Mokara

What rock were you living under for the last two years? lol.

Encoding is done by a dedicate block in the CPU, and that is pretty much carried over through different generations of processors with some tweaks along the way, such as upping frame rate or bit rate slightly. The increase in processing power primarily affects other operations. That is why you see similar video IQ from cameras across generations. Because it is still bound by the limitations of the block design, primarily heat generation, they likely have to make a lot of compromises that you don't need to make in post (basically dumping information in the name of thermal efficiency). That is why you get better IQ with ML RAW and processing it in post. It is not the processing power of the camera's CPU that is important, it is the GPU inside, and you can get an indication of what that is from the video specs of individual products. The Digic 8 may have a 4K hardware encoder in it, but the 1080p block is likely the same or very similar to those on earlier processors and consequently will have the similar limitations. Btw, Digic 7 (which is the stills version of the DV5 inside the XC10) actually has a more capable 4K variant in it, but it just cant be used in conventional cameras because of the amount of heat it generates. 4K in Digic 8 is a crippled version of the block in Digic 7 so as to allow it to operate within the thermal envelope of typical stills cameras. To shoot hardware encoded 4K with a 7/DV5 you need a cooling solution, such as a fan, which is not practical in stills/hybrid cameras. Hence no hardware 4K in Canon consumer products, outside of MJPEG (which uses the processor for encoding rather than the GPU). Other manufacturers can get away with proper 4K hardware encoding and high bit rate FHD because their processors are much more thermally efficient than the Digic processors used by Canon. This is the basic challenge Canon faces in bringing to us the sorts of video products we want. I know a lot of people go on about Canon doing this on purpose as deliberate market segmentation, but they are wrong. Canon does it because that is the only option available to them with the processor technology they have.

You are forgetting that individual pixels have a particular color, so information is lost during debeyering. To counter that you need more than 1920 lines of recorded information to reconstitute true 1920p (something like 2700p). The basic problem is that the processors in older Canon cameras don't have the bandwidth to handle the amount of information necessary to reconstitute true 1920p, that is why they make those compromises, and it is the reason why Canon cameras generally produce softer images. Having a wider sensor will not change that.

I tried a self distributing DVD before. I left it on my desk, but the thing stubbornly refused to distribute itself

If you add more drives be careful about which ones you choose. Modern Western digital drives have a very annoying feature called wear leveling technology which is supposed to reduce failure rate but produces a fairly loud click every 5 seconds. It just kills a silent system. I had a couple of WD gold drives in my main case, but had to swap them out for some older reds from my server (which is kept in a closet, so I don't hear noise from it). None of the reds in my server or in the second computer (which has a sizeable drive array in it as well) do this. Apparently the gold drives have this technology and the newer reds, but not the older ones. I have seen reports of new black drives doing it as well, so it is possible that all WD drives made in the last 1-2 years do it, not just the ones intended for enterprise use, so be careful if that is going to be an issue for you. For more info read the comments on western digitals support forums.

When people go to see horror movies they like to see monsters being monsters knowing that it is fantasy, but what they really don't like is to be reminded that there are real monsters that look like us and walk among us.

There is processing going on as well. If that is done on the fly then it will bottleneck the data stream resulting in being spread out over the entire frame rather than coming all at once. Improvements you see in RS for a particular sensor come from reducing that processing overhead, either through using faster processors or by rewriting the code to make it more efficient. The overall time you require for any particular pixel is acquisition time (your "exposure" time) + read time + processing time. Processing time is the variable here that will affect the RS you get out of any particular system. In a high frame rate capable sensor we know that the read time has to be pretty minimal, but the processing time will bottleneck the other activities going on with the sensor and limit the rate at which you can use the data coming off it.

If HDMI output is pre-compression (as is the case for most modern cameras) then whatever the internal recording bit rate is does not matter. HDMI will output the color space the camera shoots in though, such as debeyering options selected, 4:2:2 or 4:2:0, 8 bits or 10 bits etc. That sort of stuff is usually done by the sensor interface processor, which is where the HDMI feed comes from. Compression is done later by the main processor if you are doing internal recording. The general data flow is sensor to interface processor; interface processor to HDMI AND/OR main processor; HDMI to external display/storage device OR processor to internal card.

