I saw a neat thing at Fry's Electronics today, it was a battery powered generator made by Xantrex.

http://www.xantrex.com/web/id/63/p/1/pt/10/product.asp

It was $300 if I remember correctly, could have been $400. But, if you needed outlets for your laptop/production LCD/lights/Sumix camera, this could be a nice thing to wheel around with you.

Also, the Ikan V8000T looked like a neat option for monitoring. Granted it is 4:3 but it's 1024x768 resolution and touch screen capability combined with the optional AA battery pack adapter to power it with AA batteries makes it a neat option for the Sumix camera. Heck, at the least it can be the control interface for your laptop or PC combo while you're recording.

I also looked at possible laptops to use with the camera, if you didn't want to go with a small PC setup. So far, I've looked at Sager notebooks. It looked to be the best bang for your buck I've found so far. One model I configured had a Geforce 8600GT graphics chip and comes in a variety of monitor size configurations with an Intel Core 2 Duo chip as the base up to 2.6ghz. A system using a 2.5ghz chip, Geforce 8600GT, 15" monitor, and 2gb of RAM with, granted a small by today's standards, 100gb 7200RPM hard drive came out to be around $1,424. Not bad as far as laptops go.

[QUOTE=Daniel Lipats;853093]Because of the relatively low signal noise level I believe saturation can be safely adjusted. Based on videos shot with SI-2K this camera should have a lot of potential.
QUOTE]

Daniel, im aware of this aspect of cmos vs CCD. I've been playing with various sensor heads a while now and the sumix is on my target list. And im hoping to get a general idea of how this one performs. Some cmos are just plain awful and after having it pointed out to me, then through actual testing, the red performance (no pun, just the colour red) is really problematic on cmos - perhaps as a factor of the sensors being daylight balanced and therefore you cannot actually push red as much as you'd like? I've had interesting results gell'ing the lenses for colour correction!

So far in very broad terms i've found colour more accurate on CCD by a long way. As you say though if cmos can be pushed further then fine. I have an EX as well and it is very sensitive but the fidelity breaks up very easily under low light. The EX also has a lot of compensation and highlight recovery going on -- it makes a nice image though. This is custom software that would need to be developed for a camera like this. But it may well be worth it. Sensor streaking on CCD is my pet hate!

The more pictures and images i see the better judgement i can make, i look forward to more!

cheers
paul

Jose,

Great stuff.

Part of the solution for highlight handling is good highlight recovery. This is for when one or two of the channels clip early. The recovery algorithm should reconstruct the highlight based on the information around to try and get around mis coloured highlights. (You can see pink highlights on those examples which is the blue and red channel clipping before the green)

You shot these images at f2? Outside? What exposure time or gain did you have or did you have ND on the lens?

You can push the image in photoshop to approximate the SLR version, you do very quickly blow the reds though and there's an overall red cast on it. So any post treatment needs more work than just pushing the saturation slider, some kind of LUT perhaps.

Are you getting a 12bit RAW out of the camera? Because obviously the movies are compressed 8 bit which isn't ideal for checking colours. Could we get a 16bit tif from a frame from this?

But it's pretty nice, certainly compared to a lot of other cmos. It has promise, that's for sure.

cheers
paul

I got to playing around with the clips and fond that it mostly needed saturation on the high end but closer to black it was a bit more consistent. Towards white, you need to push the blue channel a bit more to bring everything back to center.

Every channel seemed to need its own special tweaking. Without working with the camera myself, I'd say you might be better off shooting what would seem to a bit too dark. Then just pull everything up.

I used a combination of curves and saturation adjustments here.
http://pghvideo.com/video/20mm_f2_cc.m2t

sorry it's HDV, Cineform's not in the budget.

(link will not last long, I don't need this sitting on the server)

Hi Paul,

I didn't know about highlight handling and recovery. I'll explain the color controls you have for the sumix so far, I guess these will change in future versions:

Basically you have an auto white balance which works just ok but it desaturates a bit, i.e. tends to turn the white surfaces gray.

Then you have brightness, contrast and gamma levels for full RGB and then separate controls for red, green and blue. Appart from that, you have frequency, exposure and gain levels.

I'm really interested in solving the highlights problem, because the camera performs just great and saturation can always be adjusted in post. Burnt highlights is the only problem I can see.

Yes, I shot this at f2 (you asked for f1.4, remember? but it was way too bright), of course setting exposure to very low levels and gain to 0.

The RAW 12bit option is not yet implemented, neither is 8bit lossless compression. So far you can just record using 8bit option.

Norpix... PLEASE!! Release the new StreamPix update!

