ha! funny!

Hmm, if you think your life is serious, you aren't paying proper attention to the script. Or maybe you need to change your viewpoint for proper perspective.

Just keeping a close eye on reality now, not quite ready to bring it home for dinner.

Rob, if you see success on the software side, we can certainly discuss FPGA-ware.
(see this post is appropriate for this topic).

Back again, Rob S I sent you an email yesterday but your email box is full, Rob L could you send your copy to Rob? Thanks.

<<<-- Originally posted by Steve Nordhauser : On the FPGA/DSP idea, if someone comes up with a person with a full hardware design (schematic) and tested FPGA design for compression, I'll do a run of boards that can be integrated into the cameras. I would have to work out the licensing and all but it is something we would like to add to the cameras but don't have the resources. -->>>

I'll check if my guy is interested too. You can get incircuit reprogrammable silicon. But I doubt that cheap programmable silicon is upto the low powered perforamnce of 25.6 GFLOP @ 10 GFlop per watt performance of the first clearspeed part. I think future clear speed parts could be much faster.

Wayne (and all others): I have received your e-mail but haven't
read it yet. I will forward it to Rob S.

The reason I haven't read it is that I just had to do an emergency
re-install of my laptop since my Windows went down the tube and
a couple of clients where "screaming", so my time was needed
there. I will read it today, Wayne. Thanks.

Thanks, no rush.

Wayne.

Yeah, no rush for sure. There is plenty of work ahead on this project.
Got it, thanks!

----- EDIT ------
Hey guys, I got a C-mount lens and tried it last night without much luck. It's a CCTV lens by Computar, and all I get is a blur. If I try to adjust the back-focus I can get a very clear view of some nasty dirt somewhere, but that's about it.

Did I get the wrong lens or am I doing something else wrong?

weird...Rob is the Iris closed? what about backfocus? did you screw the thing all the way in and out ?

is it a zoom or a standard prime? can you see light if you look with your eye into the back and front of the lens?

Rob on lenses:
There are two lens types that use the same threads- C mount and CS mount. C mount has a 17.526mm flange distance (lens shoulder to sensor) and CS mount has a 12.526mm distance. If you cannot adjust the back focal distance to match the lens at all, you probably have a CS. Since the distance is less, you are stuck or you have a bad lens, but that is unlikely. Even with the cheap lenses, I've only had one with a loose element.

You can check this by holding the lens a couple of inches from a piece of paper, threaded side down. Move it up and down until you get a good image. Measure your height to the mounting shoulder. That is the flange distance. The diameter of the circle will also give you the format (1/4" to 1").

Yup, made sure the iris was open and tried adjusting the backfocus quite a bit.
[quote]is it a zoom or a standard prime? can you see light if you look with your eye into the back and front of the lens?[quote]Standard prime. I can see an image through it, and I can get a blur on the screen.
Nuts, I didn't know that. I think that's the problem -- I just Google'd the lens and it appears to be CS mount. I guess I'm stuck. I guess I'll re-sell it on eBay :-)

---- EDIT -----
OK, I think this is the lens I bought: http://www.rmassa.com/manu/computar.htm listed under V1213. I'm not 100% sure because I'm at work right now and can't check the lens directly. If it's a V1213 it should be compatible, doesn't it? (Aside from being 1" format instead of 0.5" to match the chip.)

---- EDIT #2 -----
OK, the V1213 is not the lens I got. The one listed on EBay was a 12.5mm C-mount lens, and it should have worked. However, what I got shipped was an 8mm CS-mount lens. I'm going to return it.

By removing part of the lens mount, however, I was able to get the lens closer to sensor and get a nearly recognizable picture (though still very blurry) and verify that my simple Bayer filter is working properly. It's not much to look at, but I'll post it if anyone wants to see it.

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?

mmm streampix is ok...that is what I use right now but we will have software that is built for video production soon...streampix is for capture but has no support for 1300camera

Basler is high dollar, I think the cheapest is 4 grand

8bit sucks..you don't have much control in post with 8bit

your on the right track..keep it up!

Adrian,
Linescan - one to three linear lines of sensor, usually very long. Think page scanners where you move the sensor or object down the page.

Streampix - for fastest recording RAW data is sent to the HD. If you record in AVI directly, there is a lot of overhead and the max image/frame rate will be a lot less.
Conversion to a standard format is best done as a "pre-post-processing step.

Rob - larger format c mount are not a problem - just a bigger light circle. As you discovered, CS is a problem. You can also remove the backfocus adjustment ring from our camera to gain a few mm of handheld capture.

