3 channel 30 bit 1280 X 720 camera - Viper?
 

History_____________________________________________

Dear all, I have been reading this forum for more than a year by now in search for an answer: how to assemble a low cost high bit high resolution camera.
I also sent dozens of e-mails to cmos/ccd/camera manufacturers. I spent 8 months doing this.
By now, I am upset at me, waisting valuable time, I am upset at JVC for waisting my time comparing it's HD1, I am upset at Panasonic telling me that the $3000 flash camera will be available in year 2006.


Good results :)______________________________________
There is a cmpany out there that sells monochrome 1.3 megapixel (1280x1024) CMOS cameras with USB2.0 interface.
I quired whether they can help me out with my project (3 CMOSs/prism/final RGB stream). They replied very nicely, I am pasting the whole letter below.
(
P.S. for those people, who don't get a clue what I am up to, here's a lead:
1. Take three monochrome sensors, glue them to a prism (RGB)
2. Capture each monochrome stream on a powerful computer (2.8 GHz should be enough)
3. Premultiply each captured stream (12 bit X 3) with R, G, B
4. Get yourself a candy - 36 bit 1280 X 720 24 fps
)

Here is the reply:

Dear Steve,

Thank you for your interest in SMX 150 cameras. Please let us know what
kind of images you would like us to prepare for you, e.g. what
illumination, what kind of lens, speed, magnification, etc.
The price for SMX-150 M is $1050 and for SMX-150C is $1100, which
include tripod adapter, application software, DirectShow and Twain
drivers, and SDK software.
For two cameras with a PC with 2.8 GHz we have not seen any
deterioration in speed, both camera can work at 33 fps for 1000 by 1000
images. For three cameras you may need an even faster computer. If
needed we provide you with modification in the driver software so the
three cameras would produce a RGB stream.
If you need help with special optics for combining thee monochrome
cameras into a Color RGB camera, please let us know. For volumes of 10
or more we would be interested to produce 3 sensors RGB cameras.

Best regards
Farhad Towfiq, Ph.D.
_________________________________________________

The last lines made me post this stuff here.

Result:________________________________________
Regretfully, I didn't order the 10 cameras the guy wanted me to. The reason is simple: I don't have a spare 45 to 60 K. But asking nicely again would do the trick.
Here's the deal: if you are interested, post here, I will continue the dialog.
Please, don't mail them yourselves: they might freak out if the interest in RGB exceeds their expectations.
If that happens, we will have the same 20 000 HD solution SONY is pitching. Let it happen for 4000$ or so.
here they are
nntp://vvv.sumix.com
Having at least 10 people on board, I will promise the guy all 10 cameras will be ordered in a matter of a week.
I haven't asked for the price of the final camera, if you turn out to be interested, I'll check on it and post here.
Let me know what requirements you have other that I described above.

Thank you for reading.
Much respect,
Steve

Thank you sir, may I please have another.
 

I am interested.

I'd like a ton more detail. Please email me. like you, i have been on the same fruitless quest and would be glad to share what I have so far.

The main thing I'd like to see is a bayonet mount so that we can use off the shelf interchangable video lenses.

Wow
 

Wait, though... why wouldn't someone not purchase one of those single chip color versions. I mean I know it's not gonna be a 3 channel RGB image, but functionally quality wise it should blow out of the water just about any single chip camera out there, including the JVC MiniHD system. High resolution raw 24bit color image streams at almost any frame rate direct to disk? For about a grand? Damn... sounds good to me... especially with an Aldu35 setup.

Am I missing something here?

John

"There is a cmpany out there that sells monochrome 1.3 megapixel (1280x1024) CMOS cameras"

If I'm not mistaken John, what is being referred to here is taking 3 of these MONOCHROME sensors, and splitting the light with a prism into Red Green and Blue (in the same way most 3 chip cameras work now).

If you were to make a 1 chip camera with these sensors, there would be no way to recreate the color information. With a prism, the light is divided by color before reaching the chips, so although the chips may be monochrome, it is possible to recreate the color by knowing which chip is collecting the Red light, Green light, and blue light.

