There's A Professional Grade Digital Cinema Camera Powered By Linux

[wizard69]

It isn’t trolling to acknowledge that this will cost far more than your Wallmart special. Actually this is a lot like building high end workstations often there isn’t enough business there to charge the customer what we would consider to be a reasonable price. The manufacture ends up having to tack on a big price tag just to recoup development costs and keep the company afloat. There is a real question of the companies ability to hit a price point where suitable volume exists and generates the profit needed for those first couple of tough years. I’d be surprised if they launch below $2000 for a functional system. That would be everything required less the lens.

By by the way I’m not trying to knock the product, in fact we need more accessible 4K capable hardware. On the other hand things like the NTFS support makes me wonder if they are for used on the right markets. This isn’t a RED competitor from what I can see, thus they need to focus on lower level media producers.


It it will be interesting to see how they market this camera. I’d love to see them make it past the first two years with an affordable camera and a follow up camera by the end of three years.

Would the camera system cost over $2,000? Being 5K, that's what I'm thinking...

And I've been asking the same thing about file systems other than NTFS. Well, it does make sense for keeping costs low for big movie studios...

But hey, if the camera runs Linux, maybe that's something I could pay for if I have deep pockets...

And no, I'm not trolling about the price. I'm trying to be realistic here.

[AndyChow]

Would the camera system cost over $2,000? Being 5K, that's what I'm thinking...

And I've been asking the same thing about file systems other than NTFS. Well, it does make sense for keeping costs low for big movie studios...

But hey, if the camera runs Linux, maybe that's something I could pay for if I have deep pockets...

And no, I'm not trolling about the price. I'm trying to be realistic here.

I'm thinking more like $15K. Basing the price close to a similar RED's cheapest option: https://www.red.com/DSMC2-BRAIN?quantity=1&sensor=4

[tildearrow]

Would the camera system cost over $2,000? Being 5K, that's what I'm thinking...

I think it'd be more than that, considering it uses open-source software.

[torsionbar28]

Would the camera system cost over $2,000? Being 5K, that's what I'm thinking...

Lol, $2k is prosumer terrirory. Heck you can barely buy a decent DSLR for $2k. This is studio equipment. Add another zero, and you're probably in the ballpark for the base unit without any lens, although with 5k resolution, I'm guessing the base unit is closer to $35k without lens.

[microcode]

Interesting tradeoff of a bit of dynamic range for a global shutter. I like global shutters.

[rabcor]

So... this is the camera uid313 mentioned a while ago.

In before anti-HEVC people come up... (no, I am not defending HEVC)

Sounds like a hell of a camera, also what's wrong with HEVC? it's a great codec...

The NTFS writing to SSDs and CF cards is a bit odd. Why not use a native FS? Or exfat, for compatibility with Windows and Mac folks? Hope they include an option to use native Linux FS’.

It would mostly make sense to use exfat here, has read/write support on linux/mac/windoze. It does however lack some advanced features (like say journaling) which it's not inconceivable they might want or need.

However the likeliest reason is that you need a license from microsoft to implement it in a product. A bit odd for a filesystem that's supposed to be portable and cross compatible lol. Now that I think of it, this is probably why Windows sucks ass when it comes to filesystem support, why it can't read things like ext for example. Because then everybody could just use that and forget about their outdated af fat32/exfat crap. (That's one mystery I never understood solved I guess)

Maybe they're applying for this license, or maybe they're trying to cut costs, it only needs to be readable after all to export files (I imagine) so NTFS does the trick, it's readable on linux, mac and windows. Only writeable (by default anyways) on windows though.

[HenryM]

Would the camera system cost over $2,000? Being 5K, that's what I'm thinking...

Very hard to guess on pricing. on the one hand, it's a modular body made in the UK and likely in low volume. on the other, it's a small thing based on widely available parts...

given that Canon's cheapest cine body is about $4700, and that only has a "super 35" sensor (comparable to APS-C/1.6x crop?) and their "full-frame" cinema camera is $40K+, the Octopus body with the big global-shutter sensor module could be over $40K, but it can just as well be a lot less.

However, Black Magic makes a 4/3 sensor camera for well under $2K, and their fancy super35 is $6K USD, so I can't really guess what the low end will be like with the 4/3 sensor module.

TLDR: ??????????

[peace]

How does it compare with https://www.apertus.org/?

[tildearrow]

Sounds like a hell of a camera, also what's wrong with HEVC? it's a great codec...

2 words. Patents/Licensing

[profoundWHALE]

How does it compare with https://www.apertus.org/?

Apertus is doing the whole thing open source. Their current implementation does not have a video decoder for instance, and instead, is done by a PC via USB3 or SDI Plugin. They also seem to be doing a FPGA design which may or may not be finalized with an ASIC.

The guys doing this other camera are using x86 intel to do the video side, and probably some other processing.