SI2K in Western Australia.
 

Steve Rice, who trades as Darling Films (Darling was a pioneer here and the inland hills are called the Darling Scarp), has brought in the SI2K.

Those of us who hang around the fringes are waiting with bated breath to put our fingerprints all over it.

Great news Bob, that makes at least five SI-2Ks in Australia.

There may yet be a second. There have been used two JVC GY-HD100/Mini35-400s on a project here for a few scenes and it would be good to be able to work the same way with two SI2Ks.

We got into an interesting discussion today about how a car interior in a simulated rollover could be shot.

Then came the option of taking the modular and compact "Mini" camera head out of the housing and maybe fixing this to the vehicle interior as a remote head and "dutching" a stripped out car body at groundlevel on a special forklift, so that floor dirt, mats, old cigarette packs can flow across the view, the windscreen pops and speed it all up in post.

The project this method was proposed for, may or may not come to pass but the potential versatility of the system emerges hypothetically at least.

I feel a bit sad about the S16 film camera I have. I still like a film image better. It would be much harder to rig for this particular shot. No guarantees the film transport will work. Film over here is about 2000km from the processor as is the vendor. There is a considerable delay between filming and getting a report on the rushes. A live camera enables immediate review while all the resources are still at hand.

A steep learning curve is coming for those of us that will get to handle it and it looks like going to work very soon.

When you see the paint polished off the edges and corners of the camera body and the baseplate all bright shiny and scratched up like many film cameras, you will know it is a useful working product. If it is a turkey, it will become a relatively pristine monument . Here's to fair wear and tear.

Si2k - Explosion Slow Motion
 

Us locals are yet babes in the wood with the SI2K and off the end of the diving board into the deep end in three day's time.

A man with a big firecracker is going to blow a car up. The SI2K will be main cam and will need to shoot slow-mo. There will be coverage with several other cameras including S16 film cams.

We shall be avid readers of the manual and the owner has undergone vendor training on the SI2K. An experienced DP will also be on set. Nevertheless, if anyone has any hints to offer or pitfalls to watch out for (besides things going up and coming down) suggestions relating to the SI2K will be appreciated.

If you really want decent slo mo of an an explosion get a high speed camera, I'd suggest around 500 fps or more. We rented out an EX1 for one such a project. One shot was a car bomb, the other a suicide bomber. At 60fps both subjects were there in one frame and gone in the next. The aftermath of falling debris and head flying through the air looked slomo, just.

One caveat, for those shots they were using modern explosives which are extremly fast with little flash unlike blackpowder. There's a good example of what I mean here: http://www.cordin.com/imorange.html and that's at 500,000 fps.

The SI-2K itself is only recommended for "burst" shooting at 150fps, i.e., it can't shoot long continuous shots. If you need long continous shots, then I would recommend taking the MINI head's out of the enclosure and hooking them up to a more powerful CPU based PC.

Also I would take the SI-2K out of Adaptive compression mode, and simply hard-set it at Quality 2 for the best shooting performance ratio and maximum burst shooting time.

Thanks,

Jason

Thanks Jason,
that might explain a lot. Looking at some tests someone shot at 150fps of a sweep second hand and counting frames between ticks there certainly wasn't 150. Is the frame rate adaptive as well, I'm certain at one point I counted well over 100 but then measuring it over a few seconds the number was much lower.
Any clue as to how much CPU we'd need to sustain 150fps?

Kaboom Update
 

Unfortunately, due to an obligation to rellies during a difficult time, I was unable to attend today's shoot of the big bang, a big disappointment.

However I was able to go through a little impromptu ceremony of putting one fingerprint's worth of DNA on the camera two days ago and making the delusionary claim that it was now mine by distant association if not by legal possession.

Initial advice is that the blast was successful. There were to be four JVC cameras plus the SI2K. I was going to run a film cam as well at 64fps but there should be enough coverage with what they had.

It was a large blast and the shock wave was apparently sufficient to shut down the DR100 drive on one of the JVC GY-HD--- cameras. The SI2K apparently worked flawlessly.