Thanks! That's exactly what I did and managed to get an image that was blurry but semi-recognizable. See my blog update with a screen shot. Not pretty, but the best I can do right now. I'll be heading out in the morning, so probably won't be posting again until next week.

Adrian, you're definitely thinking along the same lines as we are. At first we are planning to support

• TIFF (16-bit)
• QuickTime (10-bit codecs)
• OpenEXR
• Cineon

...because they support high bit depths. I'm also keeping my eye on the Matroska container format as an alternative to OGG and AVI.

Jason did you ever get FCP to edit the footage I sent you? I am having very large issues with workflow...does FCP work?

Ok, I need help....i just got a call about shooting a feature, they want to use the HD cam that I have been working on...I would BUT the workflow is BAD...does anyone know of ANY system that can edit this stuff in native HD? downconversion is NOT an option for this project! What about Cinerella on linux? anyone used that? it says it's an HD editor and can use render nodes for realtime HD stuff....ideas?

will I have to suck it up and convert to HDCAM or DVCPROHD? both have heavy compression...:(

No. I cannot figure out what's wrong with the Sheer Video download I have, I even downloaded pro and QT still couldn't read the file. Followed the download instructions, everything, I have no idea what's wrong.

The only thing I can think of is that the file is 10-bit, and all the Sheer Video stuff I've downloaded has an 8-bit limit.

Is there a place I can get the 10-bit for Mac?

BTW Obin,

Have you achieved sound-sync yet with your camera? I thought the frame-rate was fluctuating, that might spell trouble for the sound crew, especially during long takes.

On the editing front, with the tools in FCP and Quicktime, you have no concerns for loosing quality.

Basically use the new 10-bit RGB codec from Blackmagic. From there import the files into FCP, and using the auxilary timecode track, assign the files timecode (you can't do this in an Avid ;-) and sync them to the audio. Create offline versions of the file for editing. Once you've locked the picture go back to the original 10-bit RGB files and do an online version inside of FCP. Export that file as a quicktime reference movie file to combustion, color finesse version 2.0 (it will have an awesome stand-alone version that will like to FCP via XML, and is the best CC our there next to a Pogol or Davinci), etc. and do the final color-correct. Also do your final render out of THOSE apps, not FCP, just export a reference movie file or use the XML hooks from FCP into Color Finesse 2.0, since FCP is limited to 8-bit in the RGB color-space. From there import back into FCP for output on a Blackmagic HD Pro to HDCAM-SR, or take the 10-bit RGB quicktime file to Lasergraphics, etc. for output to film.

Of course this is a very simplified approach, but something that FCP will allow you to do, that no other app can. Premiere Pro/Vegas were not made for the offline/online workflow like FCP and AVID, nor do they have the years of experience doing this. In addition, you won't have access to the 10-bit RGB codec from Blackmagic, since neither Vegas nor PPro are Quicktime native.

In any case though, your workflow will be slowed-down by rendering, rendering, rendering, and there's a LOT of pitfalls along the way that could compromise the image. I'm sure the producer calling you up doesn't have the money for Cinesite, Technicolor, etc, people who are experienced in the digital intermediate workflow, so you're going to have to go through some of those pains yourself, hopefully there won't be any hiccups. But the good thing is that with FCP and the new Color Finesse 2.0, the tools are there to get the job done without any loss in quality.

Hi Jason,

I read your very interesting post. It seems that there is a very large amount of data and app switching required to make the whole system work. Would it be simpler to just use the Prospect HD system? It is a compressed system, but if one can do an initial color correction on the raw camera files based on color charts shot on set, and export those files into the Propect codec, the rest of the editing and final color correction could just take place in 1 app with full resolution 10 bit footage.

I understand that the system you propose keeps the full uncompressed quality of the signal, but I suspect many people would be willing to take a visually minor quality hit to avoid having to deal with swapping proxy footage, learning 3 apps, giant hard drive arrays, etc. I certainly would.

The $22k-$30k cost of the system is certainly significant. What I would like to see someday is something like a $1500-$2000 version of Prospect that just did cuts-only real time playback; that's all you really need for most narrative movie editing.

Is there more to it? I honestly don't know and would like to know.

Thanks,

Eliot

Obin,
Have you seen the Pipe HD family of products from Aurora Video Systems? They offer 10-Bit uncompressed editing for use with Final Cut Pro. Price ranges from $499 to $1,499.
Check it out at www.auroravideosystems.com

Are you pleased with the results you've gotten from your custom camera so far? I ask because I'm interested in building one as well. Your still images looked good, yet the lower resolution Quicktime file of the girl waving the sheet around had a strobe effect to it. Unfortunately, the sheervideo codec isn't out for PC yet, so I haven't been able to watch your uncompressed clip.

