I have no doubt they will. (!)

hehe makes me think of when I was a kid and hacked the commodore C64 to squeeze every last bit out of it... :) - it sure was a different time. I grew up in Sweden..not that far from old soviet - in many senses.

He, He, Matteo, I wasn't going to suggest that because people might think it was too much. I don't know how capable the DS would be to control, decompress and display the data. In the Digital Cinema projects we mused with the idea of doing control of SD RAW through an Game Boy advance.

Odd, I know this is off topic, but exactly how did they get the extended resolution, 80 column text mode, and sprite in the borders? I used to have fun with different ideas to extend things in those days, sort of similar to what we are talking about here of using consumer electronics as viewers fro the camera. I used to be in a community that had the most powerful processor design available (the Novix, latter it became the Harris RTX engine). Like plugging the Novix into an Atari 2600 cartridge, and letting the Novix do the graphics and sound control, with the Atari hardware acting as an viewer (I think the Atari might have lacked writes control from the cartridge to the chips for that. Another was to bypass the buss, and replace chips in the C64 or Amiga with socket in expansion boards that have extra performance (when the IBM CELL comes down in power requirements, it could even, theoretically, be place in and commodore 64 with an scheme like that). Fun times ;).

Odd, next week we'll order some of the new 10349 boards (and post info) - it will have rs-232, usb (with hub), ide connector (44 pin, 2mm - for 2.5") and just some pin headers. So it will be possible to attach some prototype board to it, solder-wire it to the connections on the 10349, using that pin header for custom I/Os.

We will have some unused 10347 boards Rev 0 (after finishing with prototype I will update the layout before production run) - it will be possible to use the part with the lens interface. So cutting 10347, installing some components on it and soldering it on top of 10349 will make lens interface. Actually it is possible to attach that part of the 10347 board to the 16-pin connector of the 333 camera, but you'll need to add 3.3V->5V converter (and make a custom software build).

Current administration in this country (where I am now) seems to follow steps of the failed soviet system so familiar to me ... :-(

Extended resolution - no idea :) - sprites in the border, if I remember correctly I hooked an interrupt and then used NOP (no operation) commands to delay/sync up commands so they are done when the screen cathode ray is outside the frame...if that makes sense? :)

Things like these are so much easier these days as we have the internet to draw information from...add to that all open source projects!!

Now when even hardware is turning open source - things are really getting interesting! :) - like elphel (!!)...and on a smaller scale, projects like arduino: http://www.arduino.cc - I use this one to control my Canon SLR for timelapse.

Hub - so it's a USB host? Great!

I tried to find info on the 10349 board on the wiki...no luck - I look forward to the more info post! :)

You really make me want to buy the 333 ;) - but I'll try to hold on and wait for the 353. The main reason being the harddisk - being able to use the camera on the go without a laptop is gold to me.

Once a 353 is available - would it be possible/hard to use part of the 347 prototype board to make a lens interface? I know how to solder and read spec sheets...but I'm far away from high tech stuff. I studied electronics for three years when I was 20...but that's 15years ago ;)

The way huge corporations get more and more powerful...in the end - in my humble opinion - extreme left wing meets up with the extreme right wing. Guess they have..."mutual interests". :)

Yep, makes sense, interesting. If we only new the tricks back when we had the machines, we might have been more inclined to keep them around. The Commodore 128 was a good selling machine in the US for years with the Amiga around.

35mb 'original unaltered' full frame 12fps 333 clip. Its 10secs long & recorded at 70%.

http://www.tacx-video.com/Elphel/

Phil

RAW, as in 3 mpixel bayer grey scale image?

How do we play it back?

Thanks, will probably look at it tomorrow or so, god willing, after I finish a few things.

great looking video. i forget how nice these look compared to every video camera. no scaling, no cheap lens, no heavy processing/sharpening, what a nice clean looking image, and nice dynamic range. i mean cut the vertical res in half and double the frame rate and you have a wide 2k cinematic image right there. how is there no rolling shutter? short exposure? I mean even the 333 technically could handle anything modern camcorders could handle. the hvx200 seems to have almost identical pixelrate limitations. 960x720@60, 1280x1080@30 ~= 42MP/s (which is what elphel 333 lists as its hardware pixel compression speed limit). wow, direct capture to hard drive? sounds wonderful

plays fine for me, i dont think its real raw, my computer decodes it with mpeg-4

Sorry thats just my own words for things confusing everyone, its original video not Raw. Its 70% quality Mjpeg that was in a ogg container. I just put it in a avi container without rendering it. It looks crisp because its 3megapixels using the entire lens. Once you start only using a small part of the lens things get obviously a bit less crisp & tougher to focus.

