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Old October 25th, 2007, 11:27 AM   #46
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Originally Posted by Noah Yuan-Vogel View Post
a significant increase in exposure latitude of video could have a greater effect on the popularity of video than higher resolutions, color samplings, or frame rates ever did.
I agree... I've been waiting to see who will use the bitsdream... Very interesed in where this is sensor is going. I'm producing real world 32-bit video right now with a DSLR but to get nine stops I'm limited to 15-20 seconds per frame and thus it's only timelapse.

Since this camera is API based would it be possible to vary the eV frame by frame via custom software?

Last edited by Jay Burlage; October 25th, 2007 at 12:17 PM.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 11:31 AM   #47
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ah jose, sorry about that, i misread. so sumix does confirm that they compress in hardware and can do 1080p60 at 12bit? any answer regarding the type of compression and how it handles complex scenes that cannot remain lossless at 1.7x compression?
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Old October 25th, 2007, 11:44 AM   #48
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I mean there are plenty of productions where running a camera tethered is reasonable, and it certainly isnt that complicated to build a relatively portable computer that could be shoulder mounted. I did this with the old sumix M73 usb camera. I unfortunately never got around to shooting handheld or in a production environment (only shot stuff like motion and resolution tests while developing) with it because unfortunately the motherboard i was using stopped working. any pictures of your camera platform, daniel? do you have a thread about it? only thing is, if the requirements are anything like SI's camera, you might not be able to run the sumix on the same computer as the elphel. From the sound of it, sumix's compression isnt on-camera like elphel, so youll be dealing with 10x as much data (7MBps max on elphel vs 70+ MBps on sumix). This means more CPU and HDD speed (although one can be traded for the other). Also I know SI has particular requirements in terms of gigE chipsets because of the need for especially large jumbo packets when pushing that much data over gigE, this might be the case for the sumix as well for capturing any video formats requiring much more than 70MP/s.

Daniel, I saw some of the footage you posted from the stuff you shot on the 333. How did things go in terms of rolling shutter and accurate framerates/audio sync? I mean I can imagine shooting things that have little movement and where audio can be VO'd where none of that would be much of an issue, but that could be quite limiting in many cases.

I have not made a thread yet, I will once its 100% complete. Pictures should come in a few days. Here are some details for now:

18" long x 10" high
black plexiglass body on aluminum rails
wide 7" touch screen lcd
single hand input device

quad core 2 duo q6600
asus p5k deluxe w/ 2x 1Gbit lan
2gb DDR2 1066mhz ram soon @ 4gb
400gb sataII hdd. plans for raid 0
geforce 7900

Im fairly confident it can handle anything I throw at it, especially after I get 4gb ram and raid 0.



I have done a lot of filming with the 333. You can see some footage I edited last Sunday here:
http://www.buysmartpc.com/temp2/phon...12K_Stream.wmv

From another post.. "I was just the camera operator. This is the first time I used the 333 in an actual production environment, and I really was not ready. Its got its problems. It still needs some sound work, compression especially. And there is no CC. This is unmodified video, so it has a bit of green tint to it."

Its not the best demonstration for rolling shutter because the shot is locked off. This is before my platform. The camera was connected to a desktop pc. For nearly every setup i had to power down, move pc, move camera, setup mouse/keyboard, boot up, set settings, and 10-15 min later be ready to record again. I know all about the limitations of shooting with the network cameras all too well. Thats why im trying to integrate everything. The new platform only has 1 cable leading to it, power.

If plans go well, this Saturday im shooting a film with the new camera platform. It will be all shot hand held and im sure I will run into wobble and distortion problems. But it will give me a good idea of what to expect and learn to deal with it.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 12:35 PM   #49
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18"x10"? thats pretty big, is that for the whole system with rails and lens etc? i guess probably not since that is a full atx motherboard... so its like a smallish atx case on rails? i built a cheap battery powered mini-itx* computer for my sumix M73 way back when and it was 8"x10" which still seemed quite large to mount on one's shoulder. You dont run yours on battery power do you?

Nowadays there are certainly ITX 6.7"x6.7" options you could put a q6600 into (actually the 2.1Ghz quad xeon socket 775 is cheaper and probably better suited since quadcore for a portable pc is sort of overkill especially on battery power, even undervolted). I've been looking at them in case i ever get around to building a battery-powered portable mini hdmi capture mini-pc for my hv20.