I recall you mentioning using a shuttle PC for portable image aquisition. You probably don't plan to edit the footage on that little beast, just record it. I'm sure if you dropped the right processor in that Shuttle, it would be faster than a G5, it's just that you wouldn't be able to use Final Cut Pro.

Jason, Premiere Pro 1.5 does allow you to edit offline versions of the original video, as well as export to AAF and EDL files for importing projects into Avid and Final Cut Pro. I believe this is a new feature.

Prospect HD is good, but I have two problems with it-first it's a bit of a proprietary hack on top of Premiere, which I don't think is a good long-form film (24p) editor (having done film editing myself on AVID and FCP), and sort of tries to bypass the shortcomings of Premiere in the high-bit-depth, real-time HD department. There were solutions for FCP a couple years ago like this, and now they're gone, as well as their proprietary codecs. Proprietary codecs that are limited to one platform are also hard to share. And the second strike is that it's expensive. No one should have to pay $20K for a real-time HD system that is compressed, not anymore. Uncompressed yes, compression, no.

My post was based on the assumption that they are going back to film. If that's the case then you don't want compression. If you want a real-time compressed HD system (4 streams on a 2Ghz G5, then again, FCP is the hands-down winner with it's new DVCProHD codecs. They're 4:2:2, have around the same amount of compression as Prospect HD (Prospect is 8:1, I think DVCProHD is 9:1), and have the added bonus of actually being a codec used in a high-definition tape format, so you can simply firewire your project back to a DVCProHD tape deck like the AJ-1200A and play it back on the big screen without $20K worth of equipment. In other words a real-time HD system using the DVCProHD codecs will run you around $6,000 for the G5 (with monitor and some extra RAM) and FCP. Rent the AJ-1200A when you want to output (around $600 per day) to tape, and you're all set, and you're not using a proprietary codec that nobody else is using. This is not a slam against Propect HD, technically it's a good system, it's just that there's not much support for it, you're going to find much more support in a standard codec that comes with Quicktime and can be played back on any Panasonic D-5 or AJ series HD deck that's out there. While Premiere may look cheaper to buy, and PC's sound cheaper, in the end with the total cost of ownership, to do the same thing on the Mac and FCP versus Premiere and a PC, you're going to spend a whole lot more for the PC.

Just my $.02 based on real-world experience.

P.S. The only downside to DVCProHD is that it's an 8-bit codec, while ProspectHD goes up to 10-bits. But again, especially for editing a feature film, you're going to have to work around all the limitations of Premiere Pro, which is not nearly as mature as an AVID or FCP for long-form editing.

Yes Premiere Pro 1.5 does export AAF and EDL's, but the AAF feature isn't too great on the AVID's. We (unfortunetly ;-) have both and it's not the best combo out there.

Also if you're going to online a movie for AVID, you're going to want to go with the expensive AVID DS/Nitris (which again doesn't like Premiere's AAF's that much), as that's the only AVID box IMHO that's ready for digital intermediates at HD or 2K resolutions.

Plus remember that you don't have a tape to re-digitize, which is what the AAF and EDL workflows are based off-of. You're going to have files, and unfortunetly they're going to be ProspectHD AVI's, which aren't going to read in the AVID DS AFAIK.

In fact there's not going to be ANY timecode to work with, which is why I was suggesting useing FCP's ability to embed new timecode in a quicktime that doesn't originally have a timecode track. From there if you have to you can make a window burn of timecode onto the master to do a picture edit for the online version.

As you can see, this is not a straight forward process, but it can be done with some creative ingenuity and careful pre-planning.

Check this:
http://www.bandpro.com/products/hdto...ras/weinberger

very cool I wonder who is making that

Jason what about SheerVideo on mac?

<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Prospect HD is good, but I have two problems with it-first it's a bit of a proprietary hack on top of Premiere,-->>>

Adobe we be disappointed to hear this. :) Premiere is as successful as at is because is has a very open API layer to allow third parties to enhance the product. These are not "hacks", Matrox, Pinnacle and Canapus have been enhancing the Premiere workflow for years, just as Pinnacle CineWave has done for Final Cut Pro. There is no difference.

<<<-- Proprietary codecs that are limited to one platform are also hard to share. -->>>

Yes that is true, yet sharing across system is rarely every done compressed. DXP or Cineon files become a suitable intermediate. However if you had an Apple/QuickTime version of the CineForm codec (no promisses yet), then sharing compressed will be much faster than uncompressed.