You need a Mjpeg codec to work with the video in say Vegas etc. if you have Virtualdub it should play in that.

Phil

42 comes as 125MHz/2/1.5
125Mhz - memory/compressor clock, I believe we'll be able to get 133 at least - memory in 353 is 6ns already, but the FPGA code should be improved.
Then = FPGA is larger, so we can runs some critical parts in parallel.
/2 comes from the compressor implementation - last stages (Huffman, bit stuffer) have to run twice faster than the input pixels to guarantee there will be no buffer overflows (currently input stages of the compressor get /process data without asking next ones if they are ready).
/1.5 - comes from Bayer -> YCbCr 4:2:0 conversion, for each 4 raw sensor pixels compressor has to process 6 (4 - Y, 1 - Cb, 1 - Cr).

Yes, that should be possible (if you mean hard drive in the camera) with IDE available in 353.

http://www.tacx-video.com/Elphel/vlcsnap-10453.png here is a frame from the clip. (saved as a png file from the VLC player thats recommended for being able to play just about any type of video clip).

http://www.tacx-video.com/Elphel/Rab...inal-frame.jpg A 1280x1024 frame from another clip, its the same lens set at the same focus. If your looking at the full frame compressed into a browser then you will see the difference in clarity between 3megaPixels & 1megapixels combined with more grain from the lens.

http://www.tacx-video.com/Elphel/elphelDemo.wmv a little clip made from the older 313 footage (1280x1024 sensor 22fps), please right click & select 'save target' as its got music & its got to play properly.


Phil

Is there any example footage of the bayer pattern being recorded as grey scale, and of it debayered and converted to video (for playback)?

Thanks

Wayne.

Seems like it would be tough to compress a bayer image, it might look really noisy to jpeg compression, and jpeg doesnt deal well with noise. I dont doubt it would mess up colors. maybe separating out each color and compressing them to jpeg separately?

Bayer + jpg = true?
 

Well that's what's proposed...separate the colours and then grayscale JPG them separately...then combine them in post.

yes - I would also very much like to see what could be done using this!

//O.

I can give you raw file of the four planes if you want to play with it. I would have test it myself but i don't have photoshop and the gimp raw import function is not really working...
I have done experiment with bayer compression some times ago, using DCT only on the red and blue channel, leaving the green untouched and then range coding everything. Size wasn't bad at all, but i had some bug in the quantization, so i've no idea about the quality.
Time to get back to work, i guess :)

Oh btw, i was here because i read some news about a Dirac Pro profile, even if the news is quite old, it sound very interesting, as it should be supported by the BBC...
http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=609681

RAW file...
 

Yes please post the file!
Do you know what kind of hardware captured the raw file?

Also - andrey? Is there a raw file from the 333 that we can play around with?

I work a lot with 3dsMax (its my day job) and I believe it would be quite easy to write a script that can separate the colours and then save them as Jpeg + load and combine...just to try out the idea.

I would of course post my findings.

//O.

amazing display of the power of the elphel camera Phil!
if with the 353 we can achieve a 2000 x 850 pixel at 24fps without exposure difference from left to right side we could make very good cinema camera!

Yes, i asked Andrey for material, in fact you can download the current raw image from the elphel public camera at any moment ;)
I'll compile my little tool tonight and post the raw files.
And i forgot to say that the previous video is completly amazing!

This is what was talked about an week or two ago, that Andrey had an Bayer compression scheme for the 323. It would also be interesting to see how good an result could be achieved by Jpeg compressing the bayer sensor image in camera, rather than speculating how bad it is. When I say how good can be achieved, by trying all Jpeg compression options and setup available in the existing circuit.

Oh Ive got to finally cut a section from the film in Rome! Some of it is a bit over exposed but when the light is good I have some really nice images with the Fish eye lens. Personally I like the 313 image better due to the bigger % of sensor area thats being used in the video. But its too slow for me.

Yes a bigger then standard image is going to result in great looking video or film. I will want to film 4:3 though for the PC. Although even many PC monitors now days are wide screen.

I get 2000x800 @ 85% quality on the 333 at exactly 24 frames per second.

http://www.buysmartpc.com/333/333framecc.jpg
(color corrected)

I am very pleased.

Impressive Daniel. What data rate does that work out to?

If its the mjpeg stream the data rate is going to be either dependent on the the jpeg size (how complex is the image??) , the camera cpu, the write speed of the hard drive (if you have a really cheap slow laptop drive) or perhaps the bandwidth.

