TL;DR: What setup would enable a Laptop or ARM based mobile system to access high res video images in realtime?
For computer vision development, I need to acquire feasable high resolution video images.
However, it seems the capturing technology has not developed well the last ages.
The most convenient way is to use USB webcameras. However, there seem no single product which will exploit USB 3.0 capabilties. Stuck to USB 2.0, most devices are unable to deliver high quality video at a reasonable frame rate. The best ones do deliver 1920 x 1080 images, but as those cannot be transferred by USB 2.0 uncompressed, to obtain a feasable framerate the camera has to use H.264 encoding, thus usually adding a vast latency (encoding over multiple frames, decoding on the PC side) and low picture quality (compression artifacts). Also there are almost no devices with reasonable large sensors or optics. In addition, most webcameras don't deliver constant frame rates, but the rate changes by jitter, light conditions and so on.
The fastest solution is to use an IEE1394 interface and connect a DV device. That gives low compressed DV frames, that can be decompressed quite fast. Such cameras also provide good optics, quite low latency and a totally stable frame rate. They are however, by design, stucked at 720 x 576 pixel interlaced frames.
A modern solution seems to use a DSLR camera with realtime data link. However, I do not know any camera capable of providing a USB 3.0 link nor uncompressed images. Some cameras do however provide a realtime HDMI output. This may be combined with a HDMI frame grabber, but I do not found any product delivering uncompressed images to small PC interaces like USB 3.0.
What setup would enable a Laptop or ARM based mobile system to access high res video images in realtime?
