I made an error with the potential camera designs, I forgot to mention sound specs. There are three options integfrated, prosumer external USB/Firewire boxes, and internal sound card. Now because most of our designs will not have a spare PCI slot, we will have to settle for an external box and or integrated audio.

I am not a sound professional so take some of the following with a pinch of salt until you have a pro opinion (as I am winging most of it from memory):

Issues: audio chipsets that have seperate DAC (digital to Anlogue converters for sound output) and ADC (anlogue to Digital convertors for sound input) work best. As if the DAC/ADC is integrated with the main processing chip significant thermal niose will build up and corrupt the signal (especially from the ADC amplifier). Designs that integrate these chips should be avioded. From memory amplifiers should allways be on seperate chips to the DAC/ADC for the same reason.

DAC and ADC (and some seperate sub-components and amplifiers) vary in performance from one another, and any can corrupt the sound chain. Some people replace individual components to improve performance, and you can find discussions in forums on this, but for the rest of us good reviews will have to suxfice. One such mod was to put bluetack across the crystal to stop vibration induced niose being transmitted through it (I do have the knowledge, and have not researched this). Even though some manufactures of cards, or chips, are better than others, it varies from card to card, asnd chip to chip. I don't like Sigtel (I think that was the name) chips some people prefer the high end Cyrstal Semiconductor, AKM DACS and a couple of others (though cheap versions can have less quality). When reading the reviews I noticed that they performance and part price follow each other. The price varies from dollers to hundreds of dollers for dacs, and I guess the smae is true for ADC's.

Third, recording performance is often bad compared to sound reproduction. Looking at the reviews it will be noticed that recorded sound is often a lot worse than what the DACS will produce with significant channel cross talk.

Fourth, advertised performance figures are often far higher than the tested performance, particularly recording. You will also see cards advertised with a frequency (96Khz) only to see the signal drop completely off long before 96Khz, or at 44.1Khz (you might be able to send them a 96Khz track but they can't playit properly).

Fith sound mixing. Certain cards have mixing and processing units that work only at certain frequencies and bit depths. So this will result in all frequencies above that to be down converted and played at the lower frequencies. Other things that have happened, is that only the digital out can use the higher frequency, or only if it is played straight (bypassing the processing/mixing) without any effects. The result of down mixing problems (the full and half versions of the VIA Envy have 36bit hardware mixing) produces quantanisation errors. A lot of consumer market sound advertising is tainted by marketing hype, so read good reveiws from good sources.

Sixth, Signal to Niose ratio is desceptive. Manufacturers can use a gate to artifically boost the SN figure. But how this works is that the gate is applied when there is no sound signal coming through and the SN is measured with no signal, that can make a 50db SN card look like 120db SN card. I think the cards make abrupt volume increases/pops whe the sound signal comes out of quiet periods.

Professional cards cost a lot more (until now) and can handle multitrack recording (for surround purposes), but significantly, you should be able to get better quality recording (get multiple reviews first).

Now when you go and look at sound card reviews pay special attention to comparisons between Creative Audigy Cards and cards based on the VIA Envy chipsets from professional sound companies. A number of these cards are coming out in external versions, the problem is to find a good performance one that has mulit=track input. With a USB2 or firewire version you then by pass the need for an PCI slot.

While many motherboards have sound, only a few of them are very descent due to the low quality integrated dacs/adc (and lack of mixing hardware they use). So check out good reveiws done with Rightmark Audio Analyser (or equivalent) if you are going the motherboard route. VIA bought out a leading audio chip manufacturer a few years ago, and the VIA Vinyl six/eight trac audio DAC and Envy chipset are some of the better ones out (I have not been tracking it for a while so there maybe some better, and I have not checked out recording performance on inegrated). The six track maybe combined with another one for 8 channels, so check that to, as it maybe poor. But motherboard audio is at best descent stereo recording. If you want good mul;titrack recording you have to go for a card.