Sensors can run in spec at whatever their fastest frame rate is otherwise it would not be part of their spec. Heat generation in a sensor (or any memory for that matter) does not come so much from reading the sensor, it comes from write operations, which are going to be fairly constant irrespective of what the sensor is being used for. Even if you are only using portions of the sensor for your image, the entire sensor is being written to constantly, and it has to be capable of sustaining the highest operation frame rate in order to do that. Overheating in cameras is processor overheating, not sensor overheating.

Light is not a uniform color. Unless in direct light, everything you see is lit by reflected light, and that light will take on whatever hue it is reflecting from. Seeing changes in white balance is normal if you are changing scenes and lighting conditions.

60p can't be worse than 16.7ms, otherwise it is not 60p. Likewise, 240p, 120p, 30p and 24p can't be worse than 4.2 ms, 8.3 ms, 33.3 ms and 41.7 ms respectively. Rolling shutter for any particular sensor can't be worse than the refresh rate for its highest frequency full sensor read.

It is not that limited of a market. The area of personal surveillance/security/logging is a going to be a growth area in the imaging market over the next decade. You are going to find small imagers in everything. The problems they face are largely due to management and the company's lack of secondary activities to leverage technology development (such as processors). If one of the leading camera companies could somehow get GoPro's market share, they would make a profit without question. GoPro's problems are of their own making, it is not due to the industry sector itself.

The financial state of a company does not necessarily reflect the economics of the market they are in. GoPro may simply be spending too much and be too inefficient at manufacturing. That does not mean that some other company with more experience at making cameras and having other products with which to leverage R&D would not be able to be profitable selling these sorts of cameras. If GoPro have a dominant position in the market, and can't make money, it is likely due to management more than anything else.

Sony have their foot in the door first so to speak. Both Canon and Nikon are probably going to come up with a new mount with some sort of adapter for legacy lenses. When that happens, people upgrading are not necessarily going to be bound by their lenses. We are moving to a world that is more agnostic when it comes to lens/body selection. I think the next few years are going to be an uncertain time for Canikon. MILC technology is going to surpass DSLR tech in terms of power and capability and what happens in their future is going to depend on how they handle that transition. I think that if they had done it earlier, say starting around 2012 or so, they would be in much less of a bind than they are now. By being conservative they have opened the door for a major competitor who got in first and now has industry leading technology at affordable prices. Rather than Sony being measured against Canon or Nikon, the reverse is going to happen. As a result the transition is going to be much more problematic for them than it otherwise should have been.

The likelihood of an adapter failing is of the same order of magnitude as a lens/camera mount failing on a camera which never sees a lens switch, which is to say very unlikely. If you were using old lenses only you would never need to remove it from the camera. I am talking about properly designed adapters here, not a rough tube from some third world manufacturer. Really? That is a throwback to the 80s, lol. My old Minolta from the 70s had a system like that. It is time they got rid of that, it will create a LOT of compatibility issues going into the future. I have never used a Nikon SLR, so I assumed they had modern lenses but apparently that is not the case. That is even more reason to update the mount, that lever is a major design weakness IMO. I think in that case there is likely no question that there will be a new mount for MILCs then, along with new lenses. They will probably make a modular adapter that has the motor for the lever for people who want to use old glass, but every new lens developed subsequently would be made for the MILC mount only.

You get edge to edge coverage with MILCs, along for far more AF points. As processors continue to improve, they will be able to handle more and more focussing points. It is just a matter of time, there is a limit to what you can do with OVF based focussing, whereas in principle you could use the entire sensor in MILCs. 10 years from now there will be no DSLRs. MILCs will do everything better and cost less to make.

They will probably use an adapter. Native MILC lenses with a mount designed for those systems will allow them more flexibility in lens design, so not doing that would be short sighted IMO. Why would you need motors in the adapter when aperture is done by the lens in the first place? All it would be is a tube with pass through electrical connections to compensate for the loss of the mirror box, it would be very simple.