<<<-- And the second strike is that it's expensive. No one should have to pay $20K for a real-time HD system that is compressed, not anymore. Uncompressed yes, compression, no.-->>>

If you can find the same mix of quality and performance for less then you have an excellent deal. Avid RT compressed HD for $100k -- they do know the market.

<<<--My post was based on the assumption that they are going back to film. If that's the case then you don't want compression. -->>>

Yet if you are shotting HDCAM and mastering on D5 you can compression throughout the work-flow. We have a going-to-film production coming up for Prospect HD in the next few months.

<<<-- If you want a real-time compressed HD system (4 streams on a 2Ghz G5, then again, FCP is the hands-down winner with it's new DVCProHD codecs. They're 4:2:2, have around the same amount of compression as Prospect HD (Prospect is 8:1, I think DVCProHD is 9:1), -->>>

That are not comparable. For 1080 the DVC PRO HD only samples 1280 pixels where the CineForm HD codec (CFHD) samples all 1920. For 24p work the DVC PRO HD codec is only 960x720 samples which a bit rate of only 40Mbits/s (that is not much more than DV.) CFHD for 24p 1920x1080 10bit used a variable bit-rate that ranges between 120 - 180Mbits/s (it is a constant quality codec not a constant bit-rate codec which are designed for tapes systems.)

Basically never trust compression ratios.
DVC PRO HD starts with 960x720 x 16bits per pixel is 11Mbits/s per frame is compressed to 1.6Mbits per frame = 6.7:1

CFHD starts with 1920x1080 x 20 bits per pixel is 41Mbits/s per frame is compressed to an average of 6.5Mbits per frame = 6.3:1.

Although 6.7 and 6.3 sound simply the quality difference between a 1.6Mbit frame and 6.5Mbit is HUGE. None of this even takes into account that CFHD is wavelet compression which is more efficient than DCT compressors like DVC PRO.

Sorry for my rant. Don't dis compression unless you truely understand it. There are a lot of on-line (for film) compressed HD work-flows hitting the market soon. This is positive for the industry.

Hi David,

Thanks for the correction on my numbers. I'll apologize for that one since I wasn't giving your compression codec the credit it deserved.

BTW, why would you not want to move around compressed files? That would seem to make more sense to me since it would take less time to transfer, and the process from going back and forth with compression-decompression is not lossless the last time I checked. In other words you're going down a generation each time you'd go from a cineform file to DPX and back. I would assume it would be best to simply keep everything in the cineform codec, and not have to constantly re-render and transcode from one format to another (and in the case of a feature film we could be talking about terabytes of data to move around). Frankly DPX/Cineon file sequences can become real messy very quickly unless you have some sort of tracking system like timecode embedded in the headers (like the S-two D-Mag does with the viper, or other DPX systems, i.e., Lustre, Nucoda, etc.) and/or window burns with file-name, etc.

To me though, it seems like the best approach is to do a offline/online style edit. Edit the film like the film industry has been doing for years. You keep the uncompressed digital files as your "digital negative", cut with a low-res "workprint", and then when you're done go back to the high-res files for an online.

Jason,
I've worked on many 35mm features that were compressed, it's not a bad thing at all.
-Les

Was that at ILM? Even if it wasn't, I'm curious to know what type of compression scheme were you using, and what films they were.

Jason,

Yes I completely agree that compressed data transfer would be best the work-flow, convenient and quality. The only problem is that there is no agreed upon format to share compressed data in a online quality. One needs to deal messy uncompressed intermediates (or more conveniently D5 intermediates.) CineForm is hoping to help fix this.

Not at ILM. After that.
Lets just say that there were shots we worked on that we did some effects work on in a part of the frame, and it was cropped out and working on separately. On some shots it so happened that part of the frame was run through compression and part wasn't, the cropped part was comped back in with a hard edge with absolutely no blending of the edge. No issues. And it's not like it was on the edge of the frame, it was in the middle where everybody was looking.
Jpeg at about 4:1 compression.


<<<-- Originally posted by Jason Rodriguez : Was that at ILM? Even if it wasn't, I'm curious to know what type of compression scheme were you using, and what films they were. -->>>

as far as you guys know I have nothing but MAC or $20,000 Boxx system that can deal with POST editing for my camera in 10bit or higher?