I have recently come across a new card claiming to, and actually delivering really close to, 120db performance at a cheap price (previously 110db was the ebst from a much more expensive card). It has it's own limitations, that a professional opinion should be sought on, and I guess maybe the first of a number of cards from different manufacturers using this new AKM convertor.

http://www.extremetech.com/print_art...=123687,00.asp

Just in Digit-life review:
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/...820/index.html

The dynamic range of 16bit CD is around 96db, 20bit is around 120db, and 24bit is around 144db. CD is 44Khz, 48Khz for DVD, upto 96Khz for multi channel DVD adio and upto 192Khz for stereo DVD audio. CD is supposed to max out the human hearing range, but tests indicate (and I have heard it) higher frequencies produce a better tighter sound. I would suggest that, ideally, a card capable of a 96db+ range/SN, and 48Khz+ singal would be ideal for good sound. Below this and 72db+ (12-bit+) 48khz for descent sound. A limited number of cards come up to the 96-106db range, and few cards above that, in playback, but at the same time most of them fail/struggle to get to 96db recording.

I have gone and sought 3rd (max CD quality playback) level sound hardware (compared to the 4th, 5th, or 6th level sound from Motherboardfs) and I can tell you there is a big satisfying difference between descent and good sound. Good sound makes a better movie, bad sound makes a bad movie (ever see a DV camera with surround 16-bit sound, no, they don't want you to have it). In a cinema, or on a good home theatre, descent sound will take the edge off your sound and make it sound harsh.

Most of this is from the perspective of hometheatre than from sound recording but I have picked up a bit.

Links:

www.3dsoundsurge.com
News, and a nice forum with much consumer/prosumer discuussion. You can see links to professional forums being mentioned there.

www.digit-life.com
The people that did the rightmark audio analyser, used to do nice reviews I could whole heartedly agree with then suddenly the reviewer dissapeared and eventually a new reveiwer has come in.

www.rightmark.org
Opensource Rightmark Audio Analyser for testing audio.

http://www.via.com.tw/en/digitalbril.../via_audio.jsp
Some of the Via product.

http://www.extremetech.com/print_art...=130106,00.asp

New High definition audio from Intel is descent looking (haven't read the reveiw but looked at the figures for playback (still not any indication of recording goto digit-life for that), figures don't tell the full story as each brand of Dac has its own style of sound, so you best to check the ADC/DAC sound, some will be warmer, some strongrer/clearer in highs, mids, or bass ).

From 3D soundsurge and digit-life you can get most of the links you need. Sound card companies may also list links to revieiws from the product page.

Wow, look what I just dug up some good links on sound issues at extremetech :

http://www.extremetech.com/resource_...,s=1074,00.asp

I've come accross a number of things in the last week.

In new scientist, 19th June 2004, "Give it Some Gas" p26, they are talking about microengines that burn fuel (propane, m/ethanol) to produce electricity. They sound simular to a couple of designs I wanted to develope myself, so I think they are worth watching next year. Fuel has around 40 times more density than Li-ion battery, the alternative would be some future capacitor that stored more than the battery but may blow your head off if it blew up in your ENG camera, or a fuel cell that has it's own problems.

Commercialisation of micro fuel cells are due over the next couple of years, engines may take that long to come out and catch up. So shortly they might be viable for these cameras. In a interesting side note. In the past, in New Scientist, I saw a car by some UK college that used conventional parts to run very competively on compressed air. If anybody out there is experienced in this area, could we do the same as a power source for this camera?

A couple of the engine designs are simular to some I was hoping to work on myself. Some time ago a freind of mine was trying to put together a Bourke engine (the most efficient engine ever designed, would even run off the lubricant oil being fed the cyclinder). I was musing with a way to eliminate the scotch yoke and turn the piston through it's stroke to produce an electric current, and I pretty sure he then just suggested that the straight up and down motion (less scotch yoke) could be used to produce electricity (details left out), so I named it the Watson engine. Another, my own, sounds a little simular to the turbine version they are talking about there. Which ever way, they definetly are onto something.

http://www.brighthand.com/article/To...Tiny_Fuel_Cell

What kind of fuel?

<<<-- Originally posted by Wayne Morellini :
that burn fuel (propane, m/ethanol) to produce electricity. -->>>

Laurence well probably see you around, I'm taking a bit of a break because of health problems at the moment.

