Doesn't work and costs well over $2000.

Ok, program works, got a 5 second clip out.

I wanted to hear any suggestions as far as how to package it, i figure I could zip it...uncompressed, all the TIFF frames for the clip are around 250MB.

Should I make it shorter? Once you have the frames you can drop them directly in any program...i've tried it in shake and FCP and it works well...make sure however that the program loads the frames in the correct order! FCP tends to do an alphabetical sort which will not sort numbers correctly and you'll get mixed up frames.

Juan

Juan,

Perhaps the easiest route for me to find a suitable clip on probe would be to ask the Altera support people.

I found one other option on the web but the price of a 240 pin clip on is $977, (the less common 208 pin) is probably about the same.

Assuming we are dealing with a 208 pin Plastic Quad Flat Pack
(and I haven't opened my DVX100a to see), from the Altera drawings it appears the footprint should be footprint C.

http://www.emulation.com/catalog/off-the-shelf_solutions/emulator_tools/emulator_pods/clip-on-pqfp/

http://www.emulation.com/cgi-cfm/insert_quantity.cfm?part_number=EPC%2D240%2DQF62C%2DSM costs $977 for 240 pin

http://www.emulation.com/footprints/208-QF21.gif Footprint C?

http://altera.com/literature/ds/dspkg.pdf Compare tip to tip distances.

I hope you have a cheaper and better solution than this.

Juan,

Congratulations on getting a succesful clip out.

Now all thats left to prove the concept is to find the correct capacitor to eliminate the noise speckles?

A zip file of the uncompressed tiffs would be fine. What settings should we use on FCP to order the frames correctly?

I will also try to view this on my Onyx IR. I might have to fool with the file a little to get it to come up in Performer.

I have a Fakespace VR device which might be an interesting display if we had stereo raw files. The Fakespace eliminates visible scan lines by displaying field sequential color on high res black and white monitors covered by rgb LCD panels.

Have you written a program to uprezz a sequence of tiffs using
S-spline?

What is the final resolution of the raw files?

I got a bag full'o caps at radio shack but i haven't had time to really mix-and-match...there are 30 data lines right now and each one needs a cap, so it takes a lot of patience...that said the current captures have very very few speckles, and in video they are barely noticeable since they change location.

S-Spline Pro(now called PhotoZoom) has a batch feature, such that you can just loadup the entire directory of frames, select the new rez, parameters and it'll do it all. However, it is extremely slow, at least on my mac. Does anyone here have the PC version? I have a 1.33Mhz G4 Powerbook, but it might run faster on a 2Gz+ Pentium.

I've tried both ~720P and 1080P uprezzing and it looks good in both, i would say that some areas in ~720P rez look like they came out of an HD camera. Usually it is simple geometric shapes, because the algorithm can put out a good interpolation since it has all the color data.

And! To top it all out, i just got back the developed 35mm shots of the scene in the video clips, so we can play with color correction and see how well we can match the color. My 35mm camera's spot meter is very pesimistic(? :) ), i had to let in a lot less light than what it told me to in order to get decent pictures.

Juan

awesome to hear about the 5sec capture! waiting for the link to check it out! I want to see how well 720p HD looks from the dvx100!

Just an idea, but it may be a good idea to allow the download of the 250MB TIFF stream as a BitTorrent download which spreads the bandwidth over everyone downloading instead of just hammering one Web server.

BTW, if they're 250MB uncompressed, how much can you compress them?

Also, did we find out if After Effects or Premiere can handle importing a huge batch of TIFFs (even if they have to resample to 8-bit, as I assume Premiere would)?

How about converting the linear data to 10 bit Cineons, in density space? That color space is good enough for the full density range of a color negative, about 10 stops, so it should hold the video just fine.
After Effects can open them too.

BTW, what are the pixel dimensions of the CCD you are reading out?

Interesting stuff!
-Les

well...er...i already wrote the code for 16-bit TIFF's...i can write the code for cineons but it'll take me some time, so for now this will do. Unless someone has an easy way of batch-converting formats.

