[PD] Cameras and capture cards.

chris clepper cgclepper at gmail.com
Sat May 26 23:45:44 CEST 2007


Do you really need good color resolution for tracking?  I've tested a range
of industrial gear designed for tracking and all of it has poor color
handling compared to even $500 DV cams.  It seems that determining if a box
is out of place on the assembly line doesn't require knowing what color it
is.

PCI cards are the best capture method for latency and high resolution.
Professional ones from AJA and BlackMagic have 12-14 bit digitzers and SDI
for interfacing with gear up to Varicam and CineAlta level.  I use these
with lower cost HDV cameras at 1080i60 with good results.

How high of a framerate do you need?  720p60 and 1080p60 are 60 fps options
in the HD video field and there are digital film cameras that do 120fps
although those are still hard to come by (like the RED 'it's not vaporware
we promise' One). Specialized cameras that record to banks of high speed
memory can go thousands of frames per second although you cannot get frames
into a PC at that rate and they cost thousands per day to rent.

On 5/26/07, Jaime Oliver <jaime.oliver2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> I have to determine what cameras and capture cards are best for video
> tracking...
>
> Preferably, i would like them to work with as many platforms as
> possible (OSX, windows and Linux) and this are the constraints:
>
> capture cards: the least latency possible. I have tried some
> digitizers that used compressed firewire and they are too slow (too
> much latency). others like the turtle beach are uncompressed firewire
> and seem to be faster, however, so far cheap PCI cards seem to be
> faster for me, but the restriction there is that it has to use a slot
> in a computer and most are for windows only.
>
> Video Cameras: good color resolution, option to turn off auto-iris
> (and preferably more than 30 fps). I have tried a canon 3 ccd that
> gives good color resolution but only 30 fps. I also tried some CCTV
> cameras, but they have autoiris and bad color resolution (only
> composite video out). I briefly tried fire-i and they seemed to have
> low latency through their firewire out. I think you can hook them in
> series too which is also great unless latency increases.
>
> anyway, if anyone can share their experiences i would be very greatful,
>
> thanks in advance,
>
> Jaime
>
>
>
> --
> Jaime E Oliver LR
>
> joliver at ucsd.edu
> www.realidadvisual.org/jaimeoliver
> www-crca.ucsd.edu/
> www.realidadvisual.org
>
> 8693 Via Mallorca No. 19
> La Jolla, CA 92037
> USA
>
>
> --
> Jaime E Oliver LR
>
> joliver at ucsd.edu
> www.realidadvisual.org/jaimeoliver
> www-crca.ucsd.edu/
> www.realidadvisual.org
>
> 8693 Via Mallorca No. 19
> La Jolla, CA 92037
> USA
>
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