Direct digital video extraction

January 12, 2007 8:39 AM

I need to purchase a digital video camera for research into compression algorithms. The professor would like to extract the raw video stream from the camera, before it goes through any post-processing. The budget is thousands, not tens of thousands. Any suggestions?

Ideally there would be a data stream directly from the CCD to the output. If that's not possible, he'd like a camera that exports in as many formats as possible.

posted by donpardo to technology (7 comments total)

You might try searching for something like "industrial 1394 camera"

In a minute or two found a VGA res camera with lens that looks like it'll put out uncompressed video for under $500.
posted by Good Brain at 9:12 AM on January 12, 2007

Oh, an then there is "This page summarize the uncompressed-video cameras available with IEEE1394 interfaces"
posted by Good Brain at 9:14 AM on January 12, 2007 [2 favorites]

Thanks, GB. That list looks like what I need.
posted by donpardo at 9:26 AM on January 12, 2007

If you want raw CCD output, you can get that too. Google for things like "CCD Video" "Scientific Camera" "Scientific imaging" etc.

Depending on the work you are doing, it may be useful to have a $500 consumer digicam with firewire out as a reference device.
posted by b1tr0t at 9:36 AM on January 12, 2007

(camcorder, not digicam)
posted by b1tr0t at 9:36 AM on January 12, 2007

You can get bare CCDs from vendors like Digi-Key, if you want really really raw data. Won't most cheap cameras hand you a fairly unprocessed stream, though?
posted by Myself at 4:17 PM on January 12, 2007

Blackmagic Design--the company that makes the venerable and ubiquitous Decklink line of professional video capture cards--just released a product called Intensity, which is a $249 card that is able to capture uncompressed, high-definition video straight off the CCD of any HDV camera that has an HDMI output. This bypasses the camera's internal compression of the video stream before it hits the tape or Firewire port.
posted by melorama at 4:20 AM on January 13, 2007