The CCD resolution is 773x494, but I think we loose one vertical line because of the shifts i spoke of before.

I've been trying to upload the file but my cable connection keeps timing out...i'm going to try it from work.

Juan

Download XNview,free. Does all kinds of batch conversions as an extra.
Or use a compositor package like Shake, Combustion, etc.

-Les

duh. you're right, shake does that.

i'm not dumb, i'm just slow. :)

Ok, so i translated the TIFF's to cineon files, Shake doesn't really let you pick between 10bit, log/lin or 12-bit so i'm assuming it's 10-bit linear. That lowered the total size to 175MB. I compressed the frames with zip and now it's 140MB, and trying to upload it! stay tuned....

Not a very exciting clip, just my cat and me in the background pressing the capture button! There is only ONE bit that has speckles, that one pesky bit in the green channel...i'll try to figure out the correct capacitor tomorrow morning.

Juan (and listmembers),

Will FCP handle the Cineon format? I would like to see at least 1 second of the raw tiff files (I can play them on my SGI). The point of recording raw files is to get the maximum leeway for luminance and color correction for a film transfer.

Uprezzing:
I would be willing to uprez the tiff files on my pentium but I only have a trial license of PhotoZoom. I guess that means the stream would be watermarked. I also have access to a 240 processor Linux Cluster at the University of Hawaii; however,
PhotoZoom doesn't come in a Linux flavor. Is he algorithm published? Perhaps we could write our own code and parallelize it using MPI.

Shifting gears:
The Altera docs for the Apex 20k say Cout is 9pf max if that is helpful in choosing output capacitors. Are you using a pull up resistor or is that part of the DIO unit?

Aside:
If anyone lives near Boston, San Jose, or Toronto Altera will have a free one day DSP Video seminar (June 21 in San Jose).
See altera.com for details.

I'm impressed
 

Wow,

Juan knows what he's doing. Man, if I only had such knowledge. This is truely the most inspiring thread I've ever read as a filmmaker. You guys are all a hoot, and real go getters. I'm glad to know there are other "filmmakers" out there (not just videographers). I'm seriously interested in doing the dvx upgrade when it's ready to go. Keep me posted at actionvideo@charter.net.

The clip is done uploading...note that this is completely uncorrected, straight from the CCD's. The alignment is also uncorrected but it looks fine to me, let me know if there are any huge problems and I can modify the code.

http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~pertierr/output.zip

Juan,

Do we have to ftp this since its a zip file? I am getting "not found" error messages from your server. The Cap files downloaded just fine earlier.

http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~pertierr/output.zip

Thanks in advance,

Randall Larsen

My bad! uploaded it to the wrong directory...try it now!

Juan,

Never mind now its downloading!

Thanks

You should have used f.@@@@.cin to resave them in shake. That forces the padding to 4 digits, making them read correctly in alphabetical order. ( allowing easy compositor usage )
ie: f1.cin would be f.0001.cin

-Les

Bravo Juan!

I haven't transfered the files to the apple yet. However, I looked at them in Maya fcheck. I was able to see that that the pesky speckles are only on the green channel.

Juan's cat is charming. The alignment seems fairly good. I am not sure whether the ND used is optimal.

Fcheck reads the header file size as 773 by 495. Too bad the vertical lines are only 495! ProZoom should still be able to make a nice 720P image.

Thanks Les! I will do that for all the following uploads.

Randall: the clip was shot with no ND filter on. I originally tried ND1, but it was pretty dark.

I've gotten rid of the speckles on all the other 29 ines using caps, so it seems like it's just a matter of finding the right combination to get rid of the remaining ones on that one line.

About resolution, the actual frame read out by the A/D is 495 lines, but usually there are one or two black lines at the bottom, and on top of that the vertical shake i spoke about before that i had to correct for, takes off the top vertical line every two frames...so the effective line count is around 493. I do think however that my constants are a bit off and I am loosing one vertical column on the right, because the images ARE 773 wide and there should be no black column on the left hand side...