Thanks

Wayne.

possible workflow?
 

Haven't posted for a while as I have been following the contributions of the more technically knowledgeable people on this forum. I have come up with a possible low cost hd workflow solution. (feel free to respond and pick holes as any feedback is very welcome.)

Hardware:
Camera link camera (silicon imaging or imperx) 1920*1080
frame grabber
Streampix recorder software.
Suitable spec pc with either raid or number of external hard drives.
Use 16mm c mount lenses bolex or sneider (or get c to f mount adaptor and use nikon 35mm?)

1. Use streampix software to record 8bit images from camera and save to hard disk/raid. Save in a file format that is compatible with both streampix and Vegas.
2. Import video files into Vegas Video 5. Here are a list of file formats acceptable, when i last checked, streampix uses at least 3-4 of these:

AC-3 Dolby Digital AC-3**
AIF Macintosh® AIFF
AVI Microsoft® Video for Windows®
BMP Windows® Bitmap
GIF CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format (stills and animated)
JPG Joint Picture Experts Group (JPEG)
MOV Apple® QuickTime® Movie
MP3 MPEG-1 Layer 3 (Audio)
MPG MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Video
OGG Ogg Vorbis
PCA Perfect Clarity Audio™
PNG Portable Network Graphics
PSD Adobe® Photoshop®
RM RealNetworks® RealAudio® 9
RM RealNetworks RealVideo® 9
SWF Macromedia Flash
TGA Targa™ File Format
TIF Tagged Image File Format
W64 Sony Pictures Digital Wave 64™
WAV Microsoft Wave®
WMA Microsoft Windows Media® 9 (Audio)
WMV Microsoft Windows Media 9 (Video)
Still Image Sequences (Script)

Apparently Vegas 5 is resolution independant and can manage frame sizes up to 2048*2048! 1920*1080 is supported with 23.976,24,25,30 fps options.

I dowloaded the trail version toady and will be web hunting for small clip samples to try.

Further info can be found at "sony pictures digital"
Am I missing something here or is this workable, any responce welcome.

P.S. If this is workable, I also found out about a linescan dalsa camerlink camera currently in beta version that has a frame size of 2048*2048 at 30fps but can be reprogrammed to do 24p, would this be practical?

I think imperx has global shutter, doesn't it? Might not be too good. Not sure about SI.

Hey wayne, ya, . . . duh . . . you already posted the fuel type. Not eating my wheaties. Hope your health is good.

Both Ikegami, JVC, and Kinetta are going to be using the Altasens 3560 in their cameras. How come they don't have any problems with rolling shutter artifacting?

In fact I saw the 3560 and some other cameras built on the 3530 at NAB, and again, there were no problems with rolling shutters. I know there must be solution here because these are manufacturers using the same chips, and aren't having any dificulties with slanted lines, etc., because these types of artifacts wouldn't be acceptable to their production-bases markets.

So again, if this the way the chip is built, and these are the manufacturers successfully using it, then there must be solution somewhere (and it's not in loosing the high frame-rates of the chip, because Kinetta is going to use the 3560, and they are going up to 60fps without dropping frames).

FUELL CELL!
 

Thats last Century (literally),

Thats old tech, if you really want some thing more advanced you should look up about trapping into the engery from the vacum of free space, just google MEG (or Motionless Electromagnetic Generator)

Its FREE unlimted amounts of Energy to power anything really, (still mostly theory though, which *some* working prototype





=--===----=--=--=-=-=====-==-
----=--=-=-=---=-=-=-==-=-====
-=-=-==-----==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anhar Miah

easy, run your caemra at 50-60mhz

Hmmmm

Interesting Jason. Maybe we can call and ask about the chip as a paranoid "possible customer" or something, and mentioned you're worried about that possibility, and have them explain how they got around it?

Altasens claims on their website that they use a patented technology called "tapered reset", but I'm not sure that has anything to do with eliminating rolling-shutter artifacts. It says it allows for "lower noise and lower image lag than competing alternatives"
The chip can also be timed with a mechanical shutter or electronic gating. And there is mention of something called line-mixing, but that might be for sub-sampling to lower resolutions.

