Pi4B, HQ camera, no hdmi on full res

This is driving me scatty…

Anyone here using a HQ cam and python ?.

Everything ok until I try to get full res from the camera, hdmi shows “no connection” and I have to break out of the software. However recorded file is full res…

Problems occur when I set camera to 4056x2500(ish) or higher so cannot achieve the full 4056x3040.

Works ok on raspistill but I need to control capture using remote trigger.

Pi fully up to date, tried second monitor, hw cam, pi and cables…

Any thoughts ?

Hi @patcooper. There are a few threads dealing with the RPi HQ cam on the forum. Here’s a good starting place:

Form there I would recommend searching for terms like “raw + hq” in the search bar. Hope you find what you’re looking for!

Thanks, I did have a look at all HQ references before posting but not sure anyone else has had this issue. Even this years pi annual uses the same code for a stop motion project and recommends setting the cam to max res !. Very frustrating, I wonder if they actually tried it.

I cant believe it is a bug. If there is some kind soul on this forum that has a HQ cam and would be willing to try basic capture in Python I would be eternally grateful !!

ok, I tried it…

And: it works within the picamera environment, I am getting 4046 x 3040 px, with a frame rate of 5.5 fps.

However… - I do not display the images via the HDMI-port of the Raspi, instead I am streaming them for display and storage to a WIN10-client. That is, by the way, the usual approach for film scanners based on Raspberry Pi hardware.

In my experiment, the Raspi is pumping between 70 - 80 Mbit/s over the LAN. You might want to look at @dgalland’s approach, he’s hosting his code at github and entertains also a google-group were you might find help. There are other people who released their source code on the internet as well, you might want to try out their code.

Now, the Raspberry Pi foundation’s camera forum might actually be a better place to ask for support in this regard. If you do so, make sure you are also a little bit more specific when asking your questions, like what kind of software you are using, what your setup is (like how many GPU-memory you are allocating etc) and what the error messages are. Otherwise one can only guess what the problem is.

My wild guess is that your problem might have something to do with the huge frame size you are requesting and possibly insufficient buffer (graphic memory) allocated for that size. If you force in addition the Pi to output a full desktop to your screen (which I think you do), something might not have enough memory space to survive. But I am no Raspi hardware expert, so I am just guessing.

By the way: ask yourself whether you really need such a huge resolution. Certainly such a resolution is an absolute overkill if you are working with Super-8 or similar small formats.

Anyway, operating the HQ camera with the picamera-library at 4046 x 3040 px is possible.

Many thanks for your reply, much appreciated.

I am currently scanning super 8 so agree that full res is not needed but I want to try other things in the future and need to establish what is possible. For info I have gpu set to 512 and there are no error messages, both pi’s are fully up to date, good power supply, changed cables, monitors, camera. I have posted the issue on pi forum.

Cheers.

Curious. I wonder . . . could this be a HDCP issue ?

Good question but just tried basic raspistill command. Preview works and the resulting file is full res. I don’t know enough about the pi hardware but would assume using hdmi in raspistill is the same as python. The first monitor fell over at full res by displaying a wide band of interference horizontally with the preview underneath. I would liken this to signals that are trying to sync but not getting there. I had to buy another monitor as the picture was dire and this one just displays no signal. I know I can call raspistill from python but this is way too slow for cine capture.

Yesterday I stumbled on an Arducam adaptor for the pi hq camera that converts it to a usb cam. Up to 10 fps at full res. Adaptor arrives tomorrow so I will try this with a few webcam programmes to see how it performs. Not seen one yet that will take an external trigger but I can program an arduino leonardo as a keyboard simulator for any trigger key.

One benefit of the webcam approach (if it works) is getting simple to picture controls such as brightness white balance etc.

Small steps !

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