Then again, I may be way off. Most of this stuff is over my head.
:)

Sounds interesting though.
Keep us updated!

-Luis

Color version
 

I know exactly what he's trying to do. He wants to make a three chip camera out of three of their one chip mono cameras. But in addition to their mono camera, they also sell a single chip color camera, and judging from the sample images it shoots pretty nice color at that. I realize that if he can get enough people together to convince them to build a 3 chip version of one of these things it would be fantastic, but I was pointing out the fact that they already sell a one chip color version that seems to greatly rival any other one chip camera out there.... in price, quality, and functionality.

Also, I know that many of the chips being made now for higher end single chip cameras are actually three layers that act exactly like three chip cameras. Are their color chips three layer chips, I wonder.

J

o_o
 

John,

Thank you for comments, you're right - some manufacturers are starting to come up with new designs incorporating one CMOS sensors comprised of 3 layers.
This technology is revolutionary but Foveon (the patent holder, if someone doesn't know) is very paranoid about the licensing aspect of the invention. There are only 2 still cameras on the market (one of them hasn't been put on sale yet) that have the chip.
As for the one chip color industrial camera from the manufacturer I mentioned in the post, - you're 100% on point; 1000 $ USB cam puts all DV crap in shade (although most DV cameras outperform in low light).

Luis,

Thanks for posting, this monochrome stuff is working. Just for fun, try taking a three channel high res image into Photoshop. Separate it's RGB into different images. Take a note which channel is which. Convert them to monochrome. Multiply each of them by the corresponding color (R, G, or B). Paste back to the channels.
You should have something you started with.
There was one guy on another site who tried this trick with GR_HD1 (he used only one monochrome image to create three).
He said it works, but takes too much time.

Be careful. I researched a number of similiar machine-vision-style cameras that seemed promising even after carefully reading the specs and communicating with the companies.

I discovered that it's difficult to find one of these cameras that can shoot film-style, meaning a 48th of a second exposure at 24 frames per second (I'm assuming that's what you want). Many state that they can be programmed to shoot 24fps, and that you can program the exposure to be 48th of a sec (around 21 ms) or even longer, HOWEVER, when you set the exposure times to around 21 ms, the readout time of the chip also increases, and the max frame rate is forced to decrease. So you can shoot at 24fps, and at 48th of a sec exposure, just not at the same time.

The last camera I checked on had a chart of fps rates and image sizes, but the chart was made with a 3 ms exposure time setting.

So before you spend any money, be sure the camera can do both of these things simultaneously. It can be difficult to wrangle this kind of specific information from the sales reps.

Also, you will want to use the global shutter, not the rolling shutter which exposes the chip in a totally different way, but you can only use the global shutter when you are applying an external trigger (if I'm reading the manual correctly). So you'll have to rig up something to trigger the camera 24 times per second. They offer the trigger cable, but I think you have to come up with your own triggering unit.

Maybe I'm telling you things you already know.

If the camera actually meets the 48th of a sec at 24fps criteria, I might get one myself, but I'm only interested in the single chipper.

To Jef
 

Thank you Jef,
I will definitely bring up this issue before the engineers. This is a very valuable piece of information I have omitted in describing the parameters of the future camera.
In this regard, could you expand on how to check the quality of the output?
Should I ask the company for several hundred frames output in 24 fps mode or is there another way?
I hope you will find time to look at how we're doing here every once in a while. The final solution could make a lot of compositors and smal SFX studios happy.
Thank you again,
Steve

You might be able to do the triggering from the serial port of the capture laptop, or, depending on the requirements, a little TTL logic may be sufficient.

trigger; shutter
 

As the trigger point has just been cleared, I will return to shutter.
Which do you think is more favourable - software or mechanical?

"Which do you think is more favourable - software or mechanical?"

I assume by "software" you mean "electronic." I'm not sure your question makes sense in this context.

Regardless of whether or not a mechanical shutter is used, the camera will need to be electronically shuttered in order to gather up the intensities collected by all the pixels (readout phase). I'm not sure what the advantage would be of having an additional mechanical shutter unless some specific effect is desired (e.g. the infamous Saving Private Ryan look).