Does anyone know if you can buy these chips individually and how much they run for? Specifically, I want to know about the 2560 since I want to work with a 1280x720 image.

The tapered reset is noise reduction only. There is noise associated with the reset pulse to every line. By removing the high frequenicies (slower edges) you get less noise. It is an unbelievably quiet chip.

The mixing lets you get size reductions that are not 2:1, 4:1, 8:1 - the standard subsamples. They did this specifically to get to 720p - which is not a perfect multiple of 1080i or 1080p. The 1080p Altasens can run at 720p.

I don't know about them but most chip makers of complex parts don't like to sell single chips. They figure the cost to them to get a single camera running (tech support) and the cost to get an OEM going with one chip is about the same.

Looking for FPGA in Google I found this:

"We've implemented the new JPEG2000 Standard
on a Virtex 1000 and required about 2/3 of its resources"

Hope it is of any use....

here is a link to a Jpeg compressor on a FPGA.It has huffman and the rest.Don't know if it could be modified to use some parts of it or.....

http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ee545/f98/swingers/index.html

Here more really interesting links..

HUFFMAN ENCODER

http://vlsi1.engr.utk.edu/~mswiatko/ee552/proj/pres.htm

WAVELET TRANSFORM BASED ADAPTIVE IMAGE COMPRESSION ON FPGA.
(VHDL source code)

http://www.ittc.ukans.edu/projects/A...rin_thesis.pdf (PDF)

REALTIME IMAGE ROTATION AND RESIZING, IMPLEMENTATIONS.

http://www.xilinx.com/products/logic...ion_resize.pdf (PDF)

ESTIMATING FPGA REQUIREMENTS FOR DSP APPLICATIONS.

http://www.hunteng.co.uk/info/fpga-size.htm

REALTIME IMAGE PROCESSING WITH FPGA (source code and diagrams)

http://www.ece.ncsu.edu/imaging/Arch...eoCard/Report/


LATEST NEWS!!!!!:
I've just did a comparison test between HuffyuvRGB and Morgan J2K lossless compression 4:4:4.
The compresion ratios for a relative clean source are:
Huffyuv(RGB) : 2.3:1
J2K LOSSLESS (4:4:4) : 4:1

J2k took twice the time to compress.To me this looks amazing.
Are these ratios possible?

how is the Altsense camera doing Steve? any news?

Coming along. I will announce it here first. The chips are tough to get right now. We have several camera designs right now that are circuit boards built up except for a big missing component. I may have something else brewing of interest here. More information while I do some testing......

Oh Snap!
I didn't realize that you guys were building cameras using the Altasens chips, Steve. Is that right or am I confused? If so... that's wicked good. And what's this other development? Is it edible? Don't keep us holding our breath.

Matthew: as I understand it they are using Micron chips in the
current camera's and might be offering an AltaSens based camera
in the near future.

so you can run the chip in 720p without cutting the FOV down? that is really good news!

Obin: I think this would always be possible with a line and column
skip algorithm which almost all of these chips implement. I'm hoping
Steve is talking about their test on the rolling shutter "solution".

Rob:
You are correct for the Altasens, but 'always' is a strong word. Most CMOS sensors can do basic subsampling - skipping rows and columns to keep the same FOV with lower resolution. For Bayer color sensors, you need a complex subsampling to keep the Bayer pattern intact (drop rows and columns in pairs). Region of Interest (ROI or windowing) reduces the FOV while keeping the same resolution. ROI always maintains the Bayer pattern but you may have to adust the starting point. Then there is binning - the summing of adjacent pixels, keeping FOV, losing resolution, gaining sensitivity and only useful for monochrome sensors.

The Altasens has a 2/3 subsample - very unusual but will give a 1280x720 60fps output. I think with a unique Bayer pattern, though. This is two pixels on, one off, two on. This means that a row would be GBBGGBBG and the next row would be RGGRRGGRRG. A row is skipped so that the next row is RGGR again. I'm trying to document that now. Hey, I just did!

