What is it?#

Cinemate is a boilerplate cinema camera system for Raspberry Pi 4 or 5 building on CinePi‑RAW recorder by Csaba Nagy for enabling 12 bit (or even 16 bit) Cinema DNG recordings using off-the-shelf components.

Cinemate provides a minimal starting point that you can extend with your own controls and accessories.

The project combines a Python UI with a custom fork of cinepi-raw.

Camera stack exploded

Figure 1: Camera stack exploded view. Apps change settings by updating Redis keys. CinePi-RAW listens for those updates and captures frames accordingly while Cinemate provides the camera user interface.

New features in version 3.3.1#

CinePi-RAW recorder updates:

  • new Cinemate fork, reducing CPU load and temperature dramatically and reducing dropped frames

  • resolution can now be changed without restarting the recorder process, enabling faster mode changes and dynamic resolution switching

  • better USB microphone sync

Cinemate workflow updates:

  • exFAT support and filesystem-aware storage profiles for efficient media writes, including IMX585 25 fps at 4K to SSD without frame drops

  • dynamic resolution switching to match the observed sustainable frame rate for the attached sensor and storage media; for example, IMX585 automatically switches to HD above 25 fps when SSD is used for storage

  • hot-swapping between 16-bit and 24-bit USB microphones

  • 4K-class recording modes are visible by default

  • automatic storage pre-roll can be disabled in settings.json

Installation#

See the releases section for preinstalled image file and Quick Start Guide.

For a repo-root one-click install or a manual install of the camera stack on Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Bookworm), see the installation guide. The one-click installer defaults to IMX477 on cam0; override it inline for other sensors:

SENSOR_MODEL=imx296 CAM_PORT=cam0 ./cinemate-install.sh
SENSOR_MODEL=imx283 CAM_PORT=cam0 ./cinemate-install.sh
SENSOR_MODEL=imx585 CAM_PORT=cam0 ./cinemate-install.sh

Compatible sensors#

  • IMX477 (official Raspberry Pi HQ camera)
  • IMX296 (official Raspberry Pi GS camera)
  • IMX283 (OneInchEye by Will Whang)
  • IMX585 (Starlight Eye by Will Whang)

Preinstalled hardware#

Customization#

GPIO buttons and switches, rotary encoders and oled display are optional and configured via the settings file. On the Pi, type editsettings in the terminal to open this file.

Join the CinePi Discord for discussions and sharing builds.

Supporting the project#

ko-fi