Mechanical shutters are normally only used in motion film cameras and still cameras. They're necessary in motion film cameras only to prevent a blurring exposure during the time that the current frame is shifted away and the next frame is clawed into place. Some video cameras implement mechnical shutters to similar effect to prevent smear during the readout phase, but in any case, the utility of building your own mechanical shutter system and trying to synchronize it with the electronic shutter of the off-the-shelf sensor apparatus is going to depend on the technology used by the sensor apparatus. If your vendor is still willing to provide you sample images prior to purchase, ask for the camera to be focused on a bright light source (e.g. car headlights at night) to evaluate smear.

The "rolling shutter" (ERS) listed on the spec sheet of the camera in question is a feature common among CMOS sensors and is an electronic process--it doesn't mean that there's a mechanical shutter rolling around a la a motion film camera.

To Robert
 

Thanks for tolerance, Robert
Seems like prior to getting a proper hardware system together one needs to have more experience not only with electronics and rapidly acquired knowledge of digital image math but also solid understanding of working film cameras. Getting knowledgeable people together was the point of bringing the whole issue up.
Yes the vendor is still interested, they want me to comment on the following topics:

1. Portability
2. Inferior CMOS sensitivity (compared to CCD sensors)
3. Connectivity with capturing system (three options - Camera Link, IEEE 1394A or 1GB Ethernet)
4. Data rate (no compression, they estimate it to be around 82 MB/s)
5. Light splitting prism (not cheap)

Apart from that, the guys need at least 3 month for development.
Another thing is that the monochrome CMOS sensors output 10 bit, not 12.

Here's what I think (please, do correct me, if I lack knowledge in the following answers).

1. The camera should be portable. For that reason the only option is 1GB Ethernet wireless.
2. Because each pixel on a CMOS sensor has several transistors located next to it, the light sensitivity of a CMOS chip tends to be lower. Many of the photons hitting the chip hit the transistors instead of the photodiode. Thus, compared to a CCD chip, the same amount of pixels on CMOS would count to something like 100 to 70. The less lux you have, the more smear you'll have in the picture. Having this ratio around only tests will answer the question of image usability in low light conditions.
3. Refer to No 1.
4. To capture the stream you need a powerful system. I tested speed on my dual Xeon 2.4 HGz with onboard SCSI and software RAID. The tests show something like 54 MB/s. This problem fades away once you install a PCI SCSI card with hardware RAID level 0 (if not mistaken) on it. I have a Syborg 2.0 (an extinct PC HD compositing software) manual on system assembly. I used it as a blueprint for building up my workstation. The manual confirms on 100 more MB/s transfer rates with the hardware RAID and dual Xeons.
5. This could be a pain in the ass, if the company doesn't have OEM connections with optics manufacturers, it could turn out to be very costly (5 K US or more).

Drawing the bottom line, the whole system wouldn't be cheap.
Here are my estimates:

1. 300 US - Gigabit ethernet hardware ( I am in Taiwan)
2. 3 - 6 K (this is more than aproximate, - it could be more than that - the prism and development costs will be the major factors; I still need to reply the vendor and ask them for an estimate cost) camera assembly.
3. Lens (you count, - it might be anything depending on what you fix to the bayonet mount. I am considering using some good glass from second hand digital still cameras with homemade aldus).
4. Ground glass assembly (do it yourself style or 8000 US final solution)

Not so cheap after all.
I will get the camera aproximate cost after working all this stuff with the technical folks from the sumix. All will be posted here.
Untill that I do hope for your comments on the semiutopia. There might be ways to cut the corners (e.g - going for one chipper considering that the folks from sumix are the only ones I spotted who actually do care to push the development of customer inspired product).

Much respect,
Steve

how large are the chips? if someone would start making 35mm HD chips, then people could shoot 4:4:4 HD and get all the other characteristics of film (dof, angle of view, etc) and then color correct to their own tastes. i'm sure these are probably 1/2" or smaller though :(

Yes Adam, for price considerations the manufacturer proposes 1/2" size of the chips. The development hasn't started yet, we're figuring out the technical characteristics. There is an option to go for larger/more expensive 2/3" chips.