Samuel, I find the red flowers oversaturated, I know you had to rise red levels a lot for the rest of the image to look right, but while the overall clip looks good, those flowers don't.

Jose,

Im surprised you managed to get f2 outside that's all!

Is exposure shutter speed? Or is that frequency? Im not sure what both of those would do. Gain is obvious. I would guess that some combination of those two created a very fast shutter speed letting you get that image without ND.

If you have separate controls over the RGB gamma some correction might be possible within that software but i think more sophisticated correction tools would be needed. You may find that the correction needed changes with exposure in which case you might be looking for various calibrated LUT tables.

Highlight recovery can be really very complex and it's probably best implemented in the debayer. Much like you have within Photoshop and various RAW convertors. There's a good explaination of what happens with dcraw somewhere online (i forget exactly where)

So the only recording is 8 bit compressed at the moment? No RAW files at all?

cheers
paul

No, 8bit uncompressed is the only option so far.

I'm sorry if the "remember?" thing sounded a bit harsh, it wasn't my intention.

I guess everything will change once we get to record using StreamPix or the new software from Sumix, from highlights to post color correction. We'll be able to do white balancing in post too. StreamPix allows framerate setting, doesn't it?

I think frequency is shutter speed. I was recording at 50Mhz which translates to 1/50 sec I believe.

12 bit will work but you have to put the frequency to 36Mhz or less.

50Mhz and 12bit will turn to garbage. This may change with new software/updates.

Luc might want to jump in here but streampix basically offers a UI against whatever the camera is able to do. so if the options are offered by sumix then yes.

the streampix workflow is creating and saving a sequence of say raw frames, then you can load that sequence back in and apply various plug-ins, like debayer and export in different file formats.

I believe so long as your set up can stream and dump out the data fast enough you can write to disc. Otherwise you can always record to RAM first (for testing mostly).

If frequence is shutter speed and gain is gain, what is exposure in this case?

Could it be the frequency is the read out frequency of the sensor and the exposure is the shutter speed? The aim is to have a high enough frequency to negate rolling shutting whilst still be able to control the shutter speed?

cheers
paul

Dear Daniel
you wrote
...................................
12 bit will work but you have to put the frequency to 36Mhz or less.

50Mhz and 12bit will turn to garbage. This may change with new software/updates.
...................................
maybe stupid but which software, YOUR's or Norpix
may change is very vague.
If YES it could be some Pixels lower resolution
but who cares a real alternative and the only one to SI.
If you like to have big fanfares and applause
from the poor low budget indie film community
even outside USA PLEASE GO FOR IT
Gina

hm
white balance, knee and quite a long list
has to be done quite often, every scene you have
to do this as a question of light, inside outside etc.
If not on the camera body
on an attached Laptop
mini PC but not in Post please, would be a nightmare.

Everything ok on the scene frees the post
to do the work post is designed for

There may be some kind of hardware bottleneck prohibiting 12 bit at 50Mhz. Hopefully thats not the case and is only a limitation/bug of the software. Farhad could clarify this for us.

If it is a bottleneck it may be possible to get around it by just shooting a bit wider, say 1920x800. Or by limiting framerate to 24p.

I will test this a bit later.

Shooting 36Mhz increases sensitivity giving a brighter picture, but also raises the chance of rolling shutter distortions. ERS is not horrible at 36Mhz, but it is there on fast pans. Very usable though, not much of a problem. Its just important to be aware of it.

if it is no HW problem should be possible to fix. Sounds great to me
thanks. I blow my trumpet,..... you are dead fast.

Just got the computer. Uploaded some scale and parts pictures:
(sorry, shot on a cell phone)
http://www.dreamstonestudios.com/per...12A2/computer/

I may be too optimistic, but I think there is room inside for 10Ah batteries, PoE and all other components.

Im going to try to draw power from the computers embedded PSU to power the LCD. I did this for my Elphel setup, just plugged the LCD directly into the 12V Molex connector on a PC PSU. I hope it has enough power.

I'm thinking about adding another fan to cool the case.

I was thinking about using something like this for hot-swap hard drive cartridge. Have the main system run off solid state or just a 2.5" sata drive. Use the cartridge to record video.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817256030

The case has room inside if the front of it is cut. The 2.5" hard drives are contained in an enclosure with USB and eSATA.

If low on disk space just pull it out and replace with another cartridge. Or at the end of the day pull it out and transfer footage to workstation.

Sounds like a perfect solution.

jose what is the performance in nightime? how is it capable of handle lowlight? can you post something shot at night?

