4:4:4 12-bit Uncompressed DVX100

Laurence Maher · May 28th, 2004, 03:23 AM

Ya,

Final Cut Pro HD is allowing output to computer monitors so you don't have to use expensive HD video monitors. I'm surprised no one marketed that idea before.

Go Juan! Go Juan! Ya, baby, YAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Les Dit · May 28th, 2004, 04:21 AM

Juan,
So what file system will be on that firewire drive? NTFS ?
You aren't worried about having to implement the file system directory structure and it's associated latency while pushing the data to the drive?
Perhaps I didn't understand what you said you are doing.
-Les

Emmanuel Cambier · May 28th, 2004, 04:25 AM

Dear Laurence
There is no way in Final Cut HD to monitor input while in full screen.The capture mode desactivate the digital cinema desktop preview.

Laurence Maher · May 28th, 2004, 01:22 PM

Thanks for clearing that up Emmanuel. Maybe what they meant was just during editing? Not capture? Or heck, maybe I just got my info screwed. Never worked with FCP HD, just saw it on the Apple site.

Randall Larsen · May 28th, 2004, 02:31 PM

Juan,

Both AJA and Blackmagic make SD and HD SDI pci cards for the MAC. Blackmagic's works also with PCs. I think the price of an SD card in about $300-400 depending on whether you need genlock capability.

Another option for about the same money Marshall makes a decoder box (monitor quality).

You could also build your own decoder box with a National semiconductor all in one chip decoder. You can implement a pattern generator (color bars) in your fpga if you like.

Dual capable SD -HD sdi cards go for about $2000. AJA's will do both upconvert and downconvert if I am not mistaken.

Robert Martens · May 28th, 2004, 02:50 PM

This project has grown quite enormous, as has the thread, but I'll try and offer something of value here, since I'm feeling left out. :P

Juan, to try to answer one of your questions, I believe the reason it's not ideal to use a computer monitor is that most of them (maybe all of them, I'm not sure) don't have SMPTE certified phosphors. What it takes for a phosphor to meet SMPTE specifications I don't know, but the issue at hand, as I understand it, is image reproduction accuracy. A computer monitor, or average television, WILL display the image, just not the way you'd want it to. Sorta like how a cheap pair of speakers might technically be able to recreate really high or low frequency sounds, but they'll end up being a few decibels louder or softer than they should be (i.e. when they were recorded).

Given the proper funds, it's preferable to get a production monitor, but I think the computer display will be physically able to draw the image. And with enough control, I imagine one could get such a display to be relatively accurate.

I think. I could be wrong. I'm wrong a lot.

Laurence Maher · May 28th, 2004, 06:20 PM

WHOAAAA RANDALL!!!

Kona & Black Magic make $2000 HD-SD capture cards? I thought these things were 7K from Kona (I didn't know about Black Magic). So far the best bang I found for the buck was Igniter X. But if you know the models of these specific Kona, Black Magic, or others, please let me know, becasue I'm putting together a Mac system to use with FCP HD.

Thanks!!!

Juan P. Pertierra · May 28th, 2004, 09:06 PM

Les:

The box doesn't really care what format the drive is in, the protocol used to talk to a Firewire800 storage device in this manner doesn't do all the low-level operations associated with the file system. The drive will need to be usable i.e. formated in any manner, but all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted so that shouldn't be a problem.

Juan

Robert Martens · May 28th, 2004, 09:26 PM

Ooh! Something just occured to me (pardon me if it's been covered already, but I didn't see mention of the subject): will this device offer anything in the way of stop motion capability? Might be useful for some people, being able to record one frame at a time to the disk...can't do that with a tape.

Any plans?

Randall Larsen · May 28th, 2004, 09:45 PM

Laurence,

Because of moores law and competition today's $8,000 board is replaced by tommorows $2000 board (well $2500 list).

Here is the info on AJA's KONA 2:

Quote from: http://aja.com/K-2%20FINAL-PR.htm

Other exciting features found in Kona 2 include:

o RS-422 machine control – connect to any professional tape deck

o Kona desktop output for broadcast design and paint

o Automatic HD/SD genlock

o Input AES sample rate conversion – no audio source sync required

o Break out cables standard (including both BNC and XLR AES cables)

o Optional “K Box” 1RU breakout box with additional features

o Kona 2 QuickTime drivers written and supported by AJA

o AJA award winning telephone support

Kona 2 and K Box Availability and Prices
Kona 2 is priced at US $2,490.00. K Box is priced at US $299.00. Both Kona 2 and K Box will be available in June 2004 and carry a three-year unconditional warranty.

