3-Axis Internal Motion Sensor and GPS lat/long data used for?

[Kevin Ikeda]

I apologize if this has already been addressed but i was reading through the scarlet specs posted and something caught my eye.

"3-Axis Internal Motion Sensor and GPS lat/long data"

My guess was that this information is used in VFX camera matching for CGI compositing. However it is my understanding that GPS tracking is only accurate to within 15-30 feet, which is fine for cars but not fine if your trying to camera match. The only other option i can think of is for geo tagging (although 3-axis motion sensors would be useless for this) and geotagging seems pretty pointless anyway.

Anyone hear anything about this?

-kevin

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

At a minimum Geotagging and shot orientation for stills rotation.

 

[Andrew Gentle]

Good question. I'm not sure if the accelerometer will be precise enough to use it for capturing the camera's movement. The ones in the iPhone wouldn't be but HP have developed one which is '100 times more sensitive' so maybe if they're bleeding edge the data might be useful for that. Other than that, they could just be used for levelling the camera.

 

[jbeale]

could be used for accurate time...

could be used for accurate time...

There was a thread here where this was discussed at some length, without really reaching any conclusions. At the least, you could get accurate time. Even good for frame sync, if implemented correctly.

Funny footnote: I have a Sony consumer camcorder which has GPS, and it can set the internal clock- but it is about 1.5 seconds slow. The firmware authors could have, but did not bother to fix this. (GPS clocks must be within 1 microsecond to get within 300 meter accuracy, but you have to write your camera firmware very carefully if you want to transfer time signals without loosing precision.)

 

[Richard Tretowski]

When I first read that the camera will have an internal motion sensor I thought to myself 'Neat, they can use the sensor to compensate for rolling shutter' based on movement/spin velocity...

No matter how good any camera is and regardless of cost, as long as it has some level of rolling, someone out there will capture some footage by panning excessively in a way that a proper movie/video producer would NEVER ever really do and then complain about it..

I could see such information being useful by the military/aerospace industries as well - using RED Scarlet's mounted on rockets, experimental planes etc. Not only will they capture vision with amazing quality, but they would have a reference of the 'craft/item' movement/position/rotation in space etc.

I'm sure there are many uses we haven't even begun to consider and its possible the Red Team have a few ideas already that will be revealed in due time ...