The future of HD - The SI-1920HDVR

[francois]

The future of HD film-making is on the way. Silicon Imaging and Cineform, together with our company, Atomic-VFX, are busy at the moment shooting a feature film, entitled “Spoon”, on a HD camera that is implementing a system never before used. The SI-1920HDVR combines a digital cinema class 1920x1080P camera with CineForm's revolutionary Visually Perfect®CineForm RAW™codec in an embedded PC architecture under Microsoft Windows® XP. The camera is connected directly to the computer, so expensive tape stock is no longer an issue. It is also possible to attach a 160GB notebook hard drive to the camera for up to 4 hours of free-roaming shooting. The camera uses modern cinema PL mount lenses, as well as affordable F and compact C mount lenses that is connected to a single large format 2/3” CMOS sensor with an on-chip 12-bit A/D converter. This is then fed through wire into a 'wafian' box and into the PC. Originally developed for the independent film maker the camera provides superb image quality at a low cost. With release during the third quarter of the year the camera is costing in the area of only $20 000. Still in the Beta phase of development, but already exceeding everyones expectations, the SI-1920HDVR is the camera for the future of High Def filming. For an up to date account of the filming, visit www.indiefilmlive.blogspot.com (http://www.indiefilmlive.blogspot.com/) or for more technical information visit www.siliconimaging.com/phpBB/index.php (http://www.siliconimaging.com/phpBB/index.php) or simply comment on this post.

[bklyndv]

Doesn't using the words "the camera is only $20,000" and "the camera is connected directly to a computer" mixed with "expensive tape stock is no longer an issue" seem a bit awkward?

It looks like a great cam in some respects, but it's really out of the reach of many the independent filmmaker given the hidden costs of storage and archiving all that HD.

[Jake Segraves]

True, the camera (costwise) is out of reach of many indie filmmakers, but compared to some of the higher end cameras (Viper, Infinity, Varicam, etc.) it is actually a fairly inexpensive alternative. You mention HD storage. Considering the footage is stored using CineForm's compressed format, storage isn't as expensive as you would think.

CineForm uses a temporal Wavelet algorithm which offers light compression. The compression rate is user-selectable. Our film/television customers often operate at around 6:1. This means an hour of material is about 75GB (instead of nearly 500), and sustained bandwidth for dual-stream processing is about 50MB/sec (instead of 300MB/sec). And because it's a format optimized for editing, there is ZERO visual difference in 10 generations of rendering of CineForm Intermediate files compared to 10 generations of rendering uncompressed files.

The SI-1920HDVR uses a custom version of CineForm Intermediate, called CineForm RAW. This flavor reads the RAW camera data straight from the camera's image sensor and retains the full dynamic range, making it available and adjustable throughout the post-production process. You can read more about that at the CineForm website, http://www.cineform.com/technology/CineForm_RAW.htm.

The camera ships with Premiere Pro 2.0 and CineForm's Prospect HD, making it a complete workflow solution. IMHO you're getting a lot of bang for your buck!

[oqion]

I dono dude, looks cool and all, but maybe your missing the point. The price pint. Your an order of magnitude off our price point! One can buy enough tape stock to record half a year non-stop for $17,000.

[francois]

yes, but once you've shot half a years footage, what are you going to do with all that tape. just add the cost and time cunsumation it takes to get the tapes captured. the SI1920 shoots direct to disk and the footage is immediatly ready for editing.

[Erik Olson]

Have to agree here. Now you have a year of videotape and what... a pair of scissors to edit it with?

Since everyone edits NLE, the migration away from tape to HDD (nearly $.50 / GB today) for lossless capture and archiving makes more sense than ever. Regardless of what you shoot - negative film, HD tape, DV, HDD or solid-state, it all ends up in a HDD at the end of the day. And I do mean all of it. Always. Every time.

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[bklyndv]

The camera ships with Premiere Pro 2.0 and CineForm's Prospect HD, making it a complete workflow solution. IMHO you're getting a lot of bang for your buck!

Thanks for the info on the wavelet codec. That had slipped my mind.

I'm not meaning to disagree with your overall point that this is a relatively good deal, just not the deal I need it to be to make the leap.