Good news
 

here's a letter from sumix:

.... About three sensor camera we did some thinking. Seems retail price of
$2700-$3000 is feasible.
There are several issues. One issue is the sensor. If external trigger
is not required we should use a different sensor. The sensor size is
also critical. The Fillfactory IBIS5A is a 2/3" sensor. We can use
smaller sensor like a 1/2" micron sensor. This can reduce the price of
lenses as well as the prices of the components and also overall size
will be smaller. Both sensors have 10 bit A/D. 12 bit can only be
obtained by multiple exposure and sampling which drops the frame rate.
The only sensor that has 12 bit is Foveon which is not acceptable for
its slow frame rate.
The other issue is some form of compression to reduce demand on disk
storage. Perhaps you accept only lossless compression.
Also, we need to decide what kind of lens interface is the best. In
industrial vision we use C-mount objectives which are economical for the
sizes of sensors we use.

Steve, I am about to buy the same camera from a US dealer....do you know if your guys are shipping the ibis5A chip yet...my guy in the US only has the ibis5 chip, it's older and not as good as the 5A...I am doing a conversion of a 16mm film camera with the single chip.

Obin, they sell one chip monochrome and color cameras, I am not sure whether they ship chips separately, you might want to contact them yourself, they are one of the most polite on the market

info@sumix.com

regards

are they shipping the ipis5A camera yet?

I am getting bad feedback from the IBIS5A chip that the color is not that good...what have you heard Steve? do you have test images from it in color?

No, Obin, they haven't sent me images from the cameras. If we go on with the camera development, there will be no use of getting color information from the CMOS imager. Only monochrome stream will be used.

Steve do you know what size image sensor would be needed for use in a 16mm film camera?

I think you can use any sensor as long as it's resolution is satisfactory to your needs; but then you'll need an Aldus mechanics so popular on this forum. If you want to skip the "mechanical manufacturing" :) step, try to find a sensor which dimensions would be close to the 16 mm :) Simple as that.
I might be wrong but I hope this is as close to the truth as I think it is :)

I hope so too! I am banking on that...I wish we had some sample pictures from that chip before I slap $1,000 down for it!

Steve, looks like chip size is fine...it will be like shooting with a digital slr you have crop factor to deal with..lenses will not be as wide but the imge quality will be very good...IF your lens is to small for the chip/film size then you get dark corners in your image....I NEED IMAGES from the IBIS5A chip that show how well it shoots color!! I have searched the net high and low..still nothing..

here is one VERY VERY nice chip...I bet it costs over 10 grand ;)

http://www.panavisionsvi.com/imagers_Quad.htm

Steve I am not getting a phone answer from sumix...are they open at this time? I want to talk with them about the 1 CMOS bayer filter camera

Sorry Obin, not sure on their working hours. I am waiting for them to reply my last letter. Try e-mailing them.

steve good news,,,I got a pic from an ibis5 chip!! looks good but the bayer filter software they used sucks..I will post image in the morning

Steaming on!
 

Dear all, judging by responses from sumix, the company went on with the development of the cam.
Possible cost of the camera is estimated to be around US $3000 but you will need your lens and a powerful computer - RAID 5 double XEON 2.4 (or greater) to capture the stream. I just replied a letter from Vladimir, - electronics engineer at the company, he's open to any positive input.
We are considering an electronic RGB filter for the camera.
http://www.qimaging.com/datasheets/RGBFilter.pdf
Please, if you are indifferent, write what you think here, the company is aware of this discussion.

Steve are you still talking about a 3ccd/cmos system?
Steve you really need to use 2/3 inch chips IMHO BECAUSE you get a much more film-like image with the DOF

also what I think you need to do is have some type of chip/computer take the 3 RGB images and layer them into one before the images go to the hard disk, this way you will have much less strain on the system for capturing

Thanks, Obin, I agree, the bigger CMOSs will be better.
The software will do the math, - only RGB output frames will be written. There even might be some sort of lossless compression.

