Rasberry Pi 4

[Jacob Folkerts]

Hello. I am looking into processing 64 rolls of Super 8 and Standard 8 and was wondering if this script would not only work on the Pi 4 but how much faster it would be. Would the extra RAM help? Would it be possible to capture in other better formats such as RAW or PNG or TIFF?

[Dominique Galland]

Hello Jacob,

For this application (multithreaded) the bottleneck is not the CPU nor the memory, for that the PI4 will bring nothing more than the PI3.

The main bottleneck is the duration of capture of an image by the camera and sometimes the network when transferring to the PC if it is not very fast.

For the network the PI4 that seems to have an Ethernet controller separate from the USB will certainly be a little better.
Yes we can capture in different formats (see the documentation of Picamera), JPG, PNG, RGB (uncompresed) or even directly Bayer sensor data without any processing of the GPU but there will be no significant difference in quality with the capture in JPG.

Dominique

[Nathan Miller]

I have an RPi 4 and I've tried getting the server going on it but have not been successful. It gives me errors about the camera port already being in use. Need to mess with it some more, but I suspect that what Dominique said is very true. The biggest chunks of time, at least in my setup, are the actual image captures and the motor advance, both of which will not be helped by the RPi 4. But still, even a 10% increase in speed would equate to several hours of time with the amount of film I have. I've been capturing off and on for 3 years now and still have dozens of rolls left.

[Jacob Folkerts]

That's unfortunate. What camera are you using?

[Nathan Miller]

5mp Arducam with M12 mount.

[Jacob Folkerts]

Does the camera capture correctly through the command line with commands like:

raspistill -o cam.jpg

[Dominique Galland]

it seems that the most delicate question is the choice of camera and lens:

- V1 or V2?

- Stock lens with an additional lens or custom M2 or CS mount lens t?

It seems that with a custom lens we have a lens shading problem.

In my application I use the V2 with a 35mm lens, I perform a calibration, the result is correct except for some images those with a yellow color.

It seems that with the V1 this phenomenon is less accentuated, the V1 is probably a better choice?

@Nathan

Ccan you be more specific 

You use the V1 but  with what lens ?

Did you experience a lens shading problem

Dominique

[Nathan Miller]

Jacob,

Yes, that command works and interestingly it cleared the port from being used and allows the rpifilm client to preview for a few seconds before it stops working with the same "port taken" error. I apologize, I've already moved on to another project with the Pi 4 and returned my telecine to the RPi 3 config. I'll try to get back to troubleshooting it someday.

Dominique,

I believe the choice of camera and lens is irrelevant to this error. It's on the raspberry pi side and I'm guessing it's something simple like an unrelated process running that's calling the camera. Or could be a difference in the linux and Python versions running on the Pi 4 vs. the 3. The Pi 4 is a vastly different piece of hardware than the 3.

--Nathan

[Dominique Galland]

Nathan,

Sorry may be the wrong post, I was not talking about this error.
I was interested in your choices, thoughts and experiences on the choice of camera and lens

Dominique