A-cam dII 'High Definition RAW Format Motion Picture Camera

Exactly. When you make (or fake) your own standard (media when we are talking about video) you are effectively creating a monopoly and preparing from exploiting it. This is how a large company thinks.

I'm designing a camera. I could follow two roads. Customise everything in order to maximise profit or follow effective, widely available and affordable industry standards that have a certain future.

As an example. My recording unit uses two 2.5" disks in a removable raid configuration. The 1000gb (yes, one thousand) unit records 5 to 10 hours raw depending on resolution and costs about 200 euro. It willl not require a change for a full day of normal shooting and since it's 200 euro, you can have as many as you like. The drive is part of the camera and has very low cost. A drive that will accept this unit on a desktop and use sata2 for transfers is less than 100 euro and transfers at faster than real time (up to 4x real time). You can get everything on the open pc component market, raid unit, pc compatible 3.5" unit that accepts the raid cartridge and common hard disk drives. You can also use solid state disks if you can handle the cost and reduction in capacity and these are open SSD 2.5" units available on the open market and constantly evolving in pricing and speed because an open market is forced to improve the situation for the consumer in order to be competitive. You can also change the camera 3.5" unit to ANYTHING that is or might be available for storage in the future. Without software updates or modifications to the camera. Interface is extremely fast sata2 on both the camera and editing pc side. Fast, affordable, scalable, hard disk or solid state. You can use affordable HDD cartrdges for tripod shots and a solid state cartridge of small capacity for dangerous shots with the camera in motion or mounted to vehicles when the camera can be dropped and receive high acceleration. Modern HDD do have free fall acceleration sensing that parks the heads, but that's another story. Anyway, this power and flexibility doesn't cost the customer a dime. The development cost for media and interface standards is paid by the huge pc component market.

Or I could price that camera at 60% of what it really costs to make it look affordable and make the extra profit from the custom hard disk or memory recording unit I could build to have total control on pricing. Custom casing, custom pinout, impossible upates via firmware limitations and other tricks. Even custom lens mounts. Media that costs a lot, depreciates fast and limits the usability in actual shooting. In any case, you are depending on a monopoly.

I choose to have no control on the storage medium and lose profit in the process. But I want the unit to be affordable in use, have usable capacities and be open, in the hope that I could get the unit to more hands and get actual low budget features shot with the camera. This is what it's about. If I didn't care for that I would do a rent only high end camera.
 
Last edited:
Ok Otis. I now understand what you mean. Actually if that is the case in you camera project you will be a hero for a lot of people. Nevertheless I consider that you have a fundamental flaw in what you say.

In order to develop a new product you have to first conceptualize, then design and finally produce the product. In the design and conceptualization process you encounter different problems that emerge in different situations, and that, for some of them, there is no MARKET SOLUTION that can have enough power or adaptation to your project to satisfy your needs. THAT'S WHEN PROPRIETARY DESIGN AND PROPRIETARY SOLUTIONS COME TO SCENE. I just cant belive that you've used completely already in market components to satisfy the needs of your project. At some point your design or your problems in the manufacturing process will require a new solution that will eventually become a proprietary standard.

SO at some point you also make your own STANDARD, by your own needs and your own solution. There is no point in making a new product that has nothing new. So in a kind of way you also make you own monopoly. UNLESS YOUR CAMERA ITS COMPLETELY OPEN STANDARD, like Linux is on the software side, or maybe this new pocket console the PANDORA BOX ( that has pass through its own proprietary process indeed ). That's why brands exists to differentiate form other brands that offer different capabilities.

BUT, I AGREE WITH YOUR FEELING AGAINST THE BIG BRANDS.

I completely understand your point. If you manage to make FOR REAL an open standard camera like Linux is on software, maybe you'll not earn a lot of money. But you will transcend beyond in history as the one that actually did it. That has no price, and new levels will be actually possible with that new open standard.
 
The power provided by pc technology is more than enough and it allows a product wth higher capabilities. Don't forget that Silicon Imaging have a camera in the market that worked fine in hardware that is considered old news today. My original 800p prototype had less than 1/6 the processing power a present day prototype has and only used 1/8th of the storage capabilities we have now. Multiply everything by 2x every 12months or so. Hardware is not a limitation.

There are many ways to differentiate a product. A product is always more than the sum of its parts. A solution has two equally important parts that differentiate it, integration and software. A simple part of software development, such as a LUT can differentiate a product. Give a sensor to 10 engineers and although all are limited by the specs, some engineers will do a much better job. A product does not have to justify its existence by accessories or component details.

I'm using a custom plug when a pc standard is not good enough for field use, but that doesn't change much.
 
Last edited:
hi Otis, just wondering if you had looked into Linux for the software, before you went with windows. Your criticism of camera makers is right on, but is even more true of Microsoft
 
I hope just that the real camera footage begin to roll out. It seems to be a lot of time that the camera has began its comercial roadtrip and now we still see no footage.

I WISH IT COULD MAKE IT ON THIS NOVEMER.
 
No Jonathan. I use embedded intel/windows xp and my camera is shoulder mount with removable head. We post the first video samples in December 2007. We had a long (200+ posts) thread with technical info and discussion on dvinfo, but the full thread was removed after we got into an argument with Cineform people about whether or not we could choose not to use Cineform software in our camera. We thought that pushing the codec to a small startup business to such a degree was not a good business practice, because that's what monopolies do in business and enforcing monopolies by using your market share or power in the market is illegal in many countries. In simple words, I can use whatever I want in our design. The excuse for removing the full thread was that our last post was offensive. That's not true, but the thread could be locked and the offensive post could be removed even if that was true.