*technically wasnt itx spec, if it was it couldve been smaller than 8x10.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 01:01 PM   #50
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18"x10"? thats pretty big, is that for the whole system with rails and lens etc? i guess probably not since that is a full atx motherboard... so its like a smallish atx case on rails? i built a cheap battery powered mini-itx* computer for my sumix M73 way back when and it was 8"x10" which still seemed quite large to mount on one's shoulder. You dont run yours on battery power do you?

Nowadays there are certainly ITX 6.7"x6.7" options you could put a q6600 into (actually the 2.1Ghz quad xeon socket 775 is cheaper and probably better suited since quadcore for a portable pc is sort of overkill especially on battery power, even undervolted). I've been looking at them in case i ever get around to building a battery-powered portable mini hdmi capture mini-pc for my hv20.

*technically wasnt itx spec, if it was it couldve been smaller than 8x10.
I was looking at mini itx for a long time but I really wanted the best performance I could get. So I looked up the fastest motherboard available. A quad core chip was very important to me. When you preview and record at the same time it puts quite a strain on a single core pc, I was worried that even a dual core would hiccup. I can't afford a hiccup, it could possibly ruin an entire shot. Finally, the quad core chip allows me to do other things such as do a real time preview key on blue/green screen, capture audio, and more.

I really don't think 18x10 is that big for a camera.
The PWD-530 for example is 10 5/8" x 13 1/8" and im pretty sure thats without a lens. With a lens I bet it would be around 18"+. The Canon XL-H1 is almost 20" long, so is the XL2.

Mine is only less then 1 inch taller, and even shorter then some.

Honestly size was not much of a concern to me when I designed everything. Its comfortable on my shoulder, and a decent tripod wont have any trouble with it.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 01:34 PM   #51
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If it is comfortable on your shoulder that is what counts.

Your thoughts about other ENG-style cameras were sort of what i thought when i built mine, shoulder mounted cameras are huge, so a big computer on a shoulder shouldnt be so bad. I guess when it comes down to it build and balance probably matter more than actual dimensions. A poorly balanced small camera is probably less comfortable than a big one that is well balanced. Mine was not well balanced and I didnt get around to reorganizing, but that is often the case with computers since everything is usually mounted against a wall rather than situated toward the center/bottom for best balance. An internal skeleton to mount things onto would just add more weight though. Also, most ENG cameras have an in-set shoulder mount built in, so they are 1-2 inches less tall at the top of the shoulder than in front and behind the shoulder.

Worrying about size and power consumption make things very complicated very quickly so i can appreciate not wanting to worry about those things. But I would think anything ready for a real production environment would probably have to take those into account somewhat since you wont have much luck getting a lot of types of shots without a camera that can run outdoors and for extended periods of time, not to mention isnt just comfortable but safe and reliable.

So what do you do for power? ac cable out the back?
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Old October 25th, 2007, 01:41 PM   #52
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Daniel,

Did you develop the capture software, expand on elphel's code, or was it bundled with the camera device?

I'm really curious to see your rig! Very interesting indeed.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 01:50 PM   #53
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Originally Posted by Noah Yuan-Vogel View Post
If it is comfortable on your shoulder that is what counts.

Your thoughts about other ENG-style cameras were sort of what i thought when i built mine, shoulder mounted cameras are huge, so a big computer on a shoulder shouldnt be so bad. I guess when it comes down to it build and balance probably matter more than actual dimensions. A poorly balanced small camera is probably less comfortable than a big one that is well balanced. Mine was not well balanced and I didnt get around to reorganizing, but that is often the case with computers since everything is usually mounted against a wall rather than situated toward the center/bottom for best balance. An internal skeleton to mount things onto would just add more weight though. Also, most ENG cameras have an in-set shoulder mount built in, so they are 1-2 inches less tall at the top of the shoulder than in front and behind the shoulder.

Worrying about size and power consumption make things very complicated very quickly so i can appreciate not wanting to worry about those things. But I would think anything ready for a real production environment would probably have to take those into account somewhat since you wont have much luck getting a lot of types of shots without a camera that can run outdoors and for extended periods of time, not to mention isnt just comfortable but safe and reliable.

So what do you do for power? ac cable out the back?
Sorry. I know you asked earlier but I forgot to cover that.