I uprezzed it to 1240x~720P using the batch feature of photozoom, and it looks awesome. I've only seen a few clips of the JVC HD camcorder, but i'd like to see how this compares :)

If there are enough people without photozoom, I can upload an HD version of this clip, but i will have to take the original one down due to my quota. Also remember that photozoom has a miriad of options so I am basically using paramters to make it more soft than sharp...seems to work best to my eyes.

If you haven't done so, to see my uprez settings check out the cap10_RAW.tif link...I still think cap10_RAW.tif is the best results so far.

Juan

Juan,

There are speckles on all three channels (blue has less) when the the file is played back frame by frame (at least in fcheck). Different speckles on different frames of course.

There is also the alphabetical sequencing problem previously mentioned. F1 sequences to F10 next. The cats head turning and ear twisting is actually quite interesting.

It might be nice to put a Macbeth or CSC color chart, a gray card, and a resolution chart, in at least a frame grab.

I can't seem to scale the frames up with the zoom command in fcheck (the file pixelates). I know the resolution is there in the file. I will try to look at the files on the apple and perhaps try my hand at a color correction.

Juan:

I am upgrading my web-site - I now have 2 GB of space of which I use about 250 MB and 30 GB of bandwidth a month of which I use around 10 GB, so I could host your clip.

There was an interesting 'photozoom' compare back in one of the JVC HDV threads. Personally I am impressed on how well the photozoom product adds high frequency detail to blowup images. I use it all the time for my digital still camera when making prints. One must realize that while it does add some pleasing details, they are mostly artificial. It takes areas where there is a defined edge and makes those edges 'squarewave' sharp. But it cannot bring back details that were lost due ti the inadequate initial sampling. So you can blow up an image to 2X size, and have edges in the result that are one pixel edge transitions, but they are fake. The subtle detail is missing.
The results are pleasing to the eye, however. Our vision system loves to grab onto sharp edges, that's how human vision works.

The funny part of the DV resolution blowups compared with the HD images was that few people wanted to compare them with the HD also blown up with photozoom! Now that would be unfair :)

It's true that blowing up uncompressed images should work better. It would be interesting to raw read the JVC ccd and get the bit depth out of that, with the extra detail as well. The Bayer pattern would have to be dealt with, but that can be post processed after capture.

Juan, did you order the Rockwell HD CMOS eval kit? I'm curious if you have the data sheets for that, and if you can post them? Is it true that the eval kit is $10K ?Have you seen that camera one small company is making with that chip? Raw output is included, but no price. Kinneta, or some such company name.

-Les

Les, and Listmembers, (with a Challenge to Juan)

I mentioned the Rockwell Chip recently on the list. The evaluation kit is $10,000 but the chips themselves are only
$1490.

Here is a link to the mfg. site and a brief quote of the data sheet:

Quote*******************
ProCamHD 3560 Evaluation Kit includes:


• ProCamHD CMOS visible sensor (1936x1086 pixel format, 2/3” optical format)
• PC board (video and CameraLink outputs available)
• C mount Lens: f /1.4, 12.5 mm focal length
• Lens mount and associated hardware
• Matrox HEL 1M SFCL frame grabber and MIL Lite SDK
• CameraLink cable
• USB cable (supplies power to sensor, not used for communication with PC)
• RSC ProCam control software for Windows 2000/XP
• Sensor configuration disk
• Introductory documentation

System requirements:

Customer supplied PC with PCI-X slot, Windows 2000/XP, 500MHz P3 or better.

From my inquiry:
Regarding the ProCamHD Evaluation Kits: our kits are assembled upon receipt of order. They sell for $10,000 and contain all the components required to evaluate our sensor (a ProCamHD monochrome sensor is included in that price). This price also includes limited technical support via phone during the evaluation process to ensure the customer can exercise the ProCamHD sensor to its maximum capabilities. Please allow eight (8) weeks after order submission for the assembly, certification and testing of the kit prior to shipment. I am enclosing a brief description of the kit for your file.

