Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Many of the 30 second shots are pulled from much longer shots when editing though... I would pass on this camera based on this one thing due to the fact that I couldn't get enough coverage for editing.

It's just an opinion, so don't take my editorial as law, other people shoot differently... but this is standard practice from what I know of Hollywood shooting, so it may impact how you develop the camera's recording system.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I under stand the issue, but with a story board you can interupt the "longer" take into the parts that will actually be used.

As a micro-budget filmmaker I am faced with getting something that in the end looks like a major studio production but with tools and methods that cut out all the fat.

The idea is to make a buffered camera that can sell for about $250 and can shoot 2.5K 2.35:1 ratio and give good enough results to transfer on a DIY film recorder to 35mm color print stock, or to make a DCP with the CCed 2048x858 DPX or TIF frames.

I have written the software to do most of that so far, I have a few improvements to make to the DIY film recorder software DANCINEL.EXE (tm), but its usable as is and the results of our tests watching the 35mm film projected look usable (it requires making more than one pass in the exposure to get better than 8 bit monitor limits onto the film stock).

If I am faced with shooting 35mm short ends or 35mm color print stock and paying maybe $50000 for film and processing, vs. shooting with a $250 shoot then dump camera that has double the shooting time of a spring wound 35mm Eyemo, and maybe getting better results with the $250 camera because of the freedom of dust and scratches, then I could put up with 30 seconds shot lengths.

There is no reason you cannot make the buffer large enough to record 4 minutes which is about equal to the length of a 400' 35mm film load which is standard for filmmaking. But you would need to pay more for the larger buffer memory, so its up to the filmmaker if he wants to pay for 10x the memory he needs to make a 7 second shot.

The optimum cost vs. end result comes it at about a minimum of a 30 second buffer, since very few shots in major motion pictures are longer than that, and with an auto-clapper-slate you don't need to waste frames on slating which can be done when the frames are de-Bayered.

I have a "freeish" DI system written for working with uncompressed workflows, and will have my de-Bayer and image processing program out soon hopefully, so there is support for low cost Ture RAW recording cameras in the pipeline. People can also use my system with RED, ARRI, etc. and HDSLR cameras if they like, as well as film scans. The goal is to get good results that don't look, and sound, like they were made with a cheep compressed camcorder while not spending money that is not needed to get that result.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Unfortunately, you have to deal with actors and they don't switch performances on and off into neat 30 second segments. This will an even larger problem with the actors that you'll have available for an extremely low budget film that involves dialogue. It's not impossible for scenes just involving action, it's about the same as a clockwork motor on film cameras, but for dialogue I'd make 60 seconds,if not longer, as a more practical minimum figure.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project [new test footage]
 

You got your wish, well almost, the KineRAW-S8p (tm) is not on sale yet, but I was able to shoot some test footage for development of my free de-Bayer program DANCINEC.EXE v0.04 (tm). You can view the test at this link on Vimeo,


Its shot 2592x1104x12bit@24fps 100% uncompressed True RAW, my software removes the bad pixels and does the FPN masking. The bandwidth was 103MB/s recording to a 60GB SSD.

60000/103 = 582 seconds or 582/60 = about 9.7minutes for the maximum shot length.

With larger SSD the record time can be longer.

The camera has two hot swap slots so there may be a firmware upgrade later that could allow non-stop recording if you swap disks during shooting, but as far as I know they have not done that yet.

As the compressed images on vimeo show losses, if you want to look at some uncompressed BMP frames from that video you can email me with "DVinfo request for uncompressed frames" in the subject line so I do not delete your email as junk.

It great that after so many years Jose's vision has gotten close to being true, if anyone is in contact with him please ask him to email me again so I can tell him about the S8, as well as the S16 and S35 models in development now.

I'm not involved with Kinefinity.com sales so you would need to contact them directly for information about when the S8 would be available. I'm just interested in supporting various DNG (CinemaDNG) type cameras that record full bandwidth uncompressed True RAW Bayer data in my free de-Bayer program for use in my freeish DI/NLE/CC/MIX software DANCAD87.EXE (tm). My programs are up on my web site for download now, and I am working on some updates that I hope to have out early next year.

The video above is a collection of some de-Bayer and lens correction tests, I was also testing my 'film look" processing so the goal was not 'accurate' color as that would tend to make the results look 'camcorder' like, rather was going for a 35mm film replacement look for use in a project I hope to shoot next year for showing in movie theaters quality. I have a more developed version of my DANCINEL.EXE (tm) program for a DIY 35mm film recorder but that is not released yet, although there is the previous version up for download now. I have some things to finish and test in the new version that adds new functions and higher image quality.