Steve initially tested slow-mo with the Quality 2 setting however found the wind-down time was too short, so reset to Quality 1, which extended the wind-down time for long enough to include the going up and coming down of the remnants of the car.

I am assuming that Quality 1 and Quality 2 in SI2K speak means Filmscan 1 and Filmscan 2 in Cineform speak. Wind-down of course means duration in my own clockwork Bolex filmcam speak. I don't yet know what the equivalent in SI2K is. I presume it will be something like "frame store", "buffer memory", "pre-roll" or something similar.


Jason.

Thanks for your input. I was able to phone it through in time for them to test and experiment before the bang.

Si2k Copy Disk Contents?
 

I have intermittant access to the new SI2K which has graced these shores but not enough to get to the bottom of a little problem - operator, not hardware related.

I wish to copy D: contents to a USB drive which successfully mounts as drive E:

I have been unable to find anything so far in the operator manuals as to how to do this. I am advised that by using the stylus on the camera monitor screen it is possible to find a file on D: and drag this to E:

In my meagre understanding of the wider Windows XP operating system, this would equate to "cut" and "paste", not "copy" and "paste" and thus delete the file on the D: drive. So I have not been too willing to try it in case the clip goes "ffft" to the happy hunting ground in among all the other fragments.

There seems to be a facility for DOS command line but the screen keyboard does not have all the characters needed, probably for good reason as finger trouble might bring the system down.

Any hints as to copying files and multiple files from one drive to another at the camera would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Bob,

Quality 1 is actually "Medium" . . . about 10-11:1 compression (depends on scene content since CineForm is a VBR codec). Quality 4 is the "Filmscan2" mode at 3.5:1 compression. The reason you got more record time with Quality 1 is because the lower the compression, the less CPU used.

What build of SiliconDVR are you running at 150fps didn't seem that fast? The frame-rate is most defintely NOT adaptive, but you maybe have been running into a couple issues that were fixed a long time ago, but not knowing what build you're running, you may have bumped into those issues.

To copy a file simply right-click on it and do a "copy", then go to destination folder and do a "paste" . . . this can be done using the right-click button on the camera itself, or on any windows machine. You can also do the same for a whole folder. To select a group of files click with the left-mouse button then do a drag operation (lasso) around the group of files you want.

Thanks,

Jason

Jason.


Thanks for your prompt advice. If I'm lucky, Steve will bring the camera along on a JVC shoot tomorrow and I can try copying the files again and look up that software version.

I think his frame rate for the slow-mo was about 80 fps. He ran a really long lead on his slow-mo take rather than chance the buffer filling and losing the big bang.

Maybe will also get a chance to try the Extreme on it tomorrow as well and extract that footage.

First rough test of SI2K in a production environment today along with the main cam which is a JVC GY-HD100 with Mini35-400. We stuck a Letus Extreme on front to shoot a test through that then shot a test direct-to-camera with a similar field-of-view (wider) lens.

The director liked the groundglass look so the Extreme went back on as he decided he might be able to use the footage. Shot at 720P to match the JVC. It is early days yet and we have not yet learned to do sound-in.

Have a Sound Devices Mix-Pre which we could hook one channel out of as we are only going one channel out to the JVC for dialogue. It seems only one mixer type is recommended and the Mix-Pre is not it. More reading and researching to do.

The spot metering and spot white balance functions are a real bonus when using a camera with used still-image prime lenses which are not colour matched sets like the high-end cine primes.

Hi Bob,

I've been using the Sound devices Mix Pre (& a SD 422) with the SI-2K without a problem - what issues are you having ?

Rohan.


Thanks for your response.

Our problem is no usable signal level. In the documentation we are working from, there is no indication of a sound management system within the SI2K operating system. I'm suspecting that the XLR audio-in breakout harness might be for digital-in not analogue-in.

The problem might simply be a case of fingertrouble mismanagement of the Mix-Pre although I think we had it set up correctly. We had it set for audio-out to the production camera and had both output channels linked to the input channel. I've done the same split previously to a Sony DAT and it worked fine.