Steve FYI the single IBIS5 chip looks really bad almost no color at all...it's very washed out looking

Sounds like just what I need. Sumix could make themselves a good deal of sales when done right. I think up to 100 thousand sales could be generated (10 thousand could be likely). I want to get something like this, but I'll wait until everything is sorted out.

If a complete system can be worked out then these sales can be easily sold to inde and video clubs, and videocamera forums, and by mail order. As most, more average of us, don't want to DIY the system themselves, before they know it will work. Still that would leave hundreds of people left for the first batch.

Whatever we do we should not forget, TV production, so 25p and 30p, with variable shutter speeds, gains, would be very important. A SD picture can be extracted from that.

That thing with the recrptor pads of the CMOS chip beign surrounded by transistors, what about the increased flyscreen effect?

We should look at 1080p or more, if it's not much more expensive, otherwise, if the 720p camera is very successfull, leave it till next time. I would pay a few hundred more for it, a bit more for SHD even, as long as the picture, latitude, niose, range, min lux was still good (JVC HD10 is not). If those characteristics are bad then I wouldn't be.

What video editing packages do we use, will linux give better capture performance, are their in Open Source editors that could add support for this camera project?

As I understand a normal high speed HDD will do 66-100Mb/s without raid, what about if we have a Gigbyte of memory to buffer data into write burst (most normal drives overheat during continouse writing and have to cool down before continuing) to keep the drive cool. Would that help.

I know that you can get 5/14 inch drive sized consumer computers. You can get simular sized cases to put your own board into. www.VIA.com.tw, have mini-ITX, and nano-ITX motherboards (17*17cm and 12*12cm pc mainboards), Would that be suitable for just capture? You could make a sholder mount camera with that form factor.

Looseless compression, and decompression for editing, is fine.

Soem thoughts on outputs: coomponent ad RGB, and s-video if availble, for dumping commercials to local TV stations Beta decks. USB2.0 is standard for many new computers, can 2 or three USB2.0 ports be useded to give three times more bandwidth? IEEE1394a is more standard in video circles, version 1394b goes from 800-1.6Gb's, but who's got it? Direct camera interfaces, are best for dealing with TV stations and PRO equipment, but espensive, does anybody know any cheap alternatives? Gigabyte ethernet, OK as lonhg as it's cheaper that three USB2.0's. Wireless, standardised or custom, as long as it is cheap (less than a couple of hundred), would be excellent. Need a hardwire interface and a wireless interface, buffer memory, as certain things could break the signal up (explosions, motors, electrical niose, lightnisng etc).


A guy over at camcorderinfo has some very good suggestions:

http://www.camcorderinfo.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&postid=70544#post70544

The smal sensor is over 1 inch and has 500 times the latitude.

http://www.smalcamera.com/technology.html

yo
 

Hey, Wayne
Thanks for support.

>What video editing packages do we use, will linux give better >capture performance, are their in Open Source editors that >could add support for this camera project?

If you get plain RGB frames, the options are endless. I like shake a lot. It's simplicity, speed and power are pretty amazing. Apple did a great job adding sound editing capabilities to the package.
Although shake isn't an NLE (ruther a compositing system), it can do pretty good if there were no other options.
I'm sure there are other HD editing progs out there but my other favorite is 5D Cyborg 2.0 which has been swallowed by Discreet a few years ago. If you are lucky, you can still get it from eMule.

As for the portable system ideas you outlined - I am planning to assemble just that after I see the first results of the camera output. PCs are getting more power more speed and shrinking fast. One deterrent here though is the final cost of such a system. All the PC components could be somewhat around 2000 US.
If we could get Linux guys signed up, the cam could shrink even more. I saw a website by a Russian electronics engineer, he's built one chipper 1024 X 1300 (I think) with bayer filter totally around linux server. The cam is tiny and it can transmit the stream wirelessly.

Three USB 2 ports is teasing, I'll bring it up, as well as s-video output, in my next reply to the company.

<<<-- As I understand a normal high speed HDD will do 66-100Mb/s without raid, ... -->>>

The ATA66/100/133 and SATA150 specs only allow for burst speeds that fast. There is yet to be a single drive that can reach that speed even on the outer/fastest tracks. Most drives can only send data out of their 2-8MB cache at that rate and cannot sustain it.