The shot with the woman walking the dog was shot non-stop and then cut up, so the length of the shots in the edit is shorter than the shot length made in the camera.

Here is what I wrote on the video's Vimeo page:

Quote: [I am testing various lenses for use in film-making projects using the Super8 format Digital Cinema Camera called the KineRAW-S8p (tm). This camera records fully uncompressed at various Ultra-HD resolutions, this video was shot at 2592x1104x12bit@24.000fps 103MB/s to high speed SSD in the camera. The camera can dump the SSD to a notebook HDD in the camera so my setup was 60GB SSD and 500GB HDD for these lens tests. The camera can take C mount, CS mount, and D mount (regular 8mm) lenses. The image area varies with the resolution mode, some modes are about Super8 size so C mount lenses made for Super8 cameras may be used. the frames were processed in a free program called DANCINEC.EXE (tm) that is on my web site for download and "beta-testing". The workflow was DNG to TIF, the TIF were edited in my 'freeish' DI/NLE/CC/MIX software DANCAD87.EXE (tm) and output as BMP frame set letterboxed 1920x1080, that was converted into a MPEG4v2 6000kbps AVI in VirtualDub (tm) and upladed here. There is no sound on this reel, although the camera can record sync sound 48000 s/s stereo, and has an autoslate beep and SMPTE TIME CODE for sync with an external sound recorder or SMPTE slate etc. The camera used is a pre-production prototype that I am testing for use with my free de-Bayer software, and for use in my own filmmaking projects. The production cameras may be somewhat different from this test camera and I may be able to improve the results that my de-Bayer program produces as I am still experimenting with various filter adjustments and code developments. this was processed mostly with v0.04 while it was being worked on. If you have any thoughts or questions about the de-Bayer you can email me through the address at my program's web site. You can google KineRAW (tm) to read more about the camera development, I am not involved in sales of the cameras, just trying to work with them to support their and other companies DNG recroding Digital Cinema Cameras. You can google DANCAD3D to find my web site.]

In case you don't see that, what I see in this post is the vimeo player showing here, rather than just a link to the video page(?).

KineRAW-S8p (tm) test reel #2 Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I posted a second lens test reel on Vimeo from DNG frames shot 2592x1104x12bit@24.000fps 100% uncompressed CinemaDNG type DNG frames, here is the link,


If you have questions you can ask on the videos page or email me with 'DVinfo user question' in the subject line of your email so I know its not junk, thanks.

Progress seems to being made on all three cameras, the S35, S16 CCD, and the S8. You can contact Kinefinity (tm) about their KineRAW (tm) camera development by email at the contact on their web site if you have an interest and questions. While the camera development has expanded past the original DIY project this thread was started for, Jose's vision of a uncompressed S8 as well as S16 and S35 camera continues to the goal of an affordable solution for filmmakers.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Great work you're doing here, Dan. I periodically check out the Kinefinity website but there's still not much change. Any news on when the cameras will be for sale? And will the S8 model really be around $250?

Cheers.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Last I heard was that the production KineRAW-S8 (tm) with HDMI 1280x720 output and DNG recording to 2.5" SSD was going for a target of about 1/4 the S35 price which has a target of about $6000-$8000, so would be about $1500-$2000 if that follows through.

Anything close to $250-$499 would be a web cam like camera that would plug into a notebook computer, the images would be the same but its not a self-contained camera that way. I've mentioned that concept to them but there is no target date for such a camera for sale. An unbuffered test camera was made some years ago, but that did not shoot at up to 25fps like the self contained one does because it did not have a large buffer, you can see my comments on such a concept camera above in this thread here on DVinfo. The general feeling is that such a low cost camera for filmmaking would not be of interest to many people because of the buffer limiting the shot length to maybe 30 to 60 seconds, even though that is more than the spring on cameras like the Bolex, Eyemo, and Filmo that are or at least were used by many filmmakers that shot on film.

Most of the shots I have been making with the KineRAW-S8p (tm) prototype are shorter than one minute, so for the kind of filmmaking I'm doing it would I think be usable, if not ideal, and you could get 2.5K just like in the sample videos I made on Vimeo, so the main difference between the self contained camera and a web cam plug in for a note book would be the maximum shot length, and being able to have full resolution playback with zoom, waveforms and histograms. The viewfinder and playback on the laptop would be more limited since the self contained camera has very fast hardwired circuits for the viewfinder that allow for playback with the 100% or 200% zoom and region of interest being able to be moved around during playback so you can check focus and exposure etc.

