4:4:4 12-bit Uncompressed DVX100

John Cabrera · April 25th, 2004, 09:40 PM

I stand corrected. Mostly, though, I was referring to Juan's question of whether you could even open 4:4:4 12bit tifs in Vegas and whether it was resolution independent and could handle odd resolutions like the images he's pulling off the CCDs. But I guess "perfectly" is a bit of an overstatement. I do love my Vegas though!

That's really exciting about the Vegas 5 developments. I'll be sure to stay posted on that.

John

Juan P. Pertierra · April 25th, 2004, 10:34 PM

Ok, so i dropped my last raw frame into FCP. I rendered it with compression set to 'none'. The output looks extremely close to the original image, but there's something about it...the noise speckles don't look quite as strong now. I'm not sure if it's a difference in the pixel aspect ratio of the viewer vs photoshop, or if some decimation occurred. I can't really say any latitude was lost....

Anyone have an idea of how to test for this, other than looking at it? <g> Maybe if I make a 1 frame long video? The sizes should be approx the same..? Apple is so unclear as to how the data is dealt with.

Juan

Juan P. Pertierra · April 25th, 2004, 10:38 PM

Bah. Now that i look at it, the speckles look 'doubled'....like in the original image hey are a single pixel, but on the rendered 'uncompressed' video they occupy two side-by-side pixels and look averaged....looks like 4:2:2 to me.

Has anyone done film editing on FCP or another program? Maybe we can use the DV footage as editing footage, and create an EDL for the raw frames?

Robert Martens · April 25th, 2004, 11:35 PM

Even though I own a copy of combustion, I'm no film editor, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but according to the manual, combustion works with and renders up to thirty two bits per channel, and has the ability to work with Look Up Tables, which allow one to handle film footage--and, presumably, 12 bit video--without a display that can actually show the stuff properly.

That, coupled with the new "edit" operator in version 3 and sub-thousand dollar price point (more like eight hundred, depending on where you shop), makes combustion seem like a potential client for this project...right? Are there considerations I'm not, you know, considering?

Gotta read that manual some more...

Juan P. Pertierra · April 25th, 2004, 11:40 PM

Well, i'm actually not sure now that the problem is decimation...if i open the raw frame in photoshop i can see it fine, but when i drop it in FCP. it automatically does some correction such that the image is nearly square..

i know, i know about the NTSC pixel ratio but that's not it(afaik). I set the sequence to the exact frame size, 773x495 and ~square~ pixels, but for some reason it has black bars on the sides and it compresses the image horizontally.

Anyone have a similar problem with premiere, vegas, etc?

Mattia Visintini · April 26th, 2004, 01:07 AM

Juan, instead of working with the "uncompressed 10bit" sequence preset, I found out that it is possible to create new presets using any of the codecs supported by quicktime. If you go and look at the options available in the compression settings, you can see the the uncompressed 10bit video codecs are actually labeled as "uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2"... so that clears one point.
I tried setting a sequence to use the TIFF codec and frame size 773x495 square (with TIFF all the rendering occurs in the RGB space, check out the video precessing tab!), and then imported your frame..... and the result was perfect! no black bars and it was identincal to the one in photoshop.
hope i helped in some way......

Thomas Smet · April 26th, 2004, 02:54 PM

We may have to treat the RGB frames the same way film editors do. Every codec I could find is 4:2:2. I did find a Kona card that claims to capture video as 4:4:4 but it was for HD. There is also the bluefish 4:4:4 cards but I heard a lot of complaints about them.

Combustion may be a good way to handle the files however since version 3 does have basic editing built into it. Basic editing might be all that is needed for a movie and everything thing else like titles and color correction are there as well.

The capture software you make could create a new directory for the frames every time a new recording starts. This would help organize the frames better.

Benjamin Palmer · April 26th, 2004, 05:40 PM

Juan, your aspect ratio issue in FCP is easily fixed (i think) - open your clip in the Viewer (double-click on it while it's in the timeline) and go to Motion -> Distort -> Aspect Ratio - make sure this is set to zero. for some reason, when presented with footage that has little FCP-friendly metadata about aspect ratio or pixel dimension, it kind of guesses, and makes adjustments in there. hope that helps.

Juan P. Pertierra · April 26th, 2004, 05:51 PM

That did the trick! Thanks Benjamin! It was set to 33.33 and thus doing some weird resizing on it.

it is my best judgement that when i set compressor to "None" or "TIFF", the output video looks ~exactly~ like the input frame, thus full color RGB(4:4:4) 16bpc. This is good...

