New Video from SI-1920HDVR
 

Hi,

I've posted some new clips from the SI camera in the footage gallery on the website.

Chris, I'm sorry to use this forum for the announcement if it's not the right place, but I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up on what's happening.

Thanks,

Jason

The footage is gorgeous. Now if the camera didn't have the ergonomic appeal of a cinderblock... For shooters who don't move from the tripod, or who can afford a really really expensive handheld support unit, this thing looks great, but for handheld work it's just not the thing.

Well, true enough it ain't gonna be a pocket-cam but the current case is only an engineering shell; the SI guys at NAB did specifically say that there would be a somewhat smaller and presumably more ergonomic and stylish housing on the final product.

The optical block is removeable. If you don't mind being thethered you could easily shoot with it away from the body.

I too am excited by the cam, but the current form factor needs work.

Also, after looking at one of the clips from Vegas, Jason, I think I'd like to see a modern 16mm lens on the cam. I know those older primes you had are not really the sharpest 16 glass available these days.

Or put another way, after looking at the new clips, things look softer than I'd expect. Might be the glass.

Quicktime & RAW Sample from SI-1920HDVR
 

These may give you some better detail:

The QT is compressed with WinRaR and expands to 2GB (8-bit output only)!!!

Uncompressed Quicktime (8-bit, 970MB)
http://www.siliconimaging.com/Digita...compressed.rar

For single frame 10-bit viewing, grab the individual frames:

RAW File (DNG)
http://www.siliconimaging.com/Digita...ls/SI-1920.dng

Cineon File (Adobe Camera Raw conversion)
http://www.siliconimaging.com/Digita...ls/SI-1920.cin

These files are also posted in the usuall GALLERY location:

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.

Well, SI/Cineform, RED, and even a couple others who get less press are doing their best to leap-frog the mid-pro market squarely past the offerings of the big guys. I'm not going to worry myself about whether others pronounce entirely subjective and premature judgments on products that are still in development. I'll take the facts as they become available, which also means waiting for objective analyses of shipping cameras before deciding whether to be impressed or not.

Amen Pete, but I'm glad to see great footage from SI so far. I think it looks pretty good and I can't wait to see some more. (Hint, hint)

heath

Image Quality
 

I have some questions about the example images, im only really looking at the dng as i haven't been able to download the big file yet.

There is some quite bizzare noise in this, small vertical and horizontal streaks which im guessing are an artifact from the codec as they look very digital? If we had the proper codec are there methods to reduce this? Or is this an example of the quality we would expect?

The overall image seems very desaturated, grading the image seems to push this noise above into becoming very visible. I mean to get the colour charts looking, well, colour, pushes the noise in the shadows (esp blue) into dubious quantities.

I guess im asking, in the grand scheme of things how good is that sample dng, is it representative or will there be better samples?

thanks
paul

Those are NOT artifacts from the Cineform RAW compression, those are from the Adobe debayer algorithm itself.

Also there is no color matrix in the DNG file, it's a "true" RAW file, so you have to add saturation in the Adobe Camera RAW converter, or somewhere along the line . . . you are seeing the same results as if you were in Premiere Pro and clicked off the color saturation matrix.

You may want to try different RAW converters if you don't like the results from Adobe. Other examples are Dcraw (which has a couple different algorithms to choose from), XnView, etc.

noise and RAW
 

Jason, thanks. I have rawshooter which is how i deal with my SLR photography and that shows the same noise. Plus the default colours it comes in as look like a magenta version of the viper :) but it's the noise that matters.

Why give out a .dng when the processed results don't match up to what you see internally? Also you have a .cin file generated by adobe camera raw for download too which exhibits the same noise. I simply take this stuff into AE7 make sure everything is 32 bit linear and play with colour correction and exposure to get a feel for the latitude - is there's something wrong with this process?

Because of this noise if you push the saturation it doesn't hold up well at all.

Would it be possible to supply a .cin/.dpx after cineform codec has decompressed it?

Or does the workflow not allow that. And by that i mean if you keep the files in cinform right up until final rendering can you only output an 8 bit file at the end?

Or could you take the cineform files and generate log or 32 bit linear files to then work on without needing the codec?

Because if you can't then it implies that all the grading has to happen using the matrixes within the codec?

thanks in advance
paul

Hi Paul,

Good questions.

Right now my "limitation" is that we've been working on the Premiere Pro Cineform RAW importer, but not the After Effects version. I haven't found a way to export 10-bit DPX from Premiere Pro, only 8-bit still-file formats. So what you're asking can be done once we've got the After Effects support. In other words, with After Effects, you can do the whole 32-bit floating point workflow with the 10-bit Cineform files and then export to a deep-pixel format at render out.

BTW, I replaced the Cineon with a new file, this time using a different algorithm.

Check that one out and you can see how different codecs create different results.

Also, the way you're working with the 32-bit formats is definitely "wrong", because our file format is already gamma corrected . . . you you're placing a gamma corrected file in a 32-bit linear color-space and then trying to set "exposure" on it . . . you can't do that inside After Effects. You can only do that if you have access to the linear RAW data, which is only in the Adobe Camera RAW plug-in. Once it's in After Effects, it's been gamma corrected, and using the 32-bit float features like exposure aren't necessarily going to give you accurate results, especially if you're thinking the footage is photometrically linear when it's not. Only the exposure slider in the Adobe Camera Raw plug-in on import gives you access to the photometrically linear data.

Jason,

thanks, i understand and good news about the AE plug in

Saying the world exposure was a bit of a misnomer, i was just using it in that case to brighten everything up (the button's easier to access than a filter!). Although you can take the dng in AE, reduce the exposure in the raw convertor, bring that in, then use the 32 bit levels (with white and black point clipping unchecked) and create some superbrights. Quick and dirty and not recommended for production! (i don't know how the DNG converter deals with the underexposed image, i believe it's 16bpc so when you increase the exposure back there's still enough info to bring it up without posterising)

The new cineon looks better, the noise is more agreeable that's for sure. Is this going to be the best we'll see or is there more development to do on the RAW convertor?

Paul