Budgetary pricing: (sample quantities 10-49 units):
ProCamHD 3560P $1,470 per unit

This price includes color or monochrome, with microlenses, in a ceramic 97-pin uPGA package. I would be happy to provide a formal quotation if necessary.

We do not have defective sensors available for prototype development.

We have schematics available for the camera board of the Evaluation Kit as well as a draft of the sensor datasheet (currently in final edit).

Altasens, Inc.
1049 Camino Dos Rios
Thousand Oaks, CA 91358
Phone: 805-373-4964
Fax: 805-373-4200
E-mail: dhowe@altasens.com
www.altasens.com
unquote************************************

(newly spunoff from Rockwell with some Japanese ownership).

Maybe we should all chip in and buy Juan one to three of these chips (maybe he doesn't need the full development kit).

Should Juan build a one chip (bayer color filter) or a three chip HD camera?

Juan would you like to try to do something with one of my
dead DXC-750 heads (a useable prism block)?

I have some prism blocks that might work with these chips.
One would come from a dead Sony DXC750 (a 700 line NTSC chip camera), another is from an older Ikegami plumbicon camera, another is a 35mm (big) unit from the RCA TK-41C.

The frame store is the expensive piece. If Juan's TI firewire interface can be built then the MAC Laptop or G5 performs that function.

If might be fun to build a unit that could sit in the place of the film gate in a Motion picutre camera such as my Kinor 35H. The kinor already has the optical viewfinder Cinematogs prefer.

Dalsa has high rate 35mm sized CMOS chips but they aren't releasing them because they are building their own camera. One might be able to use two of the industrial parts (20fps) and switch between them. However the rockwell part does 60fps at
720p or 1080p.

Another option would be to use several Kodak or Dalsa 14Megapixel still sensors and multiplex them to get 24fps at an unheard of resolution (close to IMAX quality after post processing).

Different sectors in the Dalsa or Kodak chip could be driven an the image put together in a frame store so perhaps it wouldn't take more than four sensors.

Juan what do you think? Would you like to build an HD camera?
Maybe it would be cheaper to just buy the forthcoming JVC 870?

However perhaps a design that was performance driven rather than business model driven would be marketable to those who really want to make Films with the gear.


Kinetta and the Thomson Viper are being discussed extensively
on several CML professional cinematography and post lists that I subscribe to. 2K resolution is an adequate substitute for film.

The bottom line is that although film has a potential resolution of 4K only about 1K is seen on the theater screen because of the Geneva movement.

Hey gang, I am going forward with my single cmos design HD cam. I will be using a chip that can output 1280x1024 at 60fps and you can do ROI at MUCH higher framerates...It's bayer filter but looks great and I can get a 3mp chip later on...the only downside is it will have a 1/2 inch chip not 2/3rd inch, 2/3rd is closer to 16mm film then 1/2inch and I was going to use a 16mm film body for the camera. Do you guys think that building a mini35 adaptor and using a standard tv macro on the camera would work well? I was thinking of using a standard Canon 35mmSLR lens mount for the unit so that lenses are CHEAP and easy to get....what about composites with this setup? how does the mini35 effect the FOV or the MM you should set for VFX shots? how much will the mini35 setup degrade the image? should I just stick with proven tv lenses designed for 1/2inch chips and forget about the DOF issues?

I'm actually in the process of getting 3 of the Altasens sensors for a pototype...i'll be getting the 720P ones however.

I've been in the cinematography.com forums, but no one there seems to be interested in my project, so i don't really check that much.

hi everyone I am way over my head on this one. but i was just at a convention. "the vision show east" and I spoke with a number of reps for camera companies, and told them about
our hope of building a camera. the chip he thought would work best was http://products.sel.sony.com/semi/PDF/ICX205AL.pdf
I wish I had better understanding of this. every chip was being displayed at the show and the output from these cameras was stunning

Obin:

I like the idea of the Canon 35mm lenses as I have 3 nice EF primes, but not a mini35 adaptor which to me is only a good idea if you have a DV lens already.