Edon Rizvanolli · April 27th, 2004, 11:15 AM

Juan, there is a QuickTime codec called None16 (digitalanarchy) which is 64 Bit when used with After Effects or 32 Bit when used with QuickTime. It is crossplatform and produces great images. I did some testing with the .psd file and it looks great. It also runs great (no dropped fremes) on a dual gig G4 with FCP HD.
The raw frames could be imported into QT Pro as image sequence and then exported with the none16 settings.

Edon

Obin Olson · April 27th, 2004, 01:14 PM

Rob, yes they are and they will not sell direct to end users...they work with big accounts only...too bad

Jon Yurek · April 27th, 2004, 08:44 PM

Juan, are you planning on releasing the pinouts to the A/D converter and, maybe, a basic schematic of the whole circuit? You know, in case you die in a nuclear explosion (god forbid) or someone else can take a crack at capturing their own (far more likely)?

Milosz Krzyzaniak · April 28th, 2004, 08:56 AM

Yes, that is a good idea. Maybe somebody else could just assemble a simillar circuit to check if he/her has the same noise speckles problem in their DVX100.

Juan P. Pertierra · April 28th, 2004, 12:32 PM

I'm curious, since the CCD's seem to be slightly offset....can we use this fact to create a higher resolution image by taking into consideration that the 3 ccds record slightly different areas of the image? I think some cameras offset CCD's slightly to get high rez pictures, someone told me the Panasonic 953 does this for stills.

Jon&Milosz:
I might release all the details, depending on where this all ends. However this is just not something that someone can just put together overnight, so it wouldn't really help. However, if you really want to know the inner workings of the DVX and can read schematics, purchase the service manual for the DVX...that's the only thing I used.

Juan

Obin Olson · April 28th, 2004, 02:26 PM

Juan, you got me fired up...I am now working on converting a 16mm film camera to HD at 24fps, 30fps and 60fps....it's going to work...I am sourceing the parts right now...I will keep you posted.....

April 25th, 2004, 09:40 PM	#406
John Cabrera Regular Crew Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: California Posts: 67	Vegas I stand corrected. Mostly, though, I was referring to Juan's question of whether you could even open 4:4:4 12bit tifs in Vegas and whether it was resolution independent and could handle odd resolutions like the images he's pulling off the CCDs. But I guess "perfectly" is a bit of an overstatement. I do love my Vegas though! That's really exciting about the Vegas 5 developments. I'll be sure to stay posted on that. John

April 25th, 2004, 10:38 PM	#408
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	Decimation Bah. Now that i look at it, the speckles look 'doubled'....like in the original image hey are a single pixel, but on the rendered 'uncompressed' video they occupy two side-by-side pixels and look averaged....looks like 4:2:2 to me. Has anyone done film editing on FCP or another program? Maybe we can use the DV footage as editing footage, and create an EDL for the raw frames?

April 25th, 2004, 10:34 PM	#407
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	Ok, so i dropped my last raw frame into FCP. I rendered it with compression set to 'none'. The output looks extremely close to the original image, but there's something about it...the noise speckles don't look quite as strong now. I'm not sure if it's a difference in the pixel aspect ratio of the viewer vs photoshop, or if some decimation occurred. I can't really say any latitude was lost.... Anyone have an idea of how to test for this, other than looking at it? <g> Maybe if I make a 1 frame long video? The sizes should be approx the same..? Apple is so unclear as to how the data is dealt with. Juan

April 25th, 2004, 11:35 PM	#409
Robert Martens Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Miller Place, NY Posts: 820	Even though I own a copy of combustion, I'm no film editor, so correct me if I'm wrong here, but according to the manual, combustion works with and renders up to thirty two bits per channel, and has the ability to work with Look Up Tables, which allow one to handle film footage--and, presumably, 12 bit video--without a display that can actually show the stuff properly. That, coupled with the new "edit" operator in version 3 and sub-thousand dollar price point (more like eight hundred, depending on where you shop), makes combustion seem like a potential client for this project...right? Are there considerations I'm not, you know, considering? Gotta read that manual some more...

April 25th, 2004, 11:40 PM	#410
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	Well, i'm actually not sure now that the problem is decimation...if i open the raw frame in photoshop i can see it fine, but when i drop it in FCP. it automatically does some correction such that the image is nearly square.. i know, i know about the NTSC pixel ratio but that's not it(afaik). I set the sequence to the exact frame size, 773x495 and ~square~ pixels, but for some reason it has black bars on the sides and it compresses the image horizontally. Anyone have a similar problem with premiere, vegas, etc?