Unquote*****************

The SD board is of course a lot cheaper but can't upconvert SD to HD. This is a monster board at the price. A break out box is available.

Blackmagic's SD board is very competitive to AJAs SD offering. On paper I prefer AJAs KONA 2 HD board over Blackmagic's HD capture board. I haven't read any lab tests yet or tried either.

If you had one of these boards you would want SDI output on the DVX100.

Another outfit is selling gigabit interfaces for analog outs, LVDS outs, and CameraLink outs. Don't know the price yet. I am guessing its around $400:

http://pleora.com/resources/document_library/index.cfm

Another outfit Silicon Imaging will be selling single chip HD cameras using the Altasens 2/3" chip (announcement to come in the next 8 weeks). Based on that company's current Y media sensor based prices $3500 to $4500 these cameras could come in at less than $6,000 with a raw 12-bit output!

Juan's mod for the DVX100 will probably outperform these more expensive cameras because don't forget the DVX100 is a three chip camera (even though SD).

The cheapest HD camera with 3 chips will be the JVC 870 at $20,000 list!

Can't wait to find out what Juan will charge for the basic mod!

Les Dit · May 28th, 2004, 10:23 PM

What is the 'box' you refer too? Does the 'box' just ask the FW800 drive for a file handle to write to?

Are you saying that this firewire drive you want to write to has a built in file system , and you send high level commands to it to accept a big block of data ? i.e. Fopen Fwrite etc, and not raw sectors ?
Then firewire800 is *way* more than a speed up of an old firewire drive !!!!!!

You say that all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted?
Preformatted with what file system?
How does the PC or Mac OS see the drive?
Please explain or tell me where to learn about this new development of drives that don't rely on the operating system to manage the directory structure! I'm intrigued !

-Les

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra : Les:

The box doesn't really care what format the drive is in, the protocol used to talk to a Firewire800 storage device in this manner doesn't do all the low-level operations associated with the file system. The drive will need to be usable i.e. formated in any manner, but all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted so that shouldn't be a problem.

Juan -->>>

Juan P. Pertierra · May 29th, 2004, 12:03 AM

Les:

Try www.t10.org all the info is there.

Les Dit · May 29th, 2004, 01:48 AM

Juan, I looked at the site, and unfortunately I've seen no reference to file management within 1394b drives. 1394b drives are just faster 1394 drives. They are 'dumb' just like SCSI drives.

Lets see, how can I put this:

I think you are making an interface (box) that writes to a disk drive with attached 1394b interface.
I think you are doing this without a host PC or Mac, it's just the 'box' getting image data from the camera, and it is saving the image stream to the 1394b disk drive.
You state "The 'box' does not care what format the drive is in"

Sounds like writing raw sectors ( no standard file system ) to the drive to me. With a simple dir structure to keep track of the shots, like I said in my first post on this topic.
But.... then you say " The drive will need to be usable i.e. formated in any manner, but all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted so that shouldn't be a problem"

So which is it? Are you proposing to implement the Mac/PC file system allocation and management in your 'Box' .... or are you doing a custom file system?
That will need PC/Mac software to read it on a personal computer. You can't just mount it and see the data with any old computer.
Perhaps you need to think about this some more?
Do you understand what a file system *is* and how they work?
-Les

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra : Les:

Try www.t10.org all the info is there. -->>>

Obin Olson · May 29th, 2004, 09:43 AM

the real thing to beat all would be if you could somehow overcrank that puppy with your mod...can you make it shoot 60fps? I know the chips can do it because of the 60i option in the camera...can you force the chips to run at 60fps? and capture that? this is one of the most wanted things for digital ....I know I would pay more for that option ..Juan?

Obin Olson · May 29th, 2004, 09:44 AM

les...how would Juan know how to build the box if he did not know what a file system is????

