Brian's Brain

This blog post references my feature article 'Imaging Beyond Pixels: Enhancing The Elementary Picture' in EDN's March 15, 2007 edition.

The still-plus-video hybrid camera convergence has long been predicted but, until recently, the product attempts at addressing the perceived market demand fell well short of the mark. Why? Looking at the problem first from a video camera starting point, nearly all of the to-date consumer demand has been for standard-definition resolution (720x480 rectangular pixel) videocams, whose roughly 1/3 Mpixel sensors are woefully inadequate for still image capture tasks. In a 'chicken and egg' stalemate, video camera manufacturers haven't been willing to incrementally cost-burden their systems to add higher-resolution square-pixel sensors and memory card slots, solely for a still capture function whose market was immature. Without such higher-resolution sensors, the hybrid camera market remained immature. And it's impossible, even with the aid of exotic adaptive de-interlacing algorithms, to progressive scan-convert the product of an otherwise interlaced image capture pipeline without creating at least some degree of odd-versus-even field temporal 'tearing' artifacts visible around and within objects in motion.

Still camera suppliers, conversely, only recently gained access to advanced codecs (such as H.264 and Windows Media Video) that enabled reasonable-duration video recording to cost-effective flash memory capacities. Although still camera image sensors' resolutions are overkill for not only standard- but also high-definition (1920x1080 pixels max, or roughly 2 Mpixel) video capture, such sensors are usually not able to keep up with video's 30-60 fps capture rate expectations. And arguably, someone already comfortable with a film camera-like still digicam form factor will resist migrating to a hybrid device that looks more like a video camera. But without something new and compelling for consumers to purchase and upgrade to, the woeful digital camera market statistics mentioned in the main article will only further degrade.

Happily, the hybrid camera pieces are finally beginning to come together. CMOS sensors' parallel access attributes make them more amenable than CCDs for high frame rate video capture in addition to high-resolution still capture. Flash memory prices continue to freefall, while capacities shoot for the sky. Silicon and software support for H.264 and other MPEG-4 flavours is becoming particularly widespread. High-definition video optical disc archive contenders Blu-ray and HD DVD continue slugging it out in the press and in the marketplace, but both finally exist in user-writeable form, while archive to single- or dual-layer red laser DVD provides an interim bridge. And, whereas in the past the general rule of thumb suggested that folks only bought video cameras when they had a baby, and only used those video cameras for the first year or two of that child's life, services such as YouTube have dramatically increased consumer awareness and adoption of video. Multi-core CPUs thankfully also make video editing a relatively painless process.

My particular "a-ha" moment occurred in early February, when I opened up a Fry's Electronics ad and stared at Sanyo's flash memory-based Xacti VPC-HD1A, completed with a 10x optical zoom and capable of capturing 720p video clips and 5.1 Mpixel still images, being promoted for $488 (the company unveiled the upgraded VPC-HD2 shortly after January's CES). Canon's TX1 sells for roughly the same price, although it relies on motion JPEG as its video codec, whereas Sanyo's cameras employ more bit-efficient MPEG-4. And coming at the problem from a video-centric background, plenty of AVCHD and HDV camcorders also support Mpixel-plus still image capture, whether to supplemental flash memory cards or within their existing HDD, optical disk or tape media. With all that said, the jury's still out on the degree to which, and at what rate, hybrid cameras will obsolete standalone still and videocams going forward. For more perspective, check out the following opinions voiced during the research phase of the print article:

In 2007 you will see the introduction of affordable HD flashcorders, which are small pocket size camcorders which can record HD video and high-resolution stills to a SD flash card or internal NAND flash memory, for under $300. This is accomplished with highly integrated image processors.
– Saul Altabet, Senior Director of Marketing, NuCORE Technology

Although the idea of combining the image processing capabilities of a typical digital still camera and advanced video recording capabilities of your average video camcorders is an enticing one, the ‘hybrid’ category has not grown as fast as one might expect, mainly due to the large gap between the video quality consumers have come to expect from their camcorders and what digital cameras have been able to offer.However, as flash memory technology squeezes larger and larger storage capabilities into the continually shrinking camera form-factor, and as advanced video compression silicon technologies....enable higher efficiency storage, the category of ‘hybrid’ camera is starting to grow some legs.The inclusion of standard-definition and high-definition video recording capability with recording times of 30 to 90 minutes are helping close the gap in the video capabilities of the ‘hybrid’ DSC and a video camcorder.
-Kourosh Amari, Vice President of Marketing, Qpixel Technology

See my PMA photo gallery for tangible examples of the hybrid camera trend.

Continue reading with 'Form-Factor Transformations: What About The Camera Phone?'....