So if your filming a face with blue sky the image will be small & thus also the data rate, If your filming in the forest with loads of leaves its going to be huge. You need to think about this before you set up the camera. There perhaps needs to be a variable % quality setting that adjusts the quality level of the jpeg stream?

You can see this effect with any digital camera. the elphel when filming mjpeg is in effect a super fast digital camera.

Phil

I'm curious if I can push it any higher. I don't know if the bottleneck is the computer or I reached the limit of the camera.

x64 3500 amd
1 gig ram
7900 geforce
7200 sata II hdd

I have not yet found a laptop available to me fast enough to handle the 333 stream at 2000x800@85. The best I have found so far was 11 fps on a new sony vaio.

Currently I am building an acrylic body for the camera to hold all the necessary computer components. While I will still require a power source, it would be nice to integrate everything into a single unit. I have a prototype built, and while I am satisfied with the size I still need to refine it to get a more professional appearance. A keyboard and mouse is not a very mobile solution so I plan to use the Nostromo N50 for input. I will address noise issues with sound dampening foam and proper cooling.

I filmed that clip above with my Acer & that clip is full resolution 2048x1536 12fps. I think you need to play with the settings in knoppix? Or you have a really slow hard drive?

Are you filming inside with it? If you are then you you have to think exposure & use a LOT of extra light. Light the inside up like a TV studio. If exposure needs to be longer then the frame rate the frame rate will drop. its probably this thats causing the slow down. Try it outside in the sun.

I noticed a slowdown at higher exposure times, but I try not to touch the exposure setting and just add more light.

The tests were done with the laptop outside on a sunny day. I'm not sure about the laptop specs, I believe it was an intel core duo with a 5400 hdd.

Yes then for sure you need to pop that drive out & stick in a 7200rpm one (Hitachi make a good one). Format that drive to Fat32 & buy a little cadi for it so you can replace it with the Sony one after filming & use it with your editing PC. I plug it into a windows machine & run all the ogg video into Virtualdub to make a avi from it. you can also stitch all the files together with this.

Daniel, I always put some something like zMatte 'deartifact' on the Elphel footage to get rid of the (mostly) red and green spots. Look at your frame rendered with deartifact:
original
deatifact
Zoom in to see how good it works, it also gets rid of some pixel blocs, although for that I put a very small box blur on all my Elphel footage.

Besides that, it looks very good... what lens did you use?

Oscar, please check your link. I am unable to view the image.

I believe the lens was "TV ZOOM LENS T6X13.5 13.5-81mm 1:1.8"

whats with the color spots? what sort of debayer algorithm does the 333 use? i dont think i get that on my sumix m73 with sumix's lapacian debayer. I do with nearest color debayer though. what exactly does zmatte deartifact do? sharpness loss with filter doesnt look bad, but itd probably be nice not to have to filter and recompress all footage just to get rid of artifacts that should have been avoided with a good debayer in the first place.

Really??! jeez..have to go and try right now...the company firewall will probably say "noway in hell" like always ;)

EDIT:
I tried to find a menu where I could download a RAW frame...but really couldnt find it...? Any pointers?

Thanks! Much appreciated.

//O.

Its possible its just reflected light from the sun, or the spotlight I had on the plates. The dishes are decorated in gold, so it would reflect a lot of light. Also its possible this formed from the color correction which was just "Auto Levels"

I'm really impressed by how much zmatte deartifact helped.

I think those artifacts are specific to the debayer algorithm and its inability to correctly handle very small specular highlights which may end up saturating one color pixel but not others. Just a guess. Pretty sure its something that could be handled during debayering.

http://s09.picshome.com/5fd/333framecczm.jpg

Does it work now?
Zmatte is used for chromakeying, but this is a part of the plugin to reduce color artifacts and jagged edges to get a good chromakey. It doesn't reduce the sharpness.
Maybe there are others as well.

Yes it's definitly artifacts created by "simple" de-bayering algorithm, that's why it would be more interesting to do it in post :D

Here my quick test with bayer compression :

original
After separating the 4 planes and jpeg compression (q10 for G, q4 for R,B) Compression ratio was about 4:1.

You can find the raw files in the directory. I used photoshop 6 for de-bayering (with an old plugin) and jpeg compression (so max Q=12).

Yes, sure the algorithm now is too basic and we plan working on it. Unfortunately our application to http://code.google.com/soc/ did not work, but the project ideas are still there (including demosaic): http://wiki.elphel.com/index.php?tit...rithms_in_FPGA

I'm thinking to go ahead with students (on the same terms) and announce it a week or so after the student applications deadline at GSoC when some people will show up who missed the application time.