I note from the documentation that only one mixer is recommended for the SI2K. There was also suggestion that the audio recorded in the SI2K was suitable only for scratch audio ( I assume for double system, syncing the vision up to a separate audio track later in post. )


So in summary my questions would be :-


Is the audio-input source for the SI2K digital-only?

Is the SI2K audio actually usable for production to end-product?

Is the output from the Sound Devices SD 422 a digital or analogue signal into the SI2K?


The footage via the Letus Extreme is encouraging, however the cobbled up arrangement I had made using a stills lens for relay has obvious drawbacks, the most apparent was movement off-focus due to temperature change.

Whether that was due to the lens grease slumping with temp increase and allowing the lens barrel to shift or whether metallic expansion was to blame is not known.

My bridging adaptor is made from flow-cast bronze and relay focus went off significantly after everything had warmed up under the lights from the about 8 degrees C it had been when brought in from outside.

The SI2K seems to be fairly heat tolerant and one one fan start-up occurred. The only other fan start-ups occurred when actually shutting down.


Initial connection of the USB MyBook drive by the hot connecting method recommended went flawlessly. However on the first few hookups, the touch screen function was disabled and the "mouse" system on the left side of the camera had to be used.

On the first dismounts of the USB drive from the camera, the thouch screen controllability was not restored except via rebooting from scratch.

However, subsequently, after DVR was exited through its "Quit" command via the mouse controller, the USB disconnected and then DVR rebooted by double-clicking on its icon in Windows, the touch screen controller was restored.

During a copy operation, somebody switched on a light and killed off the power. The camera was fine as we were running it by battery but the USB drive went dead, initially failed on restart, but later at home was found to be okay. I have yet to re-try it on the SI2K.

This raises a suggestion which is that all peripherals attached to the SI2K should be protected by a UPS or alternative power source, not reliant on the mains power. A spike coming down the USB port as a drive collapses from a lamp related surge would not be a good thing.

The learning curve is steep and we are on a slope of slippery wet clay right now but getting there.

If you only need to copy a couple of clips a thumb drive works just fine and then you're not sweating over power hiccups. Other alternative would be to makeup a cable to power your drive from the DC out of the camera.

As far as audio goes, if you are using the built-in line inputs, first turn off the FBWA using the short-cut in the /SI folder on the desktop, and then on the reboot, go into the control panel (again, using the short-cut in the /SI folder), and make sure your windows mixer settings are correct. The main system audio should be turned all the way up, the Aux Line audio should be turned all the way up in both the playback and recording sections.

For the Sound Devices USB Pre, you have to install the drivers, which are not installed by default on the SI-2K's XPe image. Warning that this might be a little difficult, since installing items on XPe is not quite the same as a normal XP install, i.e., because it is a custom build of XP, there can often be many standard DLL's and .sys files missing from the /System32 directory that we don't install because they are not needed for standard SiliconDVR functions. So even if you install the drivers, the device still might not work without manually copying over these missing DLL's and .sys files.

So just wanted to give you that head's up before you nuke your XPe image . . . :)

BTW, if you do damage the XPe image, the USB Linux flash stick will enable you to very quickly re-flash the system to a system restore point.

Thanks,

Jason

Jason.


Thanks again for your inputs.

Steve, the owner is also getting in contact with the P+S Technik side of your operation who sold him the system and getting some more info. So if between us all, we are doubling your workload, please accept my apologies in advance.

It did not enter my feeble brain to even go into control panel to look for audio settings. I must learn to put aside the shock and awe reaction and be less fraught about taking a tour of the system, with appropriate care of course. It just takes a bit of getting used to, looking at a camera and yet treating it as the computer it essentially is.

We will probably try to keep our lives simple and stick with the analog Mix-Pre for audio to-camera and use the Sound Devices recorder for double-system if we want things to be more elaborate.

Curiosity -- You mentioned Linux. Is the system operating "XPe" under Linux? I was wondering why there are no Windows "flicks" on boot up like I see on the network at my workplace or on my home computer.

Another question you might be able to answer for me - Is there a likelyhood of a central repository on-line for "look-up" files individual users develop for specific film stock emulations?