Rob, guessing at the new info:
Actually, rolling shutter 'solutions' are getting more murky. Obin has found that at higher clock rates, the Micron 1.3Mpix is prone to smearing - bright oversaturated areas don't get reset properly and smear across the line. Micron's official solution is to run at lower rates. The higher resolution sensors in the same architecture are supposed to improve on this (even smaller pixels and less sensitivity, though). There is also a new mask coming out that *may* improve it on the 1.3s. As I told Obin, I will swap cameras if they are better for anyone in this group who buys one now, if the new ones are better.

Always was in context to doing it in our own code. Can always
skip lines and columns, ofcourse. But I see I should have worded
it better.

Steve: the rolling shutter solution was your line that you had
talked to an engineer at SI and he thought of a possible solution
that you would test last week if you had the time.

Rob,
I don't have an SI-1300 around to do that testing - working too hard on the Altasens manual. It does need to be tested though. The other person doing testing for applications is swampeder (new word, I think, but with a clear meaning) than I am. On the rolling shutter thing, I just wanted to give you a heads up that there were some potentially unresolvable Micron 1.3Mpix problems that people in this group need to know about.

You are abolutely correct that upsampling and downsampling in software are much more abitrary than in hardware. There are moire and other artifact issues but scaling can be to non-column based intervals with appropriate algorithms.

Alternative processing tech using cheap memory modules, and new FPGA.
 

Cross post.

Hi guys heres the little secret I mentioned a while back, and was what I was intending to use on my original camera project last year. I was supposed to read up on it and it has been waiting so long I nearly forgot about it. The technology is Processor in Memory modules. The idea is to implement processing elements (or full arrays) inside memory, simular to clearspeed but on the internal bus of the memory modules instead, here greater speeds and wider busses are accessable, and unlike clearspeed, large chunks of memory are directly accessible, which makes it very good for what we want, and indeed it is earmarked for things like compression. I think I have found the article I read last year, I thought it was refering to making standard dram sticks for PC's using the technology for 50% more, but I am unsure now. Production was hoped to be "18 months" (august 5th 2002 article). The speed up for one was upto 25-40 times over workstation performance (potential for several hundred), and for another it was upto 1000 times (Active page) using arrays of FPGA processing elements). The idea is that if they produce pc memory modules with it, you pop it into your PC memory slot and program it and "hey presto" your 1GHz nano-itx board is capable of processing and compressing 8 mpixel SHD streams (maybe a little exageration) but you get this without (maybe) even needing a cooling fan on the main board, low powered, low cost. To make things even better (depending on what Windows API standards are now) I think Windows had an API that allowed DSP's functions in add-in cards to be transparently used in programs (simular to Direct X API calls) to accelerate them. I remember some international meeting they had for this tech, the web site for the meetings would be a good source of contacts. For somebody like Steve in SI a non PC version could be hooked up to an ARM processor to provide a simple to program alternative to FPGA design (not that the programming is as simple as C coding on clearspeed). Normally I would keep this quiet (to stop companies from interfering) until I had researched, approached and negotiated with suitable companies about the possibilities of even using samples, but because of my health this is just not going to happen quick enough. So, if somebody with technical knowledge would like to do this for us it would be most appreciated.

Here are some links.

The only three that seemed to be aimed at intergration into memory modules is Diva, FlexRam, and Activepage (The FPGA solution), but I don't know which one is the standard PC module.. I have only been able to skim the documents due to health, so I don't know exactly the details, and haven't even looked up all the websites for each competing version.

www.isi.edu/stories/31.html
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...,54294,00.html

http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache...pages%22&hl=en
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache...pages%22&hl=en
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache...pages%22&hl=en

This site was useful finding academic papers:

citeseer.ist.psu.edu/kang99flexram.html
citeseer.ist.psu.edu/context/100858/181563

Say guys, a friend of mine just emailed me an announcement of a relatively new codec from apple called the "H.264/AVC". Is this something we could use?

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/h264.html

Claims to be some greatly sophistocated codec that can do scaleable HD. I don't know really what to look for that much, but one of you guys probably does. Check it out and tell us what you think.

