CineForm HDMI Recorder Concept Posted

[David Dwyer]

Originally Posted by David Newman

The idea has always been to bypass camera compression recording CineForm directly in a mobile device -- whether that design included monitoring was only a bonus feature not a requirement.

Live screen would be a great feature! Ideal hardware setup would be the customer buys the hardware solution then just buys a Cineform pack that would do the recording and live feed.

[Mike McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Perrone Ford

I don't understand this statement at all. The two have nothing to do with each other and use totally different technologies.

The technology behind it is irrelevant. It is about the workflow. Cineform developed an edit friendly full raster 10bit 4:2:2 intermediate format that allowed you to edit 1080i/p at about 15MB/s. A year or two later Apple releases ProRes which does exactly the same thing (but using a different compression technology). They were trying to fill the same workflow hole with their own similar product. Then Cineform added support for 4:4:4 and Alpha channels, and recently Apple has added the same support to ProRes. There is a pretty obvious link on the competition and marketing side, regardless of the underlying technology. The shifting paradigm taking place of "compressed" becoming acceptable for professional work was pioneered by Cineform and a few other innovative companies, and then Apple and Avid jumped on once that shift in the industry mindset had already taken place.

[Bill Strehl]

Originally Posted by David Newman

I've commented on the Atom spec's before in this long thread. Over 12-months ago 1.6Ghz dual Atom would encode 1080p at 16-17fps, with 533MHz FSB. The memory bus is faster now and clocks up a bit, but otherwise that haven't change much in a while. The missing feature to Atom setup is a single PCI-Express lane, so we can feed HDMI in without a big hardware effort. If as can get to 20fps with a PCI-E lane, we can do 24p/30i through SSD buffering -- it is really close.

Fudzilla.com just posted some pictures and specs of an upcoming mini-itx motherboard from Zotac that use the H55 chipset from Intel with integrated graphics and 2 DDR-3 memory slots: Fudzilla - Zotac goes Intel

In looking at a review of an new ASUS H57 motherboard using an i5-661 power consumption is between 77 and 116 watts. (Power Consumption - Review Tom's Hardware : Intel Core i5-661: Clarkdale Rings The Death Knell Of Core 2) I would expect the Zotac board might also be in this range.

I haven't seen much info on the Tegra other than the CPU operates at 1 GHz and the memory is still DDR2.

ASUS has a new laptop called the G73Jh with an impressive set of components. No pricing has been listed.

I imagine there are other laptops and motherboards that will come from CES. Should be possible to build/buy a low powered device to capture via HDMI and capture with a Cineform product this Spring.

[Richard Leadbetter]

I'd love to know how the mobile i7s perform with CineForm. However, the real problem with a mobile device is that there really isn't an off-the-shelf solution you can easily adapt.

An mITX solution is lacking the inbuilt touchscreen you really need (I actually had an Intensity interfaced with a Mac Mini via its WiFi port). If you go for a laptop, you need to get VERY creative to interface PCI Express, to the point where you lose portability that way. I'd also prefer at least PCIe x4 bandwidth rather than the x1 laptops give you too. Maybe you could repurpose a notebook SLI solution (one GPU and one other device), but in my experience with mobile capture getting the hardware to do anything other than it was designed to do is a real pain.

Bearing all that in mind, the power draw seems like the smallest problem to me! I'd be very curious to know how CineDeck has made their device so small... FPGA? mITX with a really clever custom case?

[Bob Hart]

I don't know if this info is any use or just a distraction.


CarTFT in Germany, stock a barebones version of a small USB touch-screen monitor in a sort of metal skeleton. I think but have not confirmed that it is the same innards or similar without the external casework to the monitor modified by P+S Technik used on the SI2K camera.

[Richard Leadbetter]

Which product in particular are you looking at?

[Serge Victorovich]

Info from CML3D

Recently Rogue Element Films shot some test footage with a 2 x SI2K mini
mirror rig. The kit was as follows :

2 x SI2K mini heads
2 x Lemo to ethernet cables
16mm Ultra Lenses
Synch box
Small Mirror Rig
C-Motion lens control
Cinedeck recorder with 2 x Ethernet input ports and hot swappable SSD
drive slot

The above hardware was then recorded as Cineform RAW in a QT wrapper to
SSD drives using a brand new small recording device called a Cinedeck.
This took both left and right eye feeds via ethernet into its unit and
recorded the rushes to the SSD drives which are removeable media. The
size of the box is slightly bigger than an Astro 6" monitor and the
display is the same as the 7" SI unit you all know already.

The Cinedeck worked beautifully and we had zero issues with the
recording and the archiving of the rushes. This allowed us to do away
with laptops and have a much more self contained and mobile unit. The
Cinedeck has the ability to display left and right eye, overlay, switch
plus LUTs via Speedgrade and lots more besides.

I'd like to thank SI and Ari Pressler from the US for helping with the
testing and also Charles from Cinedeck for such wonderful assistance. If
anyone would like a more detailed description of the kit/workflow I'll
be posting much more on the Rogue website which I'll link to CML.

The kit worked really well and we were all extremely impressed with the
kit and the workflow, so much so its how we are going to work on the
next few projects.

Regards
Dan Mulligan
Rogue Element Films

[Bill Strehl]

I just found out about this board via engadget.com:
Congatec BM57 fits mobile Core i7 onto tiny mobo -- Engadget

It looks like it has a lot of potential. Here's a link to their website with the press announcement:congatec: congatec announces new COM Express small form factor module based on latest Intel® Core? i7 processor

Mouser Electronics sells their products so you can get an idea of possible costs:
congatec Distributor

[David Dwyer]

MSI's race car inspired F Series packs NVIDIA Optimus, we go hands-on -- Engadget

With all these new devices coming out they should be quick enough to support online streaming from a camera? I'd love to buy a small decent netbook/mini laptop and have a Cineform device connected so I can plug my camera into.

Any updates?

[Lawrence Bansbach]

So is the sub-$2,000 dedicated CineForm recorder dead?

[David Newman]

Not dead, just emerging in different forms. CineDeck won a couple of NAB award with it CineForm based mobile recorder and there are others in the works.

[Lawrence Bansbach]

Isn't the CineDeck around $8,000? Maybe my emphasis was wrong. Is the sub-$2,000 CineForm recorder dead?

[Alex Raskin]

I've built a custom mini PC, battery powered, to capture from Si-2K into Cineform RAW.

Cost about $2K.

CPU photo below.

Rockstar can is shown for scale reference, I promise the PC is not powered by it! :)

[David Newman]

Yes certainly DIY can be done for under $2K. The CineDeck is around $8K for a DualLink SR deck replacement, which is very cool but no where near $2K. Their HDMI version will be a lot less, although we don't know price yet. CineDeck is not the only company developing CineForm based mobile recorders so I expect we will see sub-$2K, just not likely in 2010.

[Alex Raskin]

...or one can buy my own DIY version cheap, and use it right now. Works fine. Field and studio tested.

Just posted in Classifieds - click here to marvel! :)