So far, and due to limitations in the software (I hope), low light recording is not very good. You have to raise gain a lot and though noise is very low, it's noticeable when you set gain to 24-26db.

We'll see what happens with the new software. Hopefully they'll set a higher top level for exposure, so high gain levels won't be necessary.

maybe that could help in that redish white overexposure: this was andromeda, andromeda was a dvx100 mod to get raw data from the sensor... it's not the same, but maybe some ideas can be applied to sumix... http://forum.reel-stream.com/viewtopic.php?t=778

Jose, great work as usual! The color balance issues seem to be very common, even in much more expensive cameras... most consumer types have built in filters, correct? We could always add filters as needed, to a certain degree. Hopefully the new software will allow finer control to prevent those blown highlights. It would be great if gain could be controlled separately for each channel, but I do not think that is possible. I did also notice a bit of artifacting in the red flowers as they moved around, did anyone else notice that?

Daniel, since you don't need the IDE for the CD/DVD, you could use an IDE to CF card adapter for the OS. That leaves the SATA for your swappable drive. Less noise and power usage rather than running an additional drive for the system, and cheaper than a Solid State Drive (unless you meant a CF card when you said Solid State :)

It may just be me, but I would rather not use USB if at all possible.

IDE to CF card adapter...
http://www.addonics.com/products/fla...ad44midecf.asp

Are compact flash cards fast enough to be used when recording direct to cineform raw 1080p? There're SATA to CF card adapters too.

http://www.addonics.com/products/fla...der/adsacf.asp

Raw data is 3 times easier to store. However, only the new application software will provide this feature, although not as fast as what will be provided by StreamPix after CineForm coding. For now, you can only store raw frames in PC RAM.
I wonder how we missed adding this feature earlier.

The most interesting feature is that you will have access to the source code and see for yourself how things are done. Color correction is going to be automatic and by placing a color chart in front of the camera. we add details to the FAQ list as soon as we get some free time.

50Mhz is a little less than 50 fps (two channesl A/D and 2 Megapixel frames) 12 bit uncompressed is too much GigE bandwidth at this frame rate. presently our in camera compression is only implemented for 8 bit data after LUT.

As I earlier said the bottleneck is GigE. We are implementing in firmware transfer of every other frame to PC, so camera can output at 75MHz and 12 bit (only skipping every other frame.) Also we are thinking about compression at 10 or 12 bit

The key for low light situation is correct color correction. CMOS pixels R,G, and B, all are so sensitive to IR. removing IR with extra filter on front of lens must help. Then a non-linear color correction is needed for low exposure. we need a lot of Macbeth charts around to calibrate for every exposure, IR level, etc.
The sensor is sensitive to high blue, I think this must be exploited in low light situations, crank up the gain on the blue and use the out for general brightness.

I see we must consider adding flash memory adapter to the camera for raw storage while PC is just used for control and view finder with decimation. But this will be another camera.
I am not sure how CineForm codec compresses. For high quality work you need to keep raw 12 bit data. Sometimes in the future after gathering much raw video a software algorithm can learn from data and remove all Fixed pattern noise, add dynamic range by tracking pixels and estimating RGB intensities with another extra 2 bits accuracy. Technology long ago has been developed in the cold war era. You can wait a few years for cheaper computers and software and rejuvenate your old raw data movies.

The fastest CF cards I could find are only 45 MB/s, would that be fast enough to record on-camera Farhad? The camera would need at least 75 MB/s for 24 fps, correct?

I think that CineForm is 15 - 20 MB/s, so that may work with the 300x or even the 233x cards (taking into account that those are peak speeds and may not be maintainable). The advantage to CF cards over HDD, even taking into account that you may be losing raw data, is that CF won't seize up when shooting in environments that may damage a HDD... and CF is silent. Hmmm, maybe a CF SATA-adapter RAID 0 setup could capture it raw :)

That 75MHz and 12 bit every-other-frame upgrade sounds great! That should help if there are any rolling shutter issues.

I'm not sure if CF would be an ideal option. Not only are they not very fast but also very expensive. There is also storage limitations. The technology may improve over time but it may be easier to just use a faster interface. For example maybe fiber optic?

Higher exposure times will limit the framerate. It will also give us higher sensitivity.

Farhad, forgive me if I misunderstood but you said that 50Mhz is about ~50 fps which is just too much bandwidth for gige? If we limit the framerate by raising the exposure times or by just using some kind of limiter to 24p would 12bit work at 50Mhz?

I think that would be a fair compromise. 12bit limited to 24p (or whatever gige would allow) at 50Mhz.