The catch in a lot of these codecs is the 8-bit depth issue. For workflows that target 8-bit only, many of the new "delivery" codecs like this (MPEG4, etc.) could be useful.

For a workflow that requires 10+ bits throughout, we'll need codecs that are designed for production, not delivery.

I did run across this H.264 SourceForge project. It looks like it got started in March 2003 and didn't get anywhere.

Re: FUELL CELL!
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Laurence Maher : Hey wayne, ya, . . . duh . . . you already posted the fuel type. Not eating my wheaties. Hope your health is good. -->>>

Thanks Laurence.

My Health has picked up surprisingly, looks like it is not going to be long term, I can get around for a few hours now without getiing stuffed, and I can think reasonably clearly before that.


<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : Rob:
The Altasens has a 2/3 subsample - very unusual but will give a 1280x720 60fps output. I think with a unique Bayer pattern, though. This is two pixels on, one off, two on. This means that a row would be GBBGGBBG and the next row would be RGGRRGGRRG. A row is skipped so that the next row is RGGR again. I'm trying to document that now. Hey, I just did!

There is also a new mask coming out that *may* improve it on the 1.3s. As I told Obin, I will swap cameras if they are better for anyone in this group who buys one now, if the new ones are better. -->>>

That is really excellent Steve, thanks for all your support you are giving us.

About the Bayer pattern above, I am worried if there is too many of them NLE companies might not want to support them.

I think binning is the best, but it needs a 3 chip camera for that.

I read the excellent tutorials that you have on your SI website, I'm surprised you mentioned the cathode ray tube memory device, pretty obscue nowdays. What about a page describing how to read the specs of cameras and cmos sensors, I'm a bit lost at the meaning of some of the terms when reading the data sheets (thoug I know what dark current and Quatum efficiency means now)?

Thanks.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Both Ikegami, JVC, and Kinetta are going to be using the Altasens 3560 in their cameras. How come they don't have any problems with rolling shutter artifacting?

In fact I saw the 3560 and some other cameras built on the 3530 at NAB, and again, there were no problems with rolling shutters. I know there must be solution here because these are manufacturers using the same chips, and aren't having any dificulties with slanted lines, etc., because these types of artifacts wouldn't be acceptable to their production-bases markets.

So again, if this the way the chip is built, and these are the manufacturers successfully using it, then there must be solution somewhere (and it's not in loosing the high frame-rates of the chip, because Kinetta is going to use the 3560, and they are going up to 60fps without dropping frames). -->>>

I think I heard something about them having on chip buffering so they could perform global type reads.


<<<-- Originally posted by Anhar Miah : Thats last Century (literally),

Thats old tech, if you really want some thing more advanced you should look up about trapping into the engery from the vacum of free space, just google MEG (or Motionless Electromagnetic Generator)

Its FREE unlimted amounts of Energy to power anything really, (still mostly theory though, which *some* working prototype


=--===----=--=--=-=-=====-==-
----=--=-=-=---=-=-=-==-=-====
-=-=-==-----==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Anhar Miah -->>>

Hmm, I know (but how many years), but seriously you mentioned some working prototypes, can you give examples? I once had an idea for Physical Vacume Energy Sail, I wanted to use in a childrens movie "Johanes Berge and The Space Pirates), and had a few ideas flash around my mind for a method to extract free energy, but with all this camera stuff I've forgotten it :). Of course you know that it has all been done before, I have met some interesting people in my life and know a few things. We even have a local excess energy type engine thing here, and even though I Haven't met the guys myself (as far as I know) I have multiple idependant freinds that know them. The idea sounds a bit simular (no detailed info yet) to the device invented in the 70's in the States, can't remember his name, I have had plans in the past to it, hold it, with modern technology (rare Earth magnets etc) it should definetly have power for a camera? Does anybody have engineering expertese in electrical to give it a go if I could find plans? To state it plainly, I can take statements for or against these devices with a grain of salt, just remaining objective. And before anybody debates this, one of my best freinds is a top young engineer in the nation (actually our UNI also produced the top chip designer in America), he is really negative on the potentiual of the idea, but I would not trust his judgment on the issue, to much flawed logic blindly trusting in the 1% science does know (until the last 10-15 years, they were scratching the surface, now it sounds like a episode of Star Trek). I am waiting for them to go below the quantum level to proper analysis of the structure and properties of space itself, the substance we are written on! By the way, what is the code at the end of your post. Well, bring it on!