The most important speed rating of a drive is its minimum sustained write speed. That is the absolute slowest rate at which it will write data to the drive from a streamed source such as the proposed cameras. It has been suggested that 25MBps is the very minimum needed and unfortunately there are still a few 7200rpm drives out there that can dip below that. Alot of manufacturers only give their average and fastest speeds and this can be rather misleading. Yes, many hard drives can write data at 50MBps but this is only at the farthest outside tracks and is not to be considered consistent. Even average write speeds can be misleading if the drive spends an inordinate amount of time on the inner/slower tracks.

Western Digital produces a 10,000rpm drive that has a minimum write speed of around 50MBps and it only gets better form there. The only downsides are the price, power needs, and heat generated. The power required may be too much for any battery pack to resonably handle though. A review of this drive and a really good 7200rpm drive can be found here http://www.tomshardware.com/storage/20040123/index.html

Another option might be 7200rpm laptop drives in a Raid0 (2+ drives) or Raid5(3+ drives) array. Laptop drives by themselves are a bit slower than the same RPM desktop counterparts but raid0/5 would solve that. The power requirements for laptop drives is much lower than desktops and a hotswapable unit could be made to house and control three of the drives which would still probably have lower power requirements than one desktop hard drive. When one unit got filled up it could be swapped out for a fresh one. The filled unit could then be attached to the editing system by usb2/firewire. This would be similar to the Panasonic Flash card system except with laptop hard drives, though more expensive than regular hard drives, they are far cheaper than flash media.

---Patrick

Re: yo
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Ipp : Hey, Wayne
Thanks for support.

If we could get Linux guys signed up, the cam could shrink even more. I saw a website by a Russian electronics engineer, he's built one chipper 1024 X 1300 (I think) with bayer filter totally around linux server. The cam is tiny and it can transmit the stream wirelessly.

Three USB 2 ports is teasing, I'll bring it up, as well as s-video output, in my next reply to the company. -->>>

Thanks. By the way, Link, Link? ;)

One other consideration is to where ever Windows XP and USB2 can keep up with the realtime considerations of the sampling (without pausing, stuttering or breaking up). Thats the only major reason I suggest Linux, as I have had many bad experiences with Windows performance (third parties used to sell real time OS replacement cores for it, it was that bad). I understand that Firewire had better rliability in this respect to USB1, is USB2 any better?

One other aspect is that what we are looking at buying, pluss video editing package $1k-2k + computer could add upto $7000. Now, I saw a local ad for a twin security camera monitoring system for around $230US, that is not a cheap company either. So it occurs to me that just a HD head may not worth 12 times the price in high volumes. Ask about major bulk discounts past the 10 they are asking for. 1K might be possible (the prism might be the major hassel) + the rest.

The video editing software, I don't know the ones you suggested, but is there any that can support the format, timecoding, and all the pro editting features we would need for commercial/inde work, auto: colour, gamma, lighting and contrast adjustment, at a price of less than a few hundred, rather than thousands, on a packaged OEM deal, or open source?

It occured to me last night that the camera will need control software for manual/auto, iris, gain, colour correction/white balance, focus (live doco work) etc. Along with possible looseless compression and decompression for codec and editting suit (I remember a place on the web that lists the compression codec, including opensource but can't remember where). This is definetly where open source might help over OEM solutions (which might be licensed)?

