On Sat, Feb 25, 2006 at 01:38:31PM -0800, Godfrey DiGiorgi wrote: > On Feb 25, 2006, at 1:16 PM, Joseph Tainter wrote: > > >"I don't expect compression; it might save a few MB (based > >on estimates with compressed DNGs), but I'm not sure there > >is enough processing power available in-camera for this." > > > >Why not? The DS and DL are able to compress RAW files. > > The DS/DL/et al are not actually doing compression, they're just > writing an array of 12bit values as 12bits-packed rather than 12bit > in 16bits cells, the simpler implementation. The reduction in total > file size demonstrates this. > > That said, since these cameras can do JPEG compression, I'm sure > there's enough processing power to do lossless RAW data compression > through a variety of algorithms. It's really a matter more of > buffers, speed, etc.
I'd guess that the JPEG compression is done with dedicated silicon, rather than general-purpose hardware and firmware. I could be wrong, in which case I'd agree with you that there's more than enough power there to implement a simple data compression scheme. In fact that might even result in a higher RAW frame rate - what you lose in the compression time may well be more than paid back in the reduction in I/O time for the smaller file size.