DC PC/camera Power Supplies?
 

OK, furthur omissions to my list of potential camera types.

Power supplies. PC Motherboards run off of AC to multiple line DC power supplies, but batteries are DC. How can we do this with the minium of fuss (without lossing too much power), as it would cost too much to make a multiple voltage line DC power supply for the MB, or does anybody know of cheap DC PC power supplies for ATX/BTX and ITX?

Can anybody discuss this?

Getting dissy, have to quit now, see you latter.

Thanks

Wayne.

MEG update
 

For Wayne Morellini

This is a very good site:

http://jnaudin.free.fr/meg/meg.htm

It does have a US Patent, so it is coming along nicely .

And yes it could diffinately be used in Camcorders (needs a some work though).

If you go to yahoo forums and join into the MEG society they have a kinda "builders club" thing and there are lots of helpful fellow "builders" if you want to try.

I'm just passively keeping n eye on these projects, they are very interesting an i feel i break will come soon!!

P.S That crytic code was just fake, but i love the whole crypto scene ---

"Whats that you say?! he broke our 1024 bit random seed dual Laronze quad layered level seven secure line......Hmm.....What!!? hes 12 years old......F*%$£&%!!!"

Power supplies
 

Wayne:
I think you hit on a good topic for a non-programmer to research. Here is a start:

http://www.powerstream.com/DC_PC.htm
http://www.opussolutions.com/150watt.html

There are DC input power supplies for PCs. This is a better solution than battery->inverter to AC->computer PS back to DC.

To help on the battery sizing, take the power requirements (let's say 200W average (recording and just viewfinder). The two power supplies aren't perfect so maybe 75% efficient. So about 270W in (this is all guess work). Let's say you run on 24V in so you can use a nice scooter charger for $75 (like a Soneil). To run one hour, you need 24V @about 12Ah. Again, typical scooter sizes. Battery choices are sealed lead acid (SLA- either UPS batteries or Hawkers- better for deep cycle), NiCd, NiMh, LiOn. Size and weight go down, cost goes up as you go along the list. You can get bigger batteries or parallel smaller ones for longer run times. Might be better to swap batteries than lug the max.

POWER HUNGRY?
 

This is what you guys want "super Polymer Lithium Ion" they have the hightest Power/Volume Density of any current technologies,

Electrovaya (a Canaidan company)

Check out there site:

http://www.electrovaya.com/

Also, if you have time and i know this is out of topic please also visit:

www.evuk.co.uk

I feel very strongly about, electric vehicles, if only you guys/ and gals knew about the advances in techonolgy that have been made you would have converted long ago, but alas the big Oil corps and politics are holding us back to the dark ages:

Factual example:Solectria Sunrise* - 373 miles per charge. ('mpc') (cost - £3.50)

Tzero 0-60 in 3.7 seconds (300 miles range per charge)

Hopes this Helps!

Re: MEG update
 

Thanks Anhar, and all you guys.

Sorry but bed time, Less dissy, but things making less sense.

I have some great new, stop the FPGA stuff, we might have a solution (after cameralink).

The head of VIA's processor subsidary:
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2656883479.html

Notice the DSP like hardware acceleration in the next chip mentioned down the bottom. My guess is that it might be something remarkable like PIM's or clearspeed. Also notice they work closely together with nerw customers. It occurs to me we have simualr needs to the Blade server market (multiple drives, multiple Gb Ethernet, high speed (through multiple on board parrallel preocessors)). We also have simlular needs to the multimedia, high defintion DVD recorder market (using HDMI/DVI input/output and compression). It occurs to me that one of their potential platforms might over lap with our needs, and if it doesn't they might be persuaded to overlap it. They have many reference platforms and are a nice company to work with.