Four stocks spring to mind, Agfa Gevacolor XT320, 80s Fuji neg and Kodak reversals 7241 and 7252.

We do have a .Look library online in our support section.

If you want me to post some .Looks that you have made that you would like to distribute, I can do that. Also we could maybe make a provision for posting links to .Looks on our forum.

Thanks,

Jason

Jason.


Thank you again for prompt information. I shall go take the tour of the look files.



FOOTNOTE:

The link posted gets munted by the automatic link feature and recevies an extra http on front of the address, I think maybe because you have a fullstop before the words as in .look

Bob,

Jason has probably answered your questions but

1. The XLR audio inputs are analog line level only
2. Have used the SI-2K audio for several commercials & short films without issue. - the A/D converters may not be as good as a stand alone multi-track audio recorder but they are up there with other video cameras - and uncompressed 16bit, 48KHz will be far better than any HDV audio.
3. The Sound Devices 442 (& Mix Pre) output analog signals.

any other questions - just ask (although I'm still learning the ins & outs of this system as well)

Rohan.


Thanks for your added information.

The touch screen? Is this permanently calibrated and reliable as an image reference? There is probably a note in the manual somewhere. I just have not found it yet.

One trick I use with the Z1 is to adjust the LCD brightness with the colour bars switched on until the little gray bar in the bottom righthand corner is just visible, then eyematch by the "look" the iris setting when time is precious.

I find the Z1 eyepiece viewfinder causes me to shoot hot so prefer the LCD with a hood on it and wear close-up glasses if I hook the battery on my shoulder for steadying up a bit. I also do a sort of spot-metering with the Z1 by zooming in and switching to auto for a moment to see just how different my manual settings are, then zooming back. That can be a bit of a trap because of the variation in lens aperture through the zoom.

When Steve was using the spot-metering function in the SI2K, he tended to shoot hot by about one stop. My personal preference when shooting video is to go darker if in doubt. ("If you blunder shoot under".).

With MiniDV or HDV, there is not a lot of wriggle room if you shoot under. I understand the SI2K is a lot more forgiving of under-exposure. Is this valid for the SI2K in your opinion?

We are jumping straight into the deep end for five days next week shooting a short feature, so want to get it as right as we can beforehand. One of the shots will be a man falling down through a ceiling in slow-mo.

So if you have any real-world useful hints about maintaining exposure levels on the fly, these would be greatly appreciated.

For sound, - to be on the safe side we may split channels from the Mix-Pre to the SI2K and to another camera set on MiniDV for sound or to a DAT recorder.

The touchscreen is like all small LCD monitors for critical judging of colour & exposure - don't rely on it, use it as a rough guide. Although once you get your eye in with the camera, exposure can be done like any other video camera - until you change the look.

When you say Steve overexposed, do you mean that the RAW footage was over or was it the footage with the look applied that looked over? I have found that both the spot meter and the false colour meter work very well at exposing the RAW shots correctly.

A lot of the looks that come with SI-2K are based on a higher asa setting and so raise the apparent brightness of the shot, making properly exposed shots look over. Not a problem so long as you know - if you want to use those looks, expose down (or ideally colour correct your digital negative in post to match the look you want) or build your own looks based on the Default look which relates to the RAW exposure.

This camera has so much more wiggle room/latitude that a couple of stops either way wont kill you, all the info can be recovered in post (my first shoot with the SI-2K was greenscreen, two days after I first unpacked it. Looked good on the monitor - wrongly set up - I was at least two stops under maybe three but in post there was more than enough info to pull a good key and the subjects still looked good.)

Good luck with your short feature & if you need second unit - I'm happy to travel ;-)

Rohan.


Thank you again for your advice.

I ran into that same subject while doing some more reading, - look files "adding" to the apparent exposure level, so I now know this to be an illusion and not a painful loss of good image.

I was aware you can drag stuff up out of the blacks because the suit stitching, pattern and shadows in wrinkles were all visible in the second camera footage shot last week. I was not aware it also worked the other way (within reason).

Second unit? This one is a no-low budget so would not be affordable ex-Canberra. A number of people here swap help on each other's projects. This is one such. However thank you for your consideration in this.

