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Phantom cam shoots 1 million frames per second

Rob Beschizza at 7:24 am Tue, Aug 9, 2011

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Vision Research's Phantom v1610 shoots 1m fps, albeit at the rather low resolution of 128x16. At a more modern 1280x800, however, it still packs in 16,000 shots every second. A 10Gb ethernet link and other high-end connections will keep the data flowing; how many seconds of footage its 96GB of internal storage can hold is left as an exercise for the reader.

Phantom v1610 [Vision Research]

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  • jjesterb

    6?

  • alexmizell

    1280 * 800 = 1024000 pixels per frame
    102400 * 3 bytes (24 bit color) = 3072000 bytes per frame uncompressed color data
    3072000 * 16000 fps = 49152000000 bytes captured per second
    ((49152000000 / 1024) / 1024) / 1024) = 45.7763671875 GB/s
    96 GB / 45.7763671875 = 2.097152 seconds of storage with onboard memory

    • http://www.facebook.com/crispin.tobey Crispin Tobey

      thank you.

  • mccrum

    According to their site:  4.19 seconds at maximum frame rate, 12 bits, 1280×800 resolution and into maximum internal memory

    The one that caught my eye was this:
    Minimum frame rate of 100 fps

    So at the very least you’re shooting about 4 times faster than a standard movie camera (24 fps).  Psychedelic slow motion, man!

  • relawson

    holy crap, I just thought “man it would be great to be able to play with one of these” and then “hmm, i wonder if there are any places that rent high-speed cameras”

    http://www.highspeedimaging.com/index.cfm  is just a few miles from my house!

    I HEART THE INTERNETS!!!

    now to find more and see if any have the Phantom v1610!

  • kktkkr

    Using JPEG compression as a guide, I’d say 5 seconds. Supposing a 150GB per minute video compression, it will last half a minute. Using the 10Gbps as a limit, it’s probably one and a half minutes.
    But it probably costs a million bucks per minute, and I’m not going to sit here watching things move 250x slower for an hour.
    (1 million fps / 60 fps=16K times slower. Hopefully something really really interesting happens in those few seconds.)

    • Guest

      You don’t try to compress when you need to capture that fast. You just dump data to storage as fast as you can.

      And yes, really really interesting stuff does happen in those few seconds. Did you see the part where the 1MFPS FAST option is export controlled? One guess what kind of stuff we’re talking about.

  • http://twitter.com/jayrtfm Jay Kusnetz

    http://www.tomguilmette.com/archives/1986
    Locked in a Vegas Hotel Room with a Phantom Flex

  • http://www.facebook.com/theadamnix Adam Nix

    You just need $200,000 laying around to call one your own.

    • http://www.jjsaul.com Jim Saul

      While ungodly expensive, is it really in that range or is that a guess?

      For scientific work or professional work even that isn’t absurd.  Like movie cameras, I’d guess they are rented for specific productions.

      A high-end sports photographer might have that much $ hanging around her neck at an event.  A pro I was chatting with mentioned that in his line of work the camera body is considered an accessory to the lens, so he has one attached to each lens he carries and never changes them or cleans anything in the field.  He also said the best lenses he used were loaners from the client, since they might be $25k for the lens and it’s only useful in a narrow range of conditions.

      • http://www.facebook.com/theadamnix Adam Nix

        http://uncrate.com/stuff/phantom-hd-camera/ okay, so $118,000

  • technogeekagain

    Lots of fun. On the other hand, what I more often need is timelapse (of a volunteer project, for example).

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Tim-Quinn/528943941 Tim Quinn

    A friend of mine was experimenting with a fast camera a couple of years ago. He showed me a sequence of pedestrians on a commercial street. All the people were nearly still as the camera made a leisurely trip past them, but all the fluorescent lights in the windows were flashing !

  • chrisspurgeon

    I’m just sorry that it doesn’t make the type of noise that the film-based high speed cameras made. Those bastards could sound like a jet plane taking off as the film roared through them.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_D7E2DTYUFYR5NDOEWNLYQ2Z4VQ LorenP

    Paging Adam Savage….

  • smilr

    Lets see:

    128 x 16 =  2048 Pixels per frame
    2048 x 12 bits per pixel (from their website) = 24576 bits per frame
    24576 / 8 = 3072 Bytes per frame
    3072 x 1,000,000 frames a second = 3072000000 bytes a second
    307,200,000,000 / 1024 = 3,000,000 Kilobyetes per second
    3,000,000 / 1024 / 1024 = 2.861 GB per second
    96GB internal ram / 2.861 GB = 33.55 Seconds recording time at 1 million FPS

  • Donald Petersen

    “Okay, we’re on a bell.”
    Brrrrriiiiinnnngggg!!
    “Settle, everyone.  And… roll sound.”
    “Sound speed.”
    “Roll camera.”
    “Scene twelve baker, take one.”
    “And… actio–!”
    “Cut!”
    “Huh?”
    “Sorry, camera reloads.”

  • Guest

    Phantom kitten. 
    http://youtu.be/J1vpB6h3ek4

    • DavidPursel

      Yes!

  • futnuh

    At high frame rates, I can only guess at the ambient light required to get a decent exposure, probably enough to blind a human subject.

  • Dustin Kleckner

    Vision research has made cameras that do 1MFPS for a long time now, in fact they have an older model that does 1.4MFPS (http://www.visionresearch.com/Products/High-Speed-Cameras/Comparison/).

    That isn’t too say this thing isn’t awesome though; I’m using an older model at work and it’s amazing.  What’s actually more impressive here is the peak data rate of 16Gpx/s.

  • Piperbum

    What could you film with a vertical frame size of 16 pixels?

  • maarten vlot

    I was going to suggest this video as the all time most ultra awesome slow-mo video ever: http://vimeo.com/4366695?hd=1

    It appears I have been outkittened by monday2sday though. Kitten vs Saturn V – 1-0

  • Mark Rous

     I remember being on set for filming of the first season of Spartacus and being blown away by one of these things whenever they brought one out to film an action shot. And then I’d be blown away again by the size of the files it generated. I felt sorry for the post guys who had to paint out wires or wounds in hundreds of near identical frames.

  • http://www.facebook.com/itaki Michael McReynolds

    Film we made a few years ago with a slower Phantom camera. http://vimeo.com/23021171

    They were so new that they loaned one to us for free. It shot at 2000fps and only recorded for 6 seconds max. Then it took 30 minutes to transfer each take.

  • Eddie Perkins

    16,000 1280×800 shots in one second? Wow! Add auto exposure bracketing to this thing and just imagine the extra special HDR photo horrors that would be made.

  • http://www.mag.ma andrewbaron

    I scrolled all the comments but none showed 1 Millions frames per second in action (most are in the thousands). I found a good example of a video that demos 1million fps pretty well:
    http://mag.ma/m6i90a