New alternative low PC powered processor by AMD, but faster:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/V...5510%2C00.html

Nice case:
http://www.mini-itx.com/news/archive.asp?date=0405

One of these pages (lost it) on the itx website, under computex coverage had some ITX product running "surveilence" footage on a screen, I only saw a glimps but I think it was multiple video streams on a 16:9 moinitor (only got a glimps before a closed the window).

Been to it website, couldn't find any DC power supply reference.

Thanks

Wayne.

New here and honestly overwhelmed by the hundreds of posts in various threads. I must say I am rather lost.

Anyway, I am most interested in this low cost project in particular. I may have missed this but has a test version been completed? When is a possible release? What cost?

Very interested in this... very.

I am supposed to be away for a week, but here goes.

Go to the 4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project thread, most of the action is happening there for the moment. Obin is experimenting with a lowend Bayer 720p design. We are trying to do any camera, Sumix and SI (Silicon Image) are making cameras that specifically suit our puposes, only Sumix is targeting their designs specifically for us.

Prices are vary variable, as we are trying to make it so you can put together a camera to your needs and price.
We are trying to target a $5K system price, but it could be done cheaper or more expensive. This would be camera head and computer systemn priuce. I imagine that you could do it for $2K, but you would end up with either a cheap and nasty $1K camera head or bulky computer (camerass are availble for less than hundreds of dollers, but you get what you pay for). Both companies are aiming for the higher end Rockwell Altsens chip range. The Altsen is at the high end of the mid range market, and as such is good value, compared tot he expensive cinema sensors that would cost $4K-$10K+ just for the sensor (then add price to make into complete camera head).

The software is a work in progress, done by Rob S and Rob L. Recently (the last time I was here) Obin has hired his own programmer to get his project workming for a professional work sooner. We have been approached by another seriouse production at the same time, hopefully something canbe worked out for them.

Goto my Home Made HD Cinema Cameras threads for links to information website and threads.

Thanks

Wayne.

I have received an email from the manufacturer that has the low volume distribution rights to Foveon based box cameras. It is as we have expected, there is no HD Foveon scheduled for release.

I have given them something to think about in terms of volume appeal, so hopefully things might change oneday.

Thanks

Wayne.

Thanks Wayne. I have been following the progress in the other threads as well. There are just so many different things happening at once it is hard to sort them all out!

Does anyone have an approximate completion date for any of these cameras? I'm just rather curious as I am going to be shooting a feature (possibly in September, if not then next spring) and would love to go uncompressed HD.

So if I understand correctly there are essentially two different cameras in development both with the same basic goals?

That's correct. Obin has hired developers to complete his project, while I am still (mostly) on my own at this point.

The problem is that it maybe easier said than done. The sort of programming to maximise through put canbe above most programmers. I try to hint at Rob in what to look out for, and who might have the answers, but your average developer is a hack in comparison. Otherwise Windows and applications would be virtually crashless, fast efficent, without massive guidlines to fence in bad programmers who don't care. At uni our studfies covered case studies that showed differences between the best programmers and the worst as 100:1 (I think, from memory), I think most programmers won't get to 10:1.

Yes I know what you mean Wayne. I have done some minor programming here and there and it is very hard to write good code.

Forgive my lack of knowledge - I'm probably just missing something (and this may not be the best place for my questions) but:

1) Have protoypes been constructed and functionality verified? I've looked around but haven't really seen any screen grabs or video tests.

2) Is it likely that a working product will be available in the next few months?

3) Regarding portability; will a self contained camera being implemented (ie a camera that would not require a separate laptop, thus record to some form of internal RAID system)?

I am specifically interested in the possiblity/looking for a portable HD camera that I could take home at the end of a shoot, dump onto a large RAID and then take out shooting the next day/week.

I understand that there are still many problems to solve - I'm just interested in some form of predicted time table for future developments if it is possible to provide such.

You can follow my progress here and you'll find a couple of screen grabs -- video frame only, I don't have much of a UI running yet.
Almost certainly. Obin's project may be done sooner, since he has some developers who can work on it full time, but mine is coming along as well.
Several people have discussed ways to do that also, but it's obviously a great deal more work to build an "embedded" system. I think it will happen, but I wouldn't hold my breath.