May 28th, 2004, 02:31 PM	#710
Randall Larsen Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: Honolulu, HI Posts: 54	SDI testing Juan, Both AJA and Blackmagic make SD and HD SDI pci cards for the MAC. Blackmagic's works also with PCs. I think the price of an SD card in about $300-400 depending on whether you need genlock capability. Another option for about the same money Marshall makes a decoder box (monitor quality). You could also build your own decoder box with a National semiconductor all in one chip decoder. You can implement a pattern generator (color bars) in your fpga if you like. Dual capable SD -HD sdi cards go for about $2000. AJA's will do both upconvert and downconvert if I am not mistaken. __________________ kind regards, Randall Larsen

May 28th, 2004, 09:45 PM	#715
Randall Larsen Regular Crew Join Date: May 2004 Location: Honolulu, HI Posts: 54	SDI capture boards Laurence, Because of moores law and competition today's $8,000 board is replaced by tommorows $2000 board (well $2500 list). Here is the info on AJA's KONA 2: Quote from: http://aja.com/K-2%20FINAL-PR.htm Other exciting features found in Kona 2 include: o RS-422 machine control – connect to any professional tape deck o Kona desktop output for broadcast design and paint o Automatic HD/SD genlock o Input AES sample rate conversion – no audio source sync required o Break out cables standard (including both BNC and XLR AES cables) o Optional “K Box” 1RU breakout box with additional features o Kona 2 QuickTime drivers written and supported by AJA o AJA award winning telephone support Kona 2 and K Box Availability and Prices Kona 2 is priced at US $2,490.00. K Box is priced at US $299.00. Both Kona 2 and K Box will be available in June 2004 and carry a three-year unconditional warranty. Unquote***************** The SD board is of course a lot cheaper but can't upconvert SD to HD. This is a monster board at the price. A break out box is available. Blackmagic's SD board is very competitive to AJAs SD offering. On paper I prefer AJAs KONA 2 HD board over Blackmagic's HD capture board. I haven't read any lab tests yet or tried either. If you had one of these boards you would want SDI output on the DVX100. Another outfit is selling gigabit interfaces for analog outs, LVDS outs, and CameraLink outs. Don't know the price yet. I am guessing its around $400: http://pleora.com/resources/document_library/index.cfm Another outfit Silicon Imaging will be selling single chip HD cameras using the Altasens 2/3" chip (announcement to come in the next 8 weeks). Based on that company's current Y media sensor based prices $3500 to $4500 these cameras could come in at less than $6,000 with a raw 12-bit output! Juan's mod for the DVX100 will probably outperform these more expensive cameras because don't forget the DVX100 is a three chip camera (even though SD). The cheapest HD camera with 3 chips will be the JVC 870 at $20,000 list! Can't wait to find out what Juan will charge for the basic mod! __________________ kind regards, Randall Larsen

May 28th, 2004, 10:23 PM	#716
Les Dit Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Southern Cal-ee-for-Ni-ya Posts: 608	FW800 drives have built in file systems ? What is the 'box' you refer too? Does the 'box' just ask the FW800 drive for a file handle to write to? Are you saying that this firewire drive you want to write to has a built in file system , and you send high level commands to it to accept a big block of data ? i.e. Fopen Fwrite etc, and not raw sectors ? Then firewire800 is way more than a speed up of an old firewire drive !!!!!! You say that all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted? Preformatted with what file system? How does the PC or Mac OS see the drive? Please explain or tell me where to learn about this new development of drives that don't rely on the operating system to manage the directory structure! I'm intrigued ! -Les <<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra : Les: The box doesn't really care what format the drive is in, the protocol used to talk to a Firewire800 storage device in this manner doesn't do all the low-level operations associated with the file system. The drive will need to be usable i.e. formated in any manner, but all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted so that shouldn't be a problem. Juan -->>>

May 29th, 2004, 01:48 AM	#718
Les Dit Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Southern Cal-ee-for-Ni-ya Posts: 608	1394b and filesystem for storing the images Juan, I looked at the site, and unfortunately I've seen no reference to file management within 1394b drives. 1394b drives are just faster 1394 drives. They are 'dumb' just like SCSI drives. Lets see, how can I put this: I think you are making an interface (box) that writes to a disk drive with attached 1394b interface. I think you are doing this without a host PC or Mac, it's just the 'box' getting image data from the camera, and it is saving the image stream to the 1394b disk drive. You state "The 'box' does not care what format the drive is in" Sounds like writing raw sectors ( no standard file system ) to the drive to me. With a simple dir structure to keep track of the shots, like I said in my first post on this topic. But.... then you say " The drive will need to be usable i.e. formated in any manner, but all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted so that shouldn't be a problem" So which is it? Are you proposing to implement the Mac/PC file system allocation and management in your 'Box' .... or are you doing a custom file system? That will need PC/Mac software to read it on a personal computer. You can't just mount it and see the data with any old computer. Perhaps you need to think about this some more? Do you understand what a file system is and how they work? -Les <<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra : Les: Try www.t10.org all the info is there. -->>>