Hey Obin,

If you don't have the money (or they don't have the $$) to purchase a new system for the camera, then the easiest, simplest approach (although easily the most time consuming), is to do a simple match-picture online edit. That's what all my film-school buddies had to do when they messed up their cut lists. For each edit line up the appropriate shot in online (say After Effects) by matching the image(s) by eye, and try to record each and every take and scene to a seperate folder to facilitate finding the right frame. I know it sounds time consuming, but it's cheap, and it will get you the correct results every time.

David is much more of an expert on compression effects than I am but be careful about a work flow that does too many iterations of lossy compression and decompression. Each time you lose a bit more. A single cycle at 6:1 may be visually lossless, but taking the same video and cycling it a couple of times at 6:1 may become a mess.

Steve,

Absolutely, multigeneration of a lossly codec an make a mess -- particularly when a codec isn't designed for that workflow (basically all the aquistion formats DVCPRO HD HDCAM, HDV etc have this problem.) When we set out to design production codec, multi-generations was planned up front. With our CFHD codec you can do ten generations without visual loss from the first to the last. This is why we feel confident that benefits of compressed based editing easily out-way the technically lossless nature of uncompressed.

I am especially interested in this as most of my work involves compositing 2D source footage with 5-15 layers of rendered 3D images. At HD resolutions, the amount of storage space consumed with this many uncompressed TIFF images defies belief. Being able to drop the storage requirements by a factor of 6 or so makes the whole process much easier to handle.

Is this the sort of use that the Cineform codecs are designed for? A good way to visually show their performance might be to put them through the same sorts of tests that are at onerivermedia.com under their 'codecs' heading. If that is too artificial a setup, perhaps a 'before and after 10x encodes' picture with something that is tough on codecs like outdoor scenes with moving grass or trees would be good.

Eliot

Eliot,

Those are excellent ideas. Now to find the time. The problem with onerivermedia comparisons it the uses of apple as the testing platform, if they do testing under AE on the PC that might be fine. However putting the x10 generation examples on our web site is simply something we must find time to do.

OT: Camera Choice
 

<<<--
The American cinematographer's manual will tell you the exact aperture dimensions. 16mm is from side to side. The real difference is that some cameras the K3 included use film perfed at both sides.

Super16 has the film perfed on one side and the aperture plate is enlarged to take advantage of the additional negative space where the perfs were.
-->>>

Going way back...

The K3 can actually take single perf film.
Single perf was not actually a S16 invention but arrived with the introduction of sound for the 16mm format.

Super16 uses the part of the film where the optical soundtrack used to be.

Some people enlarge the K3 gate to shoot S16 on it.

Just thought I'd mention this as some people with K3 cameras go to ever such a lot of trouble trying to get double perf film which is hard to get these days and it is silly as it will take standard single perf, it just will only shoot the normal standard 16 image on it unless it has been modified for S16.

love

Freya

I am tired. Been downloadin codecs all day and encoding my footage to them..seems that lots work fine with windows media player for playback and none work in premiere pro..most almost work but drop frames every 2-3sec maybe 2-4frames dropped at a time...it's the code not hardware as windows media plays the stuff fine

I have used the LeadTools codec and it seems very nice..even Premiere color work looks great with that codec! Now if I could jsut get it to playback smoothly!!!! gawd this is a pain!

LeadTools for 8 bit is good and I would finish with that if I could get it to PLAY!

Which of the many Leadtools codec is the one you are using?
Mjpeg2000?

BTW, I need someone to post a zipped small video clip of RAW images to test some compression mixtures and quality.
To make this, first I would need to code an app that decomposes the RAW images as my proposal's description, so it would take me some time.If anyone just made it, please, post it too! :)

@Obin: Did you test Huffyuv for compressing the raw captured frames?
If the answer is yes, what is its speed in fps?


Does anyone know what's the speed of Huffy on a P4 3.X GHZ for a 640x720 video clip? And for 960x1080?
I'm talking about B&W, 8 bits but I don't know if it supports this format.

I ask this because I don't owe a P4 system (Athlon 2500).

Update: I've just tested a 640x720 clip with Huffy and it gives me 2.3:1 compression ratio and a speed of 25 fps on a P3 1GHZ with a slow disk....for an RGB compression.

I just found out a strange thing, in the SOURCE monitor in Premiere Pro and Premiere Pro HD v1.5 the clips playback PERFECT..then when you drag the same clip onto the timeline and hit space(Play) the clip stutters...what could this be? why does the source monitor inside Premiere work and the timeline monitor not?

if this one tiny little thing could be fixed we can POST this HD stuff with a really great LeadTools Codec...arrgghh...someone MUST have a clue to this little mystery eh?


I am using this codec with VERY good results!:

LEADMCMPCodecE.EXE

from www.leadtools.com