Daniel, you are correct, Frequency limits the top frame rate. Lower frame rates can be set by software at high frequencies. Our firmware guys will perhaps give us the most economical option for minimizing the rolling shutter effect for 24p. The rolling shutter effects depends on the time cycle of reading one frame two pixels at a time (exposure only stops when the pixel is read.) Exposure is controlled by how long is the pause before starting to read the first pixel.

Daniel and Jose,

Have a think about SxS cards, they're expresscard based and fast. I think the specs are 800mbs but i could be wrong. The same cards as the EX1. Im sure i've seen motherboards that have expresscard interfaces (which is an extension of PCI so it's pretty direct to the system). Now that sandisk are producing them the prices will level out. They're robust and you can take them out and plug them into many laptops to pull the data off. In my plans i've been thinking about these as a solution. I've just shot 3 weeks or drama on an EX using them and they've been great.

I don't like the idea of hard drives swinging around in a camera, much prefer the idea of solidstate.

cheers
paul

I would consider 10bit log (via a LUT) an ideal solution. What would the max fps be under those circumstances?

cheers
paul

They're all very good ideas. Xpress Card or CF recording is perfect. That way the computer just has to control the camera and you have an easy way to transfer what you shot to another computer.

Silicon Imaging uses the "every other frame" option to achieve 24p 10bit film look because if the sensor is capturing 48p and you discard every other frame, you have 24p at 1/48 sec, which is the standard in film. Also you can dramatically reduce rolling shutter by doing that.

Lossless compressed 10bit RAW also sounds great.

Jose, I took your "semioutdoor35mmf2" clip and did the following:

- gamma correction
- highlight recovery and magenta shift
- highlight diffusion
- slight vignetting
- S-Curves (warmer)

http://solomonchase.com/sumix/semioutdoor35mmf2_CC.avi (format is Cineform 720p)

I think the diffusion and gamma correction helps the highlight clipping look better.

Solid state storage has its benefits. Its potentially much faster then a hard drive, resistant to shock, and also use much less power since it has nothing to spin or move.

I have a few videos here recorded with the smx. A 13 second video is 1.7 GB. At this rate 60 seconds of video will be ~7.8 GB. This camera has absolutely no mercy on drive space. CineForm codec really helps drastically reduce it but I still think you still need some good numbers as far as storage way beyond 8-17-32gb. Something like sets of swappable 250gb 2.5" hard drives.

I really lean towards a hard drive design because its a practical, proven solution. Yes, solid state cards are used in cameras but for compressed formats. I think we can learn a lot by looking at what the guys at RED and Silicon Imaging have done. Even with the CineForm codec they record to HDD. We are trying to build a very similar camera and should not ignore their design choices.

I don't mean to discourage people trying to implement solid state. If there is a practical way of doing it, I'm all for it. I would like nothing more then to get away from the power hungry unreliable hard drives.

Solomon, that clip looks more like a SI2K example. Very good!

Highlight diffusion is a bit high for me though. But that's just me.

Here's a version that is corrected with just color curves (no post diffusion etc)

http://solomonchase.com/sumix/cc1.jpg

The dslr image definately has more dynamic range.

Solomon,

Thank you for this example. It shows that green is bleeding into red. but red is not bleeding into green as much. A color correction must subtract a fraction of green from red. Wherever there is green there is extra parasitic red that must be subtracted. Our automatic matrix color correction must take care of it.

Threw together a prototype using whatever I had laying around the garage. Everything came together nicely at ~7lb and its not very big at all.

http://www.dreamstonestudios.com/per.../prototype.JPG

Unfortunately the T7200 processor used in this system is too slow. I'm going to have to return the computer. To encode CineForm in real time you need a quad core processor. This is bad news because its going to use a huge amount of power and running off batteries will be a challenge.

I have a production tomorrow and will work more with this setup over the weekend. Hopefully it will give me a better idea on if I want to continue investing in this project.

CF cards can't go beyond 50 MByte/sec. It's a limitation in the interface, that's why the guys behind the CF-Standard are actually thinking about switching to SATA.

The XsX-Idea is good, but what are the prices? The standard is now 1 year old now but I did not hear a lot about it since it was published.

If you want to go the no-noise and low power consumption flash way I currently recommend Solid State Drives with SATA2. OCZ has thrown one on the market that writes with 100 MByte/sec and costs "only" 400 Euros for 32 GByte (or 800 Euros for 64 GByte respectively). I will have my hands on a few SSDs in a month and can post benchmarking results if anybody is interested.

Jose: Did you have any problems with the customs? How much Euros did you pay in total for the Sumix?

About 712 euros in total, but exchange is changing almost every day. Taxes were about 50 euros.