Silicon Imaging SI-1920HDVR

The Camera That Defines Its Own Workflow

As image-quality requirements bump up against bandwidth-based reality, it’s more clear now than ever that when you select a camera you’re already starting to determine your optimal post-production process. Working in cooperation with the codec experts at CineForm (they’re the guys who first brought you HDV editing in Adobe Premiere Pro), Silicon Imaging has a new camera that defines your entire workflow from the moment you hit record. The camera itself uses a single 2/3-inch CMOS chip with a 12-bit A/D converter and has four hours of recording (to a hot-swappable 160 GB USB 2.0 notebook HDD) on board. What’s radically different here is that it records files using a 10-bit wavelet-based codec (running at 96 Mbps) from CineForm that maintains RAW Bayer data all the way through the render process — the color matrix is handled as metadata in the stream, so the codec won’t allow you to make any truly destructive color-space changes as you work. The camera records 1080p at 24, 25 and 30 fps, and 720p up to 72 fps. Lens options include PL-mounts as well as F- and C-mounts, and the camera head can even be detached and linked up to the rest of the system vie Gigabit Ethernet. Maybe the best part? It’ll be less than $20,000. Look for it as early as the third quarter.

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Click here to watch the video of the Silicon Imaging camera and the Cineform RAW workflow.