April 26th, 2004, 01:07 AM	#411
Mattia Visintini New Boot Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Trieste, ITALY Posts: 8	Juan, instead of working with the "uncompressed 10bit" sequence preset, I found out that it is possible to create new presets using any of the codecs supported by quicktime. If you go and look at the options available in the compression settings, you can see the the uncompressed 10bit video codecs are actually labeled as "uncompressed 10bit 4:2:2"... so that clears one point. I tried setting a sequence to use the TIFF codec and frame size 773x495 square (with TIFF all the rendering occurs in the RGB space, check out the video precessing tab!), and then imported your frame..... and the result was perfect! no black bars and it was identincal to the one in photoshop. hope i helped in some way......

April 26th, 2004, 02:54 PM	#412
Thomas Smet Trustee Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Milwaukee, WI Posts: 1,719	We may have to treat the RGB frames the same way film editors do. Every codec I could find is 4:2:2. I did find a Kona card that claims to capture video as 4:4:4 but it was for HD. There is also the bluefish 4:4:4 cards but I heard a lot of complaints about them. Combustion may be a good way to handle the files however since version 3 does have basic editing built into it. Basic editing might be all that is needed for a movie and everything thing else like titles and color correction are there as well. The capture software you make could create a new directory for the frames every time a new recording starts. This would help organize the frames better.

April 26th, 2004, 05:40 PM	#413
Benjamin Palmer New Boot Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: USA Posts: 7	Juan, your aspect ratio issue in FCP is easily fixed (i think) - open your clip in the Viewer (double-click on it while it's in the timeline) and go to Motion -> Distort -> Aspect Ratio - make sure this is set to zero. for some reason, when presented with footage that has little FCP-friendly metadata about aspect ratio or pixel dimension, it kind of guesses, and makes adjustments in there. hope that helps.

April 26th, 2004, 05:51 PM	#414
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	That did the trick! Thanks Benjamin! It was set to 33.33 and thus doing some weird resizing on it. it is my best judgement that when i set compressor to "None" or "TIFF", the output video looks ~exactly~ like the input frame, thus full color RGB(4:4:4) 16bpc. This is good...

April 27th, 2004, 11:15 AM	#415
Edon Rizvanolli Tourist Join Date: Apr 2004 Posts: 4	Juan, there is a QuickTime codec called None16 (digitalanarchy) which is 64 Bit when used with After Effects or 32 Bit when used with QuickTime. It is crossplatform and produces great images. I did some testing with the .psd file and it looks great. It also runs great (no dropped fremes) on a dual gig G4 with FCP HD. The raw frames could be imported into QT Pro as image sequence and then exported with the none16 settings. Edon

April 27th, 2004, 01:14 PM	#416
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	Rob, yes they are and they will not sell direct to end users...they work with big accounts only...too bad

April 27th, 2004, 08:44 PM	#417
Jon Yurek Regular Crew Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Worcester, MA Posts: 64	Juan, are you planning on releasing the pinouts to the A/D converter and, maybe, a basic schematic of the whole circuit? You know, in case you die in a nuclear explosion (god forbid) or someone else can take a crack at capturing their own (far more likely)?

April 28th, 2004, 08:56 AM	#418
Milosz Krzyzaniak Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Germany Posts: 64	Yes, that is a good idea. Maybe somebody else could just assemble a simillar circuit to check if he/her has the same noise speckles problem in their DVX100.

April 28th, 2004, 12:32 PM	#419
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	I'm curious, since the CCD's seem to be slightly offset....can we use this fact to create a higher resolution image by taking into consideration that the 3 ccds record slightly different areas of the image? I think some cameras offset CCD's slightly to get high rez pictures, someone told me the Panasonic 953 does this for stills. Jon&Milosz: I might release all the details, depending on where this all ends. However this is just not something that someone can just put together overnight, so it wouldn't really help. However, if you really want to know the inner workings of the DVX and can read schematics, purchase the service manual for the DVX...that's the only thing I used. Juan

April 28th, 2004, 02:26 PM	#420
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	Juan, you got me fired up...I am now working on converting a 16mm film camera to HD at 24fps, 30fps and 60fps....it's going to work...I am sourceing the parts right now...I will keep you posted.....