SDI uncompressed Recorder + monitor
 

OK, I just did my own solution of uncompressed recorder + HD monitor. I will upload pictures later but I will describe it now:

I ordered a box, where I firmly attached my G5, which is connected to HUGE raid in the same box. On the back side of the box there is a slide, where I will mount a 23'' apple cinema display, so that I can slide the monitor up and down very easy. on the top of the box there is a keyboard and mouse, attached to the box. The box has multidirectional weels and hadgrips. So you can either roll the box, from location to location, or pick it up and carry. Everything is preconnected inside the box so. And there is a power cord comming out of the side of the box. This power cord is connected to 100meter long power cable on the roll. Also there is a long SDI cable comming out of G5's decklink card, which will connect to the camera.

The result, I get a uncompressed HD recording solution, togather with HD field monitor. So, togather with my XL H1 and mini35 I get quite a nice solution, that perfectly substitudes for 35mm film.

Oh, and those who have seen my previouse mini35 shots, I have to comment it. Many have said that there was a focusing problem, which was also abviouse to me. I thought it was due to the mini35 itself. But then I found out that, my relay lens was not perfectly focused on the ground glass, so after I adjusted the focus I have very sharp focus, well not as sharp as with original lens, but sharp enough, and as I mentioned before, sharpness is not what I like at all.

Now, that I have done some shooting (I continue over this weekend) with the mini35 (well focused) and uncompressed solution, I achieved jaw dropping results, because when I do color correction of the footage, there is so much freedome, that I have a feeling that I am working on 35mm footage. And the greatest thing is that I needed at least 3-5k for a good field HD monitor, not even mentioning price of the uncompressed recorder. The whole setup here is about 12K and I get the editing machine on the same time.

I will post pictures, tomorrow.

and If anyone can suggest how can I post uncompressed video I would love to share. At least I will post framegrabs.

Yahoo !
 

Brilliant !

Levan,
First things first:
-What kind of relay lens are you using with the Micro 35 ?
This is Very important to me and I can't wait to see your results. PM me if it's easier.
- Second, I have been thinking along these lines as well. It's a brilliant idea andd I can't wait to see your results !!!

This is why I got the H1 - this kind of abiliy and functionality
Very Very Very Nice -
Thanks for posting and keep the updates coming !

John

Hi Levan,

Would you talk a bit more about your RAID system ? Which controller are you using ? How many hard-drives ? Which RAID level ?

Thanks

Levan,

That's fantastic! I'm so glad to hear that you improved the focus -- can't wait to see some grabs from that, plus of course pictures of that beast you've built. Very cool.

Nice to have you leading the way. By the way, the free service that you used for your clips before worked fine for me, quite a few clicks and small wait to get the data, but that's not a big deal. I would love to get even a two second clip uncompressed just to see exactly what you're getting.

In addition to the details of your RAID system, I wouldn't mind a recap on exactly what hanging off the front of your XL-H1.

Drat Levan, you posted my million dollar idea (I had it two days ago) with the size of some of the old CRT monitors it seemed that building an LCD monitor with attached Hard drives wouldn't be a great alternative (though heavy) I like the mounting of the monitor on the side of the computer (or raid array) have you visited macmod.com? someone did something very similar a little while back (I believe it was so the computer could fit in a dorm room). Anyhow I think the monitor/storage idea is the next step in video monitoring and production. Now we just need a way to make the whole thing smaller...

Got home back, after whole day of shooting. I will upload few clips here on monday. I am glad you all liked the idea :*).

I have HUGE SYSTEMS u320-RX. I think it is raid 3.

@John Benton,

I use mini35 not micro35. I use the standard realy lens that comes in the box with mini35.

@John Cordell,

I will post as much as I can. Pictures are great. I did some color correction. Even with hardest color correction picture quaility doesn't degrade at all.

As for the lenses, I use PL mount K35 canon lenses.


@Nick

No I have not seen macmod.com thing. :*)


So, I promise that you will see some great footage on monday. Unforunatelly I will not be able to upload more than 100mb of files, and that is just 2 second of ucnompressed I guess. But at least you will see something.

That is a HUGE Raid system !
Dang.
This is great - I can't wait to see whats going on here -

Can we seen a photo of that box?
I've been considering something like that myself and I'm interested about how big it is.

Walter Biscardi did this a while ago...

http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bi..._hd/index.html

I am in admirationn of Levan's design.
But as I don't have the same money to invest,
I am trying to find a cheaper, somwhat portable way to grab the Raw HD
There is the solution I think Pappas or Elton suggested awhile ago:
(I have some access to a friends G5) that I was thinkiing of getting a Kona card for (600$) and having a few 500$ 500Gig Raid drives

I also hope that we may see something at NAB, bot am not holding my breath.

Any other ideas. I would love to strap a mini to my back but cant get a card in there
Waifan's too much
thanks
J

how many hard drive do you need in RAID to be able to capture HD-SDI live?

how about an apple x server rackmounted will it run the software?

I have six 15k rpm ultra320 scsi with my G5 and it works perfectly.

vince

Price might be the killer but the Wafian recorder might be a solution worth looking into. Still need a monitor though.

Unless Wafian releases an Intel Mac version, I'd have to build a Mac/Raid setup.