I suggested Linux, because of the real time processing capabilities might be better. In capture mode, I would suggest that the system comes on instantly in a special mode without Windows. Linux offers some recompilable portability between PC and MAC, but I would like to put forward the Toas vOS system (RTOS and intent) as much more portable, efficent and faster. It is the system at the heart of the new Amiga initatives, I believe it would give the best efficencies, is very small for instant on, and is available for many hardware platforms, and Linux I believe, though a number of consumer electronics companies are shareholders. Actually I would not be surprised if some cameras use Toas for the firmware OS (just looked at the site and it is used). For the PC I believe it is probably the best system around at the moment. It is it's own Virtual OS but also can be programmed in Java (it had the most efficent Java plugin, Intent, on a PC). Through either of these (but especially through machine code, or TOAS) you might also get a greater through put of data, requiring a slower cheaper processor. Some www.via.com.tw ITX mainboards have flash instant on capacities. I believe www.via.com.tw is easy to work with for projects using their technology. I am surprised that capture required such horsepower as is quoted before, VIA will probably have 2 ghz low powered pocessors this year, I imagine. Even two of their boards put together is 12*12cm *2. We are talking about 14.5 cycles for every pixel at present 1.2ghz, but we are talking about many times that with double 2.4Ghz server cpu's. It all comes down to how you program the underlying hardware's efficencies (also getting rid of interference from background OS operations), the PC game industry used to have these problems, and any fast game, programs around them. The game industry is probably one of the few industries that takes this into concern, as some of the inefficencies mount upto 100's of times speed reduction (in real life, on average, maybe only double). Just compiling in C (Linux) can drastically reduce performance, I don't know if any C compiler (with highly optimised C code) approaches faster than 80% Machine code speed, and it might be less than that for the sort of capture we are talking about.

http://tao-group.com/

Searching the following opensource sites should reveal related Open Source projects:

www.sourceforge.com is one of the most common place for Opensource projects. There is a group (maybe more than one) working on mutimedia software for Linux, I can't remember the name, there might be one for editing software or something, and I don't know about capture software, but these are the people to approach, and their forums, as they might be interested in coding such a beast (as well as ex engineers and software programmers for camera companies). You can sell, them on the idea, that if they thought it was bad to pay Micro S too much money for something they don't like, imagine how it is paying $35K too much for a quality HD camera system, also stopping them from owning their own cheap high quality PC HD camera system :)

www.opencores.org is opensource hardware, but I believe there is another more suitable bunch with more general opensource electronics designs, but it is burried among many thousands of pages of paperwork around here. Somebody at opencores may know.

http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/video_systems/overview

If opensource software and hardware is put in place, it canbe reused by other future camera projects.

So those are the programming options I can tell you about.

Don't let any of this stop you getting a cheap, well worked out, comprehensive version out as soon as possible, as Open Source can take a while. All the custom programming can be done in the background for future upgrades, and could take years.

Pactrick, Raid issues, I thought that was the sustained rate, my appologies. I have not read anything for a while, but I think that the last article I read was on tomshardware.com about drives for multimedia or video editing, but there are a number of other sites I could have read it on. One computer can carry 4 drives, so we are talking about enough speed in parallel (the memory system can deliver many times more), adding 4 120 gb drives together will give you oddels of space. I suggested the 3.5 inch drive because of low cost compared to laptop and multimedia 3.5 inch drives, and performance (I'm interested in a shoulder mount). I had another consideration for power, but that is not relavent here. Large main memory buffer and twin drives will probably allow close to maximiun burst speed (one at a time) without stalling because of overheating. The data goes into a buffer, is written to one drive, before it overheats it then goes to the other drive, or buffer, some overlap in the drives maybe possible, I actually don't know.

Additional. I followed the link to the site of the cmos sensor, and found many new sensor designs there, there was a link to a 1000fps camera made with their sensor, probably too expensive for our needs. It's good for some ideas, but I think it is far better to stick with Sumix, as it will be far better to work with them.

How much extra would the Panavision sensor cost?

http://www.visiblesolutions.com/
http://www.visiblesolutions.com/phantomv9.html

Re: yo
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Ipp :
If we could get Linux guys signed up, the cam could shrink even more. I saw a website by a Russian electronics engineer, he's built one chipper 1024 X 1300 (I think) with bayer filter totally around linux server. The cam is tiny and it can transmit the stream wirelessly.
-->>>

Steve do you have a link for this camera? If you do please feel free to post it in my alt imaging thread as well.

Sure :)
 

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2441343146.html

http://www.elphel.com/

Good old Linux Devices ;), I keep a book mark file of around 1 MB, and a library of 8-10 thousand printed pages, of information for my variouse projects, I've been there many times. Thanks for the link.

Wayne.