Apertus, the Open Source HD Movie Camera

osliving writes "This article takes a tour of the hardware and software behind the innovative Apertus, a real world open source project. Led by Oscar Spierenburg and a team of international developers, the project aims to produce 'an affordable community driven free software and open hardware cinematic HD camera for a professional production environment'."

Open hardware?

[toastar]

Is open hardware really that big a problem? It's not like opening a Fab is cheap.

Good luck with that...

[Eggplant62]

Didn't I read someplace that MPAA, in collusion with camera equipment manufacturers and the camera operators' unions, is looking to place patents on these devices so as to preclude competition?

Re:Open hardware?

[V!NCENT]

Now that there is Ogg, WebM, HTML5 video, the 'Ubuntu' video editor for Gnome and the Kdenlive video editor for KDE4, all HD camera's are still recording to h.264 by default.

This is a huge problem for free software because it not only involves patents when dealing with h.264, but also a license.

Now you might think: *yeah well license... bla bla bla bla bla. Free software doesn't concern me.* But if you knew what kind of a threat this poses not only to free software, but also to you; you'd be very, _VERY_ concerned. (unless you wouldn't mind George Orwell scenarios, but in any case you asked what the problem was...)

You see the license you get with your camera, even expensive proffesional camera's, basically sais; all your base are belong to Mpeg-LA, even when converted to another format. This sucks, but oh well you can alsways buy a different camera because capitalism rules! But in this case it doesn't; try finding HD camera's that do not shoot in h.264 first.

For more info Google is at your service ;)

Is it just me?

[bracher]

Or is this really the Elphel opensource/openhardware camera, and how Apertus hopes to add things around the edges. The camera is Elphel, as is the sensor and the software. The only thing that seems to be community-designed/built is the "rod" packaging, and maybe the battery rig.

Re:I don't see much of an advantage...

[Taxman415a]

Well the not being hemmed in by the MPEG-LA's patent trolling would be one big advantage. "It's a shame your film has made some money or become famous, let's talk about damages."

Being limited to the C or CS lenses seems like a pretty big thing when the 5D has a large range of interchangeable lenses, and apparently the Red One can use Nikon and Canon lenses with adapters and even have full electronic control of them. The people developing the Magic Lantern firmware [wikia.com] seem to be a fan of the 5D's larger sensor compared to the Red One, etc to the point where they are reverse engineering the camera to add some cinematic improvements to its firmware. That's pretty hard core.

Re:Open hardware?

[cgenman]

MPEG-LA basically claims certain financial rights over your project in exchange for the right to use the h.264 codec. This means that if you shoot a scene in h.264, but switch to something else to release on the web, they still have rights over you. If a contractor shoots in h.264 but sends you the video in a different format, they still claim rights over you. As far as I know, pretty much all HD cameras shoot in h.264.

Some of this is definitely winnable in court, some isn't. But if you're an independent filmmaker, you don't have the money to go against one of the biggest legal groups in filmmaking.

So yes, this particular situation is a bit Orwellian.

Re:Is it just me?

[Abu Hurayrah]

The homepage for the Apertus project is cinema.elphel.com [elphel.com].