Yes in the back of the camera leads an AC power cable, the greatest shortcoming. There really is no chance of using a battery with this hungry system. I have been considering a car battery with an inverter but I doubt it would last very long at all.

A final thing is noise. This is a pc, which has to cool the CPU and will have 3 extra fans on the ram. The case will have a 140mm fan on the side, and a 80mm in the front cooling the PSU components. There may be another fan on the side with a duct to the cpu. Two hard drives on Raid 0 will only make things worse with spinning and grinding. This will all add up, even with very quiet fans of ~30 dBA sound on location will be a problem.

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Daniel,

Did you develop the capture software, expand on elphel's code, or was it bundled with the camera device?

I'm really curious to see your rig! Very interesting indeed.
The capture software is mplayer for recording / preview. I have been expanding it to make it easier to work with the cameras by using SDL to get input and other libraries to set settings ect... I have not had time lately to work on it. I have to get ready for Saturday so im setting everything up to work on windows shortcuts and macros. If i have any issues I can use the touch screen to resolve any problems, but the touch screen is only for emergencies. Its not the ideal way to operate a camera.

I should probably just start a thread later and get this one back on topic :)
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Old October 25th, 2007, 02:05 PM   #54
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We're heading a bit away from the Sumix cam but, Daniel, did you consider a MiniITX board? They support up to 2Gb of ram, Core2Duo processors... And they fit in the palm of your hand. Some are even smaller and come fanless. In fact I'm thinking of getting one for the Sumix and build a standalone cam.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 02:44 PM   #55
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We're heading a bit away from the Sumix cam but, Daniel, did you consider a MiniITX board? They support up to 2Gb of ram, Core2Duo processors... And they fit in the palm of your hand. Some are even smaller and come fanless. In fact I'm thinking of getting one for the Sumix and build a standalone cam.
Yeah I did consider them, I would be interested to see how well they will do. But as I mentioned earlier size was not a deciding factor. At the time I was most interested in the peace of mind of having a quad core chip. Im probably just crazy and its overkill but this sure did turn out to be a great HD editing system.

Im guessing this is the ones you were talking about:
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=32
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Old October 25th, 2007, 03:54 PM   #56
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I was talking about these in terms of ITX boards supporting socket 775 Core 2 Quad:

http://www.american-portwell.com/pro...roductid=16133
http://www.icpamerica.com/products/s...no-9654G4.html (might not be good ethernet chipset for this application)
http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/SBC/LV-676.HTM (no PCI-e)
http://www.ipoxtech.com/ADE-6040.php (may not support quad)

Booting from flash, recording to a 2.5" HDD, and an undervolting the CPU and no dedicated graphics this could make very powerful compact system that could be powered by a small m3-atx psu. quad core with 4GB of ram you could take this on the road easily and probably fit it all in a box as small as 7"x9". might even be able to rig it to run on standard camera batteries. or pretty much any battery you throw at it that can handle the power draw (more likely NiMH/SLA than LIon, but then there are quadcore laptops running on LIon so it would probably be fine with the right battery). So basically like the Silicon Imaging DVR body that comes with the SI2K only twice as fast and probably waaay less expensive (but then again time is money).

If you dont need quad core and want to go with mobile processor (higher price, lower CPU and FSB clock, more efficient, more resistant to heat) then there is no shortage of ITX boards for merom processors...

http://www.logicsupply.com/categories/mainboards/intel

... Might be some santa rosa boards around if you look hard.

Oh yeah, we should probably get this thread back on track though :)
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Old October 25th, 2007, 06:30 PM   #57
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Well, since everyone planning to use a Sumix camera will need a computer I think this would be a legitimate topic...

Im pretty impressed with the ITX motherboards you brought up. Too bad I didn't see them before. I'm still a little skeptical if they have the same power as an ATX but things are looking promising. I wish I could see a benchmark, I can't find much data on any of them. In fact, I can't even find a price for any of the 4.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 06:41 PM   #58
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Sorry if I missed it but were are the links to some footage. Thanks.
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Old October 25th, 2007, 07:41 PM   #59
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Sorry if I missed it but were are the links to some footage. Thanks.
They have not released the camera yet...
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Old October 26th, 2007, 03:39 AM   #60
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They say they'll post some footage within the next days.
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