I don't consider the Microsoft factor important in this case, because switching to another platform increases cost a lot, so the monopoly is in benefit of the consumer in this case:) On the other hand, I wouldn't use a codec that adds an important amount to the cost.
 
Btw, I'm sure I read somewhere about footage from the Acam. There were positive comments about no visible smear on street lights in a night shot. You don't have to worry about image quality on this camera though. It's uncompressed, it's ccd, there is no roling shutter, it's sensitive enough and the colors should be typical kodak (excellent bayer filters and great color). Even an average implementation will look geat compared to the cmos competition.
 
Well Otis it's time to make your very own www.otisuser.com web forum so you can present and discus whatever you want. How easy. Good luck. I will read it with pleasure.
 
karapetkov said:
Otis,

Cineform tried to force you in using their codec? :huh:
Click to expand...


That's offtopic but anyway, it could be useful to A-Cam or anyone working on a camera or independent project in this market. It sounds strange, but I believe Cineform actually did attempt to force the codec use on our product:

First, we received an attack on our "claim" that uncompressed is better than any form of compression for image quality. We were testing 16bit fully uncompressed linear recording at that time and although it did not produce better results that simpler uncompressed formats, we certainly didn't need a compressed codec to improve quality.

Then Cineform got a little carried away and we got to this point:

<<Cineform: Seems like you will now have to reconsider. If none of our 4-5 debayer options work for you, you can use your own with our codec. And really, isn't that the customers choice?>>

Due to the ovious advantage of uncompressed to not require licensing cost for the camera and cost for an an editing solution that supports a codec, we chose uncompressed. If the two cameras on the specific market both used cineform raw, that would push the market to a monopoly in our opinion.

<<My partner: I have to also add that we would not include Cineform, because that would create a monopoly and a de facto standard. We have a solution that does what cineform does, is fully uncompressed and does not increase the end user cost.>>

<<Cineform: This was funny. Are you that important that you could create a monopoly, all by yourself; silly me I only heard of you yesterday. I'll assume you had a bit of glitch in that moment. CineForm RAW is certainly the only licensable RAW compressor on the market, we have SI, Weiscam, and Norpix using the compression various ways. With Norpix the user chooses to purchase a CineForm license if they want, the base product price in not impacted. I think you give your customers option to use a compressed workflow, one already proven on many features (through SI-2K), you would find a very wide usage rate. Remember SI-2K also has a 12-bit uncompressed mode, I just not aware of anyone using it.>>

At one point we rephrased our monopoly concerns:

<<My partner: 1) You proudly accept your product is a monopoly in the bayer compression market and demonstrating your monopoly status in a gross way I might add. 2) Intellectual property licensing falls within obtaining ability to exercise influence over other business carriers under every single antimonopoly law ever put on paper. 3) You are using your status, influence and power in the workflow and bayer compression market to achieve it.>>

Cineform did respond but I doubt anyone actually read it. Dvinfo removed the full thread (in less than 3 minutes from our post I think), promised to edit it and put it back when users were asking about it by starting new threads, then dvinfo said they don't actually have to put the thread back. The account of my partner was locked/banned immediately after his final post but he did not appear as banned to the forum users. Dvinfo did not contact him or respond to his questions about the banning.

One day, months after the incident, I saw someone mentioning our project (ILB16) in dvxuser, so I joined to inform them the project is not dead.

Btw, we did get appologies from Cineform in that thread, they presented themselves as a small business without a marketing department and using word of mouth for sales, but I think they only did it because we mentioned the monopoly issue.

Cineform was a sponsor on dvinfo at the time.

A sad but interesting story about how business is these days.
 
Business is like that when economy is not going well. I just find no reason to get bothered with such circumstances or move away from my vision to the least. We fund our own project, we have total control, we have no licensing deals with anyone in this business and we really don't care if we sell five dozen units at a loss:) The project is worth the time because it is interesting to the developers and produces equipment that is needed in our own projects. If somebody likes the unit enough to order it, we will produce large quantities of the product. Due to the dvinfo incident I lost a valuable team member because he didn't want to get into a business that works like that. Anyway, we will give some publicity when the product is ready and will stop at that.

I think the A-Cam developers can relate to that. I like their approach to marketing and I believe their product will be a hit.
 
I'm a bit at a loss, is this treat still about the Ikonoskop A-cam DII?

I really am interested in Ortis technical knowledge, and also comparing the camera to other camera's, but please not only about other camera's :)
 
hahahahahaha otis otis otis. Your are a fine person. I wish you the best of luck and energy to your project. i know it will be the kind of project that the books will like to hold.

And for Lars. Dont worry we are not talking all about other camera's BUT THE IKONOSKOP GUYS just dont keep on bringing news for the comunity, so we have to talk about something isn it. LOL and well it turns up that otis knows alot and we ask lots.
 
Perhaps they are a bit sceptical about the pixel peeping approach to early samples of cameras. Another digital cinema camera (NoX) received some negative comments even though it looked great, just because the debayer was not final and the color correction was a little off at that time. My guess is they are waiting for final implementation and a professional shot with top quality lenses. Customers generally want to see best case scenarios that hide the flaws of a given system, not a demanding low light situation shot with affordable lenses and beta firmware.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top