC, and control signals (RS-232 or GPIO) are passed back to the camera.

For demanding applications, the GigE-CameraLink High-Performance IP Driver or GigE-CameraLink Universal IP Filter Driver allow users to send data directly to PC memory. The drivers bypasses the compute-intensive Windows stack, using instead an ultra-efficient processing stack that is optimized for delivering image data. This powerful technique minimizes end-to-end latency and maximizes data rates. The GigE-CameraLink High-Performance IP Driver uses only about 1% of the CPU's processing power, leaving almost all its capacity free for running applications."

Given this to work, the GigE approach will solve you a lot of problems. You can use a simple Notebook now as recording system. There are even notebooks that handle dual or triple disks (such as from 1beyond), but these don't run nicely without "power wire" - so there are moveable but not like mobile. If you consider that in most sets you will have light anyway and you can work with a mostly wire PC system, you might turn to a barebone shuttle or the like with a fast enough RAID.

Why do you want to have Pentium-M? Just for its power saving?

Axel

[Obin Olson]

Dothan is a Low power chip
I will have a complete camera system like a video camcorder when all is said and done....I am still looking into CameraLink VS Gigabit

[Steve Nordhauser]

Axel,
You are correct about typical gigabit rates. With a custom high performance driver, we get 100MB/sec over gigabit - point to point or through a switch that supports jumbo packets. Another advantage of this driver is that it uses less than 2% of the CPU for acquisition. With the standard windoze stack, we get about 200Mbps and 30% CPU usage.

Gigabit will limit you to 1080p@ 30fps, 12 bit however.

The reason that all of us are interested in low power motherboards is to embed the CPU and disks in the camera head. Ideally, we would like to run on batteries, but even on AC you want minimum fans.

[Axel Mertes]

Hi Steve,

thanks for this clearing comments. I expected that Jumbo Frame thing. Bypassing the windows stack is a nice idea.

One question:

Do you intend to have a mainbaord small enough to fit INTO the old 16mm camera? I thought of some of these Blade servers currently hip in 19" rack mount systems. You can get a complete embedded computer with the size of a PCI card. I believe some use low power CPUs for lower total heat dissipation.

All this embedded computing stuff comes with boards nowadays that would be small enough. But PCI-X - I guess there is no chance to have it. I'd expect you would have more luck on mini-versions of the PCIexpress bus then, which might be adapted to work with a standart PCIepxress card then. Just an idea.

Axel

[Steve Nordhauser]

Axel,
Now you are on Obin's turf. He has probably looked at every low power motherboard option. He has examined retrofitting film cameras and designing new housings. He has eyeballed PCI, PCI-X PCIe and gigabit. CPU power and processing capabilities, cache usage, bus bandwidth, DMA transfers - he knows more about this stuff than he ever would have wished. And he has a funny red spot on his forehead from banging his head against the wall. ;-}

It is not an easy path to bring a product this complex to completion.