Higher end cameras have a lot more processing power than an XC10, so that would reflect in any sort of image processing that goes on. Beyond that, the sensor on the XC10 is physically different from that used on Canon's Cxxx cameras, and that physical different WILL have an effect on the image. Unless the cameras are using the same physical sensor and have the same processing capabilities and have the same front end interface chips, they are not going to produce the same image. They may look similar, but they will not be the same. GoPros are intended to be mounted on small objects to provide a POV of what that object experiences. I would like to see a cyclist or hanglider pilot with a XC10 attached to his helmet. Companies like Canon don't go around filing patents because they think they are going to get royalties, they do it specifically to protect their actual products and to make life difficult for anyone who might think about competing. Other camera tech companies are doing the same, and probably most of them have some sort of cross licensing going on, or at least "understandings" in place so they can operate. You wonder why some companies only seem to be serious about DSLRs while others focus on MILCs? There is a reason for that. It relates to freedom to operate, what you can do and when you can do it without legal consequences.

Well, it has a smaller and different sensor, with reduced processor capability, so there is no way that it is "indistinguishable from the footage from larger cameras". Pretty unlikely that it is being used as a "GoPro alternative". Selling "more than they were anticipating" means nothing, everyone says that about their products. If you were expecting to sell 1000 and sold 2000 instead, you would be wildly exceeding your expectations but still only selling trivial amounts. Something like the XC10 is essentially a different form factor of existing camcorders of the more traditional type, such as the XA series. It replaces them to some extent, and cannibalizes the market that exists for that sort of camera since the XA and older XF don't have 4K. I expect that with the 4K versions of the XA (XF405 and related cameras) coming out, XC sales will drop since it's form factor is not ideal for the application those cameras generally service. As far as Canon are concerned, for video shooting their products are going to fall out as (1) Cxxx cameras for tripod based shooting; (2) XF405 and related cameras for professional R&G/event applications; and (3) general purpose MILCs (when they finally arrive) for consumers. Oddballs like the XC cameras are going to disappear since they will no longer be necessary. XC cameras were originally marketed as "hybrids" for people such as news crews, but when real hybrids arrive, what would be the point of having something like the XC? It was just a stopgap measure to plug a gaping hole in Canon's competitive lineup, but in a year or two that hole will mostly be gone. Why would anyone need an XC after that?

You don't understand why companies patent stuff. It is not only to protect a product, most of it is to make it difficult for other people to compete with you. You lay down a minefield, and if there are enough mines then it becomes difficult for them to make a product that is competitive with yours. That is why companies like Canon or Apple file thousands of patents every year. It is not so they can include that stuff in products, it is to make it hard for OTHER people to make competing products. I do this for a living. I am just telling you how it works, take it or leave it *shrug*.

Most patents filed are defensive in nature. The point being to claim all sorts of things surrounding your actual product so as to create an IP minefield that would inhibit people who might want to compete with you. Almost all patents issued are never used for in any product specifically.

It all relates to the mounting mechanism however. The rest is just boilerplate and examples of how the mounting mechanism could be applied. Don't go by the title or abstract, those are usually very misleading when it comes to patents. It is normal practice to throw everything including the kitchen sink into the boilerplate to cover any conceivable application of what is being claimed. The only thing that counts is what is actually in the claims. Part of getting a patent involves reducing something to practice, and for that you need examples where whatever you are claiming is used, so to the untrained eye it might seem that the patent is covering a whole lot of things when it actually is not. It does not mean that any of it outside of the mounting mechanism would actually be used in a real product, or that a real product would look anything like the example the provided in the specification.

Those are Samsung designed cameras however, they are the same, that is why people can't tell the difference. Samsung uses Sony as a third party manufacturer, in much the same way that Apple uses Foxconn. Sony makes some of them because Samsung does not have the burst manufacturing capacity to produce enough on a product release. It is cheaper and more efficient to use some third party manufacturer to produce the extra needed with otherwise non-utilized production capacity.

Patent refers to the mounting mechanism, not the body itself. They just used the XC body as an example because they have to use something. The camera that uses the mount (if it is ever made) most likely would have a different body.

The acquisition format would absolutely affect the results of an A/B test. If something was shot at HD or FHD resolution to start with, putting it out as a 4K version would not really change the overall appearance. It would still be limited by the original resolution.