Of course I'd only do this if I were shooting a feature film. For short form projects I'm content with HDV. I haven't experienced one image breakout due to MPEG compression on the H1 yet. It appears Canon's resampling the image multiple times for recording to tape.

http://www.gvs9000.com/gvs90004xu.html

Check this link out. It is all in one system of what I have described above. Much more compact and portable. I love it, and going to order it. It is quad core G5 with built in raid. Well it is like tuning of MAC. Tell me what you think. I just need to add a monitor to it and I am done.

That looks like an ideal solution. Especially for long form narrative production.

How much is it? With all options? The Website doesn't mention pricing.

i think what we nee is for someone to build a portable wireless transmitter that will be able to send uncompressed video to a computer off set that is set up to record the video. that would seem easy'er to build than a wavland device ect.
Darrell
FIRST CINEMA PICTURES

I am currently in process of getting the price, but it not something very expensive as I understand. It has quite compatable price compared to normal G5. I will let you know what it cost. As for now, I found out that if it is dual G5 2,7 with 4GB ram, and 6 drive bay (no drives in the price) is going to be around 4K.

What about that rolling hard case system with tray for keyboard and monitor. Is that the whole system or are you just buying the CPU and Storage?

Well, no, I mean that, in a system that I have set up I have 3 components, it is G5 case + Huge + monitor. In a system by GVS9000, I save space on HUGE, since the raid is inside the case. But, I will still have the case, with weels and monitor and keyboard, that stays the same. But trust me saving on raid space is a lot of advantage and comfort. :*)

Hey Levan... You still owe us some pictures... ;-) Im curious how it looks like..!

:*) yes, I remember, but I am in the middle of the shootings, and get back from shootings late at nights, so over the weekend I promise I will not only upload pictures, but also, you will have some finished works, including some uncompressed footage.

I'm not just asking Levan,

But could anyone else, wo had captured Uncompressed through HD-SDI, post pictures?
Especially 24p/f
Thanks,
J

Ok, sorry for the delay, I still had problems with web space and had problems with rapidshare also. I promise, tomorrow I will upload some uncompressed frames, and also I will upload 2 finished commercials, but I will compress them.

I will also upload a 2 second uncompressed video.

Again, I had too much work, and I couldn't find time to upload the files. Now that I have finished it is comming.

http://rapidshare.de/files/16282862/Archive.zip.html

Here are some uncompressed frame grabs in TGA.

now uploading 2 clips, but I covnerted them to H.264 from uncompressed. I wish I could upload uncompressed quality, but it is 5GB.

http://rapidshare.de/files/16283682/kidgas.mov.html

here is the link to onve of the videos

http://rapidshare.de/files/16284751/...stvis.avi.html

another clip.

Let me know


But consider all that all the conversions make clips more desaturated, I don't know why. It is desaturated and lower contrast.

Great work, Levan! Thanks for posting these clips/grabs!! I was unable to play the .avi on my Mac. Neither QT, VLC, Real Player or WM Player would play it. Any suggestions?

TIA,

Ron

Edit: FYI - VLC would play the audio track, but no video was shown.

Did the first file play ok ?

If PC users also played first file (.mov file) without problem, I will encode the second one the same way.

Yes, it played fine for me, and the quality was excellent! (G5 Quad w/ GF 7800 GT) It should play fine on any beefy Windoze workstation with QT 7.x installed...

:*) Great but, what about non-MAC users, did anyone play it?

Levan,
Great work !
the kidgas.mov was the only file I was able to get from Rapidshare - but it played fine on my Mac .
It is beautiful - I see the work of the Mini 35 !
Very nicely done !
There are still a few blocky compression artifacts (like even in the sky with the ttail of the plane in it) but these are coming from the NLE, I assume when it makes a .mov file.
Again, great to see!
Thank you for posting these !
J

I just upgraded my Windoze box (a Dell Dimension 2400 w/ 2.4 GHz Celeron and some measly Intel shared-memory GPU) to QT 7.0.4. The kidgas.mov played (albeit choppily, but I can't expect more from this box), and neither QT nor WM Player knew what to do with the .avi-file.

Levan: What lens do you use with the mini-35?

Cheers,

Ron

So, yes, I forgot to mention that they didn't let me take my G5 with Raid in the airport, so only this shot is not uncompressed, it is HDV recorded on tape. :*)

Ron - I use canon K35 lenses

I have a question regarding image quality in the kidgas.mov: particularly through the first two cuts (wooden door, green carpet, bird in cage), the image looks almost surreal with a somewhat posterized quality. This is particularly noticable when viewing stills. Is this present in the master as well, or is it due to the MPEG-4 AVC encoding?

NB: I'm not at all saying that I don't like the way these scenes look - I'm just curious whether what I noticed was intended or not.

TIA,

Ron

Honestly, I don't understand what you mean by MPEG-4 AVC encoding. What I can say is that stills are from original source, uncompressed. Well, everybody that sees the door (the first cut) says that it is 3D generated and it is not the real one. But it is a real shot.

And What is posterized quality?

That's another term for H.264 - see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264
Amazing! Did you grade it or otherwise manipulate it in post, or is it close to how you shot it? If I look at the uncompressed still of the door (uncompressed 10.tga), it still has this look. Is this grab from the raw uncompressed footage or did you grab it after grading/editing?
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posterization

Cheers,

Ron

No, the frame grabs are from the original uncompressed .mov files, before any grading at all. The clip is graded, unfortunatelly, when converted to h.264 you don't see the actuall colors, but trust me it is beutifull, and you have a lot of room for color grading. I do it in final touch HD.

Thanks for explanaitions. :*)