What are your thoughts on a self contained Digital Cinema Camera vs. a lower cost web cam like camera if the image quality is the same and the cost as gone into?

Do you think there is a market for both types of S8 format 2.5K C, CS, D mount lens camera?

You can write to them about the sales dates if you like there is an email on their web site. Last I heard they are trying to get the KineRAW-S35 (tm) into field testing by April 2012, they are having several prototypes made at the factory now and if those are working right testing could begin in a few weeks time. What I have heard so far, is that sales would begin after testing has worked out in China first, so to purchase an early one you would probably need to be in China, after that you will just have to follow along and see what and when things work out.

Re: $500 = 2.5K RAW = New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

If anyone has experience hacking the GH1 or other cameras on the sensor pin-out level, if you can get in contact with me and are willing to share your information with OptimaCine.com (sm) so they can engineer an adapter to connect the GH1 or other commercial camera their PCIe card, then I can maybe pass that contact information on so he can talk to you about the details, and in that way put a True RAW tap on the camera so that full sensor data can be recorded to SSD on a computer.

He has a 2.5K sensor board already and has written the recording software to record from that sensor board, the combo of the 2.5K sensor board and PCIe interface is about maybe $500, so maybe doing True RAW from a GH1 or HDSLR would be about the same cost.

The results from his 2.5K sensor board would be similar maybe to the Vimeo videos I made using the KineRAW-S8p (tm) cameras but his OLPF and IR-cut filters are different so they would not be an exact match, I already have support for both OptimaCine.com (sm) and KineRAW.com (sm) cameras in my free de-Bayer software that is up on my web site for free download now.

If you have any questions or think you can help with such a hack, email me and let me know, please put 'GH1 RAW hack' in the email subject line, thanks. My address is: tempnulbox (at) yahoo (dot) com

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Anyone with camera circuit skills that wants to help with what could turn out to be an important advance in digital movie capture can contact James at OptimaCine.com (tm) to share what information he might have about how to tap the sensor signals.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Updates:

1) James at OptimaCine.com (sm) finally put an email contact on his web page. He's looking into various options for revising his camera design as I understand things.

2) Kinefinity.com (sm) is finishing initial testing of their two new KineRAW-S35 (tm) prototypes, I have been processing some test DNG for calibration of monitoring tables to use in the cameras so shooting of test footage can start before too long. As I understand things, they would get back to the KineRAW-S8 (tm) re-design after the S35 goes on sale in China.

I've got my DI system processing shots and the editing and sound mixing seem to function so far, so it could be possible to finish a feature film, if anyone finds an issue they should let me know. My de-Bayer program has a general configuration so other cameras not listed in the camera type menu, such as Aaton (tm)'s 4K camera can probably work by selecting the generic RAW or DNG camera type.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

Digital Bolex.

Thoughts ?

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

It seems like the digital Bolex might be a case of SI2K, A-Cam digital, Kinor, the new as yet unreleased Chinese offering and other "Super16mm" sized sensor cameras revisited, albeit in a smaller cute retro package.

The pistol grip photo-sniper form factor of 8mm/Super8mm film cameras was initially embraced by early generations of consumer video cams but is an ergonomic deadend for the more serious practitioner unless the handle is detachable and a tripod mount somewhere under the body and not on the handle.

Super16mm digital cinema cams have already been forced into niche zones by the 35mm and Super35mm format sensor cameras.

My imagining is that at best, the digital Bolex may pioneer its own additional niche market at the right price point but I don't see volume of sales generating economies of scale to bring the costs down to an affordable "consumer novelty" level.

Interesting concept though. I vaguely recall that way back in 2002 or thereabouts, the SI2K kicked off in a forum here on dvinfo as a hypothetical of stripping out a K3 16mm film camera and substituting a CMOS sensor and computer hardware within the camera casework.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I posted the third test reel for the KineRAW-S8p (tm).

It stutters a bit from the Vimeo playback on my Brother's computer, and there are some spots left behind in the scrolling titles from the compression it seems, but you get the general idea of what shooting at f/0.95 with a 2:1 squeeze lens gets you,


Yea, there is no substitute for using a real anamorphic lens to get those great flare effects. I was using the ElmoScope-II anamorphic adapter on a Bolex H16 with a mounting plate held onto the turret , but the low resolution of 16mm movie film did not bring out the fine details like the KineRAW-S8p ™ can in part because film has so much grain and un-steadiness, the KineRAW-S8p ™ worked great for the two composite shots since there is zero regeneration error.

