The images created for Zodiac left the Thomson Viper camera by means of a realtime dual HD SDI connection. The is the only time in datalab that a realtime technology was used. (except for the various playback scenarios of course.) Datalab, llc tries to avoid realtime operations. They generally involve expensive equipment whose performance is locked. Realtime operations are not as easily scriptable and are rarely open source. Integrating them into a bigger automated workflow can be counterintuitive. Many operations in the processing domain have already crossed into faster than realtime, upending the price-performance ratio of dedicated real-time equipment. ALso, processing operations scale much more efficiently than real time operations.
