{"id":11,"date":"2007-10-14T23:56:10","date_gmt":"2007-10-15T06:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/14\/silicon-imaging-si-2k\/"},"modified":"2007-10-19T22:04:44","modified_gmt":"2007-10-20T05:04:44","slug":"silicon-imaging-si-2k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/14\/silicon-imaging-si-2k\/","title":{"rendered":"Silicon Imaging SI-2K Camera"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Silicon Imaging SI-2K<\/a> is a single sensor CMOS camera that mimics 16mm film camera optics.\u00c2\u00a0 It uses a bayer pattern to derive RGB images from a single native 2048×1152 pixel sensor.\u00c2\u00a0 These images are transfered uncompressed over a Cat6 ethernet cable to an Intel based computer system, which compresses the image data\u00c2\u00a0using Cineform RAW<\/a> wavelet based compression.\u00c2\u00a0 The resulting data rate is low enough to be saved to a single 2.5″ hard disk.<\/p>\n

When used with just the sensor, the SI-2K is an amazingly small and light imaging device for use in\u00c2\u00a0the tightest places, but it must be tethered to a computer system within 100 yards.\u00c2\u00a0 Usually the lens is much larger than the imager.\u00c2\u00a0 If an all-in-one form factor is desired, there is a full-sized\u00c2\u00a0camera body that can be attached to it, which contains a fully functional PC, running Windows XP Embedded.\u00c2\u00a0 The data is then saved on removable hard disks, that can be hot swapped via the internal USB interconnect.\u00c2\u00a0 With 300GB 2.5″ hard disks available now, you should be able to get 4 or 5 hours of footage onto a single drive.<\/p>\n

Once the Cineform RAW footage is on disk, it can be edited in that codec on most popular NLEs with Cineform’s Neo2K<\/a> product.\u00c2\u00a0 For best performance, you can use Prospect2K<\/a> in Premiere Pro to edit with accelerated playback and rendering.\u00c2\u00a0 The RAW files are debayered in real time by the software, and edits or exports are rendered to regular Cineform 422 or 444 files, which work seemlessly together.<\/p>\n

The SI-2K, when\u00c2\u00a0processed at the highest quality, generates a 10bit log RGB image at up to 2048×1152 pixels.\u00c2\u00a0 The colorist I work with has been very pleased with the dynamic range the\u00c2\u00a0images retain by the time they reach him in color correction.<\/p>\n

Its\u00c2\u00a0small size gives this camera a few unique advantages.\u00c2\u00a0 Like the Iconix<\/a>, it can capture stereoscopic footage\u00c2\u00a0without the use of a beam splitter, since the cameras can be mounted so closely together, side by side.\u00c2\u00a0 ParadiseFX<\/a> has also recently developed an interesting application\u00c2\u00a0for the cameras, in their 18K wide 360 degree surround 2K360<\/a> video capture system, utilizing nine cameras running in parallel.\u00c2\u00a0 It has very limited and specialized uses, but will be much cheaper than any similar solution.\u00c2\u00a0 The next logical step is the inverse of this, with a ring of cameras pointing inwards, allowing time to be frozen while the perspective changes, like in the famous shots from The Matrix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are a few issues to be dealt with in using the camera though.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how you configure the capture setup, you are using a Windows PC as your capture device.\u00c2\u00a0 This entails almost all of the same possible pitfalls of any other direct to disk recording system.\u00c2\u00a0 Your camera has to “boot up” and could lockup, crash, or even theoretically get a virus, if you network it to offload capture files.\u00c2\u00a0 Eventually you will probably have to reformat and reinstall the software as performance declines.\u00c2\u00a0 Silicon Imaging says they are currently working on a USB Flash based\u00c2\u00a0solution to that problem.\u00c2\u00a0 On the positive side, it makes it much easier to update the drivers and software, to add functionallity to the system as it continues to be developed by Silicon Imaging.\u00c2\u00a0 For example support to capture directly to Quicktime<\/a> wrapped .mov files was recently added.<\/p>\n

This\u00c2\u00a0is all around, a very creative and innovative imaging solution from Silicon Imaging, but they are still developing it into a smoother running product.\u00c2\u00a0 It has many possible\u00c2\u00a0uses that it is uniquely well suited for, but one needs to be ready to compensate for its limitations as well, as with any imaging solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Silicon Imaging SI-2K is a single sensor CMOS camera that mimics 16mm film camera optics.\u00c2\u00a0 It uses a bayer pattern to derive RGB images from a single native 2048×1152 pixel sensor.\u00c2\u00a0 These images are transfered uncompressed over a Cat6 ethernet cable to an Intel based computer system, which compresses the image data\u00c2\u00a0using Cineform RAW […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}