May 28th, 2004, 03:23 AM	#706
Laurence Maher Join Date: May 2004 Location: denton, texas, usa Posts: 416	Ya, Final Cut Pro HD is allowing output to computer monitors so you don't have to use expensive HD video monitors. I'm surprised no one marketed that idea before. Go Juan! Go Juan! Ya, baby, YAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

May 28th, 2004, 04:21 AM	#707
Les Dit Major Player Join Date: Oct 2003 Location: Southern Cal-ee-for-Ni-ya Posts: 608	Juan, So what file system will be on that firewire drive? NTFS ? You aren't worried about having to implement the file system directory structure and it's associated latency while pushing the data to the drive? Perhaps I didn't understand what you said you are doing. -Les

May 28th, 2004, 04:25 AM	#708
Emmanuel Cambier Regular Crew Join Date: Feb 2004 Location: Paris, France Posts: 20	Dear Laurence There is no way in Final Cut HD to monitor input while in full screen.The capture mode desactivate the digital cinema desktop preview.

May 28th, 2004, 01:22 PM	#709
Laurence Maher Join Date: May 2004 Location: denton, texas, usa Posts: 416	Thanks for clearing that up Emmanuel. Maybe what they meant was just during editing? Not capture? Or heck, maybe I just got my info screwed. Never worked with FCP HD, just saw it on the Apple site.

May 28th, 2004, 02:50 PM	#711
Robert Martens Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Miller Place, NY Posts: 820	This project has grown quite enormous, as has the thread, but I'll try and offer something of value here, since I'm feeling left out. :P Juan, to try to answer one of your questions, I believe the reason it's not ideal to use a computer monitor is that most of them (maybe all of them, I'm not sure) don't have SMPTE certified phosphors. What it takes for a phosphor to meet SMPTE specifications I don't know, but the issue at hand, as I understand it, is image reproduction accuracy. A computer monitor, or average television, WILL display the image, just not the way you'd want it to. Sorta like how a cheap pair of speakers might technically be able to recreate really high or low frequency sounds, but they'll end up being a few decibels louder or softer than they should be (i.e. when they were recorded). Given the proper funds, it's preferable to get a production monitor, but I think the computer display will be physically able to draw the image. And with enough control, I imagine one could get such a display to be relatively accurate. I think. I could be wrong. I'm wrong a lot.

May 28th, 2004, 06:20 PM	#712
Laurence Maher Join Date: May 2004 Location: denton, texas, usa Posts: 416	WHOAAAA RANDALL!!! Kona & Black Magic make $2000 HD-SD capture cards? I thought these things were 7K from Kona (I didn't know about Black Magic). So far the best bang I found for the buck was Igniter X. But if you know the models of these specific Kona, Black Magic, or others, please let me know, becasue I'm putting together a Mac system to use with FCP HD. Thanks!!!

May 28th, 2004, 09:06 PM	#713
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	Les: The box doesn't really care what format the drive is in, the protocol used to talk to a Firewire800 storage device in this manner doesn't do all the low-level operations associated with the file system. The drive will need to be usable i.e. formated in any manner, but all Firewire800 drives come pre-formatted so that shouldn't be a problem. Juan

May 28th, 2004, 09:26 PM	#714
Robert Martens Major Player Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Miller Place, NY Posts: 820	Ooh! Something just occured to me (pardon me if it's been covered already, but I didn't see mention of the subject): will this device offer anything in the way of stop motion capability? Might be useful for some people, being able to record one frame at a time to the disk...can't do that with a tape. Any plans?

May 29th, 2004, 12:03 AM	#717
Juan P. Pertierra Major Player Join Date: Jul 2003 Posts: 479	Les: Try www.t10.org all the info is there.

May 29th, 2004, 09:43 AM	#719
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	the real thing to beat all would be if you could somehow overcrank that puppy with your mod...can you make it shoot 60fps? I know the chips can do it because of the 60i option in the camera...can you force the chips to run at 60fps? and capture that? this is one of the most wanted things for digital ....I know I would pay more for that option ..Juan?

May 29th, 2004, 09:44 AM	#720
Obin Olson Trustee Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Wilmington NC Posts: 1,414	les...how would Juan know how to build the box if he did not know what a file system is????