While there is quite a bit of over-expsoure room, keep an eye on the histogram and false-color meter, as you will see when you're actually clipping highlights. This can be dangerous territory. One f-stop is not bad, but more than that, and you can run into issues.

The LCD monitor is not color-calibrated, it's an "okay" reference, but not something i would do super-critical judgement with. Again, that is why we have so many exposure tools for the RAW image coming in, so that you don't have to guess from the monitor whether the exposure is correct. You can look at the exposure tools and know where you're landing with the exposure in the digital negative.

Thanks,

Jason

Jason.


Thanks again for your advice.

Old dogs sometimes take a few kicks up the date before they learn new tricks. The histogram looked fine as I recall it. The over-exposure was in the facial highlights and in light of the available latitude probably more of an impression than reality on my part.

I shall play with the images some more and see what happens.

All these displays and aids all beat the hell out of the stressing after film goes off to the lab. "Now was that battery in that light meter flat?" " Did it really work properly?" Did I really reset the aperture after opening it up wide so that I could see better for critical focus before rolling?"

(Mind you, I do miss film in a sort of traitorous feeling selling out sort of way.).

Gee Bob,

I thought that with the boom in the west that the streets of Perth were paved with gold.
(actually I was over there last week so I know that's not quite true)

I agree with your sentiments about film but I'd say there is a good chance that I'll never load another mag again - cost & ease of use are going to win out.

QUOTE: "I thought that with the boom in the west that the streets of Perth were paved with gold."

They were, but the streeties dug the pavement up, hocked it and bought drugs, or the eastern states emigres took it home and paid off their mortgages.

Those of us mere mortals on fixed or restricted earnings are not in happy concert with the wellspring of WA being sucked dry and the northern mining towns being sucked even drier without infrastructure being put back. Local pricing is being pushed up unsustainably.

There is a redneck sentiment of the secessionist and xenophobic kind that WA is being stripped, that a new Brisbane line exists.

The think is that the resources on the western and northern sides of it are to be exhausted as rapidly as possible whilst Australia still hangs onto sovereignty. Afterwards, our several northern neighbours can be yielded what little is left when the push southward starts and the nation decides to shed less useful body parts or so the story goes.

I think a lot of other more pressing emergent circumstances will prevail before that scenario would ever get off the ground. With climate change and pandemic disease being two contenders, wars over living space and resources will become an unaffordable luxury.

Anyway, off the politic and back on topic. We will be exercising the SI2K on Thursday for sound. Hopefully another lens mount will also have arrived, which will enable some local S16 lenses to be tested.

Have you worked the full SI2K hand-held with the P+S long front arms, existing electronic side-finder and shoulder support yet? I would be interested to know how that went if you have done.

Sorry to butt in. Does anyone else have the P&S OLED viewfinder?

We have one and it's a thing of great joy and frustration. We cannot get it to reset or lock any changes we make to the setup. I go through the reset procedure and for a few seconds the image looks gorgeous and then it goes back to whatever state it was in when someone fiddled with it i.e. horrid.

Bob


Steve's camera has an electronic eyepiece which sits on a sliding lockable mount on the left side front of the camera when it is assembled. Is this the "OLED" viewfinder you refer to?

He is absolutely rapt with it. Unfortunately for me, I am left-eye dominant, left-handed and shortsighted, so I don't have a prayer with it. It's the big touch screen, black and white and the red marks for me.

I have not found any setup notes for the viewfinder, but my document copies are as yet incomplete.

That's the one.
We do have documentation. The three buttons on the back are a bit fiddly to use I find but probably that's just a matter of us getting used to it. If only I could the changes I'm making to the settings to stick.

Contact P+S Technik (or whoever shipped you the viewfinder . . . not sure if it was directly from us or from P+S) . . . this is due to a bug in the firmware of the viewfinder that is preventing the user-defined changes from being saved. It's not in all the viewfinders, but it has cropped up in some of them.

Thanks,

Jason

Have got the OLED viewfinder but apart from adjusting brightness have been happy with the way it looks so haven't tried to alter it - now I've got some paperwork I'll see what happens.