Lots more features and lenses to test in the KineRAW-S8p ™ like 1920×1440 for 4:3 in Black and White (someone in Europe was asking about that), and 220fps slow motion etc.

==

You can check the spec sheets for the sensors, but I think that the stated digital Bolex sensor has about 1 T/ stop less dynamic range than the KineRAW-S8p (tm) sensor, more similar to the Acam dII (tm) sensor also made by Kodak (tm) (which seems to have sold off its sensor division?).

I hope to show that more with a softer grade in some future demo videos etc.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I posted some new photos of the KineRAW-S8p (tm) in this thread here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/digital-...-8000-a-4.html

The system will not let me post them in this thread, so you need to click to that thread to read the test of that post and see the five new images.

Has anyone heard from Jose (person starting this DIY camera thread for a camera like the KineRAW (tm))? I was talking to him by email some time ago, but have not gotten a reply in a while.

==

With regard to the digital Bolex (tm) question above, I think the KineRAW-S8p (tm) sensor is rated at about 1 T/ stop more dynamic range than the Kodak sensor used in the digital Bolex (tm), the Kodak sensors have 4 readouts and so need good FPN masking to not show the four way split, the KineRAW-S8p (tm) sensor has one readout, so there are no split quadrant artifacts even without black calibration or temp drift in the sensor, it seems.

I wish them well and hope they can deliver their camera, but the KineRAW-S8p (tm) offeres a different look, maybe less brittle and softer film like depending on the de-Bayer processing method, such as using EDR for Extended Dynamic Range in my free de-Bayer program etc.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I posted the fourth Vimeo video, D1, showing some hand held footage made with the KineRAW-S8p (tm), you can read my text on that video's page for more information about how it was done and the 1920x817 crop from 1920x1440 shooting mode used.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I like Dan's video quality; the color richness; etc. The Kineraw-S8p may have a lot going for it compared to the competition. I wish it well. But please, that's double posting, and off topic here.

Now this is a new development; and has the potential to include DIY; and is a Cinema Camera project: Announcing the Apertus Open-Source Cinema Project | Dynamic Perception

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I wouldn't say new as that one's been going on for years. It's also showing it's age now by being 5 megapixel and so newer cameras have left it far behind.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

We can excuse Damian if he's gone to sleep on this one, as the Apertus Project has seemed to be in a holding pattern for quite some time. However, what's new is the development, over on the link supplied and also on the Apertus Project website: new hardware partner; the plan now appears to be to make a 4K S35p cinema camera with raw sensor data recorded from a12MP APS-C global shutter sensor ( the same one as in the Kineraw S35p); and a new post-production suite. Sure, by the time it gets produced it will have been so called bettered. Dan's video on the S8p is plenty good enough for me . 4K S35p with hardware and software upgradibility is plenty future proof; and the ease with which it might be customized by DIY sounds fun. Again on the niggles side: will it scream like a jet engine; or can it be cooled silently? Will it be prone to fill with dust? Or whatever else problems.

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

The reason I was posting in this thread was that it was started by Jose some years ago to make a raw recording digital cinema camera with several sensor sizes, which is what Kinefinity.com (tm) has done.

I was talking to Jose as well as to Kinefinity.com (tm) and OptimaCine.com (tm) about making such a camera for a low cost solution.

Before that I was interested in developing a public domain (no strings unlike Apertus (tm)) design for a digital cinema camera much like what Jose was talking about, so I got in contact with him to see if I could add software support for his camera project in the DI system I was developing and in the de-Bayer software I was developing to support Acam dII (tm) as well as the Kinefinity.com (tm) and OptimaCine.com (tm) cameras.

If Apertus (tm) wants to take over this thread, and why exactly since Jose knew about their 8bit compressed camera and it seems wanted to develop a true RAW recording alternative, then I can't stop them.

But the point of this thread was to have a low cost True RAW recording digital cinema camera available for people to shoot with and if Apertus (tm) is going to make an 8bit compressed recording camera what does it have to do with Jose's original reason for starting this thread?

Re: New DIY HD Cinema Camera Project
 

I am not Apertus. Sorry to mention a true raw 8 10 or 12 bit, 2k or 4k, free to DIY cinema camera project that Jose could take hardware or software ideas from or add such to. Love it or hate it, the Apertus project is right now the closest DIY possible thing to what Jose described in the OP; and is not "an 8bit compressed recording camera".