Wearable Computer System for HD Capture

[Wayne Morellini]

Exactly right, that is why I am looking at lower powered platform compared to 965. Along as we have enough processing performance, it is alright, we can put something together in an day, instead of waiting for an FPGA, that might be free, or not, and then putting in an card device?

If people were serious they could start designing an small bigger than cigarette sized capture box today rather than wait for cineform FPGA solution. Using HDMI->two Analog devices JPEG2K codec chips, and usb to IDE chip, or straight to usb.

[David Newman]

Here is the problem with that solution. Have you tried playing back HD JPEG2K files, they play at 5-6 fps. JPEG2K has never taken off as an editing format based it is too compute intensive.

[Wayne Morellini]

OK, but I thought that was really an matter of hardware acceleration support (standard formats have everything, and JP2K is on it's own). How do you guys handle your wavelet encoding/decoding? There must be somebody working on an tricked out 2K encoder/decoder.

Now that I have got you here, any chance of an cheap capture solution like what I am talking about (ie based on free FPGA design or cheap chip) I think that BM could sell an heap at $249+ the price of your software?

Back tracking to the easier solutions, any chance that cineform 10 or 8 bit intensity 720p25/50 capture could work on an nano/pico itx board, what Ghz do you think would be required?

I might point out to people, that the 2K suggestion is only for an quick cheap dirty solution, it does not equal cineform at the same data rates.

[David Newman]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

How do you guys handle your wavelet encoding/decoding? There must be somebody working on an tricked out 2K encoder/decoder.

There is nothing J2K developer can do to speed it up, other than waiting for faster PC. Our design has wavelet transforms are 2-3 times faster, and our entropy coding even is faster still. We see 4-6 times speed difference between CineForm and JP2K. And of course faster PC benefit CineForm too so J2K is not catching up. ;)

Now that I have got you here, any chance of an cheap capture solution like what I am talking about (ie based on free FPGA design or cheap chip) I think that BM could sell an heap at $249+ the price of your software?

Yes, there is a chance. :)

Back tracking to the easier solutions, any chance that cineform 10 or 8 bit intensity 720p25/50 capture could work on an nano/pico itx board, what Ghz do you think would be required?

720p25 is easy, most of the nano/pico solutions could do it. Whereas 720p50/60 is like 1080p24/25/30/i50/i60 in processing load. You will needing 2+Ghz parts.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Wayne, you'd be lucky to capture and compress 720p using a 1GHz CPU. David obviously knows better but I think you're seriously pushing it ;)

In fact there's a whole host of obstacles to overcome - some insurmountable without a significant firmware upgrade on the board.

Firstly, Blackmagic outputs its own special brand of YPrPb 4:2:2 that barely any codec natively accepts. So you'll need to engineer your own capture tool that converts BMD's colourspace into conventional YUY2, just as CineForm has done. Then once you've done that, if you're capturing using Sheervideo or Huffyuv you'd need a RAID array for 720p/60 or 1080/24+.

There's also the small matter of Intensity's technical limitations. The only 720p modes other than 720p/60 and 720p/59.94 are slowmotion modes. So the 720p/24 option is closed off, I think.

The fact is there's a ready-made, brilliant quality solution out there and it's called CineForm HD. So I'd seriously consider Serge's Santa Rosa plan as it's the best - and certainly the most realistic - option.

[Serge Victorovich]

Richard, thank you very much for support:)
HDMI output (1440x1080 8bit) from camcorders and Intensity HDMI input (8bit only) really bottleneck for amazing Cineform codec.

Time to push CineformRAW. Every prosumer camcorder must have CineformRAW. HDV and AVCHD 4:2:0 8 bit its a deliver codec for broadcast and optical media as BD/HDDVD.

For acquisition and editing only one quality solution - CineformRAW.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by David Newman

Yes, there is a chance. :)

Yes! ;)

Have an look over at my technical thread about an new c programmable parallel processing chip :) . Ambarella might be cheaper (if it can be reprogrammed to do cineform).

I respect what you say about 2K problems (you think they would have sorted that one out before release). I think by what you say, some DX10 GPU improvement, and multi-processing core, might be able to obtain reasonable numbers, even an PS3 Linux system.