Bob H
It would be good if the rails were longer to enable to viewfinder to slide out for left eye use - you could always flip it over to the right side of the camera & operate on that side, might feel a bit weird though.

Have shot several bits hand held with the full rig. Didn't get the shoulder pad for the cam, have Velcro'd one from an old Sony537 on. For the past three years or so I've always shot hand held with an EasyRig which takes most of the weight off the shoulder and helps steady the shot - love it (especially with the weight of a full loaded SI-2K)
The two front handles also really aid in keeping the shot steady as well but while you are holding onto the handles you've got no way to adjust focus or iris. If you try to hang onto the right handgrip and adjust with the left I find that balance becomes very unsteady and you get a lot of unwanted movement (it could be just me)
So you really need an assistant with a follow focus whip or a wireless focus unit

Rohan.


Steve Rice has for the Mini35, the long arms (the ones with a truss pattern cast into the shanks), which are interchangeable with the SI2K.

I found with the JVC HD100/Mini35 combination, that it was handy to set the left arm low and the grip handle backwards or flat against my ample gut as a sort of tripod leg and to set the right hand grip like an older ENG or CP16 film camera to free up the left hand for focus etc..

With the heavier mass of the SI2K, there will return the abiding CP16 fear that the weight will overcome your right hand strength and capsize off your shoulder, the moment you let go of the lens to grab a stair rail. The shorter arm on the right helps but your right arm has less leverage over weight and tires more quickly.

Still if we wanted it any different we would simply shut our eyes and play back our own imaginations, but you can't share those.

Some Behind Scenes of "Cadillac" Trailer shoot.
 

Here are a few stills from the principal day "Cadillac" shoot, our first excursion into serious production with the SI2K, much learning to do but we are getting there.

FOOTNOTE:

Sorry about the stills. I tried to upload them from Steve Rice's computer but it did want to play nice. Will get them psoted as soon as I can.

Furthur to above message
 

Hopefully here are the pics I promised but failed to deliver.


FOOTNOTE: Found a way but long and tedious.

A few more pix from Cadillac trailer shoot
 

Here are some stills from the pyro shots.


Grab 3 - SI2K touch screen and stylus controller. Very handy in the dark.

Grab 5 - They call the cameraman "Riceberg". I wonder why.

Grab 6 - The round fill lamp is a porchlight on a stick.

Grab 4 - Riceberg and the SI2K out of harms way behind the blast barrier.


Sony HVR-Z1P and Letus Extreme combination was used for behind scenes footage grabs.


Lenslist :-

Nikon f4 12mm -24mm.
Noct-Nikkor f1.2 58mm.

Night focus would have been better if I had been wearing my close-up glasses.


The short clip the grabs came from can be found here :-

http://exposureroom.com/members/DARA...a4ac4a5830b07/

Cadillac The Movie
 

The trailer has now been assembled, edited and posted here :-


Cadillac The Movie


All origination was on the SI2k which has proven to be reliable throughout the shoot. Steven Rice, the owner is well pleased.

Al credit due to P+S Technik and Silicon Imaging for helping the journey around the learning curve to stay smooth. Thanks Jason at SI and Silvio at P+S.


For the sake of pure curiosity, there can be found in the Alternative Imaging threads a link to an audition/screen test which was shot using the SI2K as the master wide, and two Sony Z1s with groundglass adaptors for over-shoulders and reverses, just to see what it would like and get some more practice in under a different lighting setup.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/alternati...tml#post950990

Obviously, for resolution and ease of workflow, the SI2K is way ahead

Trailer is looking great Bob. Can't wait to see the finished movie.
What are the plans for distribution?

Bob.


I'm not up to date with the producer's distribution plans. The full movie is yet to be completed. I think they intend to go the path of presale, supplemented with grant assistance. I understand they may have a strong prospect into at least one other continent.

Hi Bob, if you want, we'd be happy to host a H.264 high-res version on our website forum.

Really neat movie, and I like the style, especially the transitions :)

Contact me off-list if you're interested in us hosting a clip in our customer gallery.

Thanks,

Jason