Thanks


Richard,

I thought I might have to give up on anything like an 50fps (until faster boards come in an year) 25fps would do me. Yes, I am saying cineform, and was asking fro comparison with others. I know the data rates and HD capability. Providing you want to pay the power consumption price you can do it dingle storage drive for 25fps 720p (notice I avoid 1080, makes system bigger). To save power, you might have to go 4:2:0 and twin laptop drives, though I think there might be an faster than 30mb/s sustained laptop drive out there. 32GB flash SDHC due in January, so flash IDE drive maybe cheaper by then (still big money fro this low cost rig).

It is an viable option for me, attached to an rig attached to little hand camera (like that post of the Canon HV10 rig) sort of being planning on going for something an bit loopy like that. Still like to do an pixel-shifted digital cinema camera though.

Serge, yes, yes, and the cineform RAW could also be delivery, with my idea. I'd rather 720p at twice quality, than 1080i at half of something. Problem is, that 720p50 would be around 48mb/s, but we have far too many TV stations as it is ;) very inefficient.

[Adriano Apefos]

Hi, Kevin,

Congratulations. Your system is perfect in my opinion. I would like to know how did you fit the intensity card in horizontal position. Is there an extension PCIe cable? And about the 20MBps BM codec, does it work in the windows xp? I think this datarate can give artifacts results as low as in minidv? Did you try it?

Thanks,

Adriano.

[Richard Leadbetter]

BM's codec is losing frames for Kevin and to put it frankly, CineForm completely outclasses it from a quality perspective.

Putting the card in a horizontal position is achieved using a PCI Express riser.

[Adriano Apefos]

Originally Posted by Richard Leadbetter

BM's codec is losing frames for Kevin and to put it frankly, CineForm completely outclasses it from a quality perspective.

Putting the card in a horizontal position is achieved using a PCI Express riser.

thanks for the reply, Did this forum find the reason for drop frames? I read almost everything and I did not find the answer. I just read maybe it is a processor speed not enough. but maybe this motherboard does not have enough architeture for the hd workflow like the intel's does. What do you think?

[Serge Victorovich]

Originally Posted by Richard Leadbetter

Putting the card in a horizontal position is achieved using a PCI Express riser.

A Good source for PCI Express Bus Extenders:
http://www.orbitmicro.com/company/pr...ser_cards.html

[Adriano Apefos]

In my experience with computers I could never get good performance with onboard graphics to capture and edit video. maybe this can be a reason to droped frames too. But as this board cannot handle the graphics card together with intensity I sugest to disable the the video preview when capturing and turn off the audio output too. this two settings helps very much to avoid drop frames in slow computers when capturing video.

[Ian G. Thompson]

Originally Posted by Serge Victorovich

Do you think the A1 is better (in image quality) than HV20 ?;)

.....
Native resolution HV20's cmos image sensor not 1920x1080, but 2048x1536
With properly hack you can get 2K from 1/2,7" sensor:) Yes, its not 2/3" as altasens in SI2K but have good potention
if capture to CineformRAW straight from smos image sensor.

You know what Serge...if I answer no to this question I think there will be a lot of A1 owners ready to dispute that answer. But...honestly I don't think the A1's picture is any better (if better at all) than the HV20s. It seems to have a wider angle view but the pictures compliment one another. Now...in low light there should be a difference....but I don't own an A1 (only viewed many of its pictures). But to add...I do believe the HV20 does have the potential of giving a better looking image if there was a way to hack it or andromadize(sp) it using Cineform's codec. This is definately a real 2k camera.

[Adriano Apefos]

I dont think an external 2.5 drive can handle the capture well if it is pluged in firewire or usb to capture HD. the capture drive must be pluged direct in the sata conection in the motherboard. if user wants to put the drive outside for swap, so user needs to pull the sata and power cables outside the box to plug in the 2.5 drive to get speed on it.

[Adriano Apefos]

the photo 3 of teh system in first page shows the 2.5 external hd pluged in the usb conector. was the capture tests done in this way or the capture tests was done using sata or e-sata connection in the 2.5 drive?