If you are going 1/2", why not 16mm cine lenses - lots of them on the used market and better focal length options, especially on the wide. Plus designed for motion picture and can take a wide ranges of cine accessories (follow focus, matte boxes etc.)

Obin:

Also, if you are serious, why not start on new thread here in Alternative Imaging? This one is really long already and your idea is a unique one worth highlighting on it's own.

Les, and listmembers

Some links on Kinetta, Panavision, and Viper:

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040419/195264_1.html

http://www.kinetta.com/home.php

PanavisionSVI: 8.3 million pixels?

http://www.1570.com/discus/messages/6/609.html?1036468994

http://www.panavisionsvi.com/technical_FAQ.htm


Thomson Viper:

try google.com search.

Dalsa:

www.dalsa.com/dc/dc.asp
www.dalsa.com/news/news.asp?itemID=72

you will get the crop factor like digital SLR if you use the 16mm lens with a 1/2inch chip I think more like 9mm not 16....I could do that but then your wides will not be as wide as they should...I REALLY wish they would use 2/3rd inch for that chip ;) hmm I did find one company using 2/3rd chips that can do 500fps! they record direct to RAM in the camera, full res 4000 frames to ram...small record time but good enough for a slo-mo shot I think

I think this chip excels in low light http://www.photonlines.com/PDF/CamPdf/Pixelfly.pdf

don't forget to read the fps...we need atleast 30fps for a video cam

I guess I had told the camera rep it would be a 24p camera.
but if we used three of these would the specs be the same as a varicam. and the pdf claims the chip supports 30fps I realy think this guy was happy at what we were doing. and think he was stering me to the best chip. oh and his company didn,t even sell the chip, he sold cmos chips

your pdf lists a max f-rate of 15fps...gota get 24-30 and for slo-mo atleast 48

Juan,
Do you have a link to a data sheet describing the electrical aspects of the chip? It sounds like a nice part. It would be even better if they had a higher resolution one to allow great Bayer filtered single chip setups.
-Les


<<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra : I'm actually in the process of getting 3 of the Altasens sensors for a pototype...i'll be getting the 720P ones however.

I've been in the cinematography.com forums, but no one there seems to be interested in my project, so i don't really check that much. -->>>

Someone was asking about data sheets on the Alsens CMOS sensor. Perhaps Juan has one. In answer to my inquiry I was given only the development kit brochure. I was told schematics for the eval board would be available.

The eval board hooks up to a Matrox frame grabber the Helios
XCL [SFCL] that acquires at 680MB per second.

http://www.matrox.com/imaging/products/helios_xcl/home.cfm

apparently the eval board puts out either video or cameralink digital.

The XCL is also used with the Dalsa Pantera 1024x1024 60fps cmos sensor camera:

ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/imaging/helios/appnotes/dalsa/helios_1m60.pdf

There is no application note posted for the Alsens Rockwell Chip.

There is a lot of talk recently from Sony and JVC about Ultra HD
television approaching 4k (by 2k) resolution. Dalsa's Origin camera has been doing it since NAB 2003.

The Dalsa camera will rent for $3000 per day starting in November 2004. Sony supposedly is experimenting with a 10Mega pixel unit. Kinetta is sensor independent (using Alsens for now). Alsens still has the limitation that it is not 35mm image size. The pro-teknica's 35mm to 2/3" video interface goes for $23,000 plus sufficient motivation to find a 35mm chip.

UHD may be overkill even for a film transfer (but may be useful for compositing and effects). In the movie theater it has been shown that the 4k by 4K resolution of 35mm film is not realized. The wiggle of the geneva movement in the projector reduces the on screen resolution to about 700 vertical lines. No one complains.

I think resolution over 1080 in the original might not be visible in the theater unless it was digitally projected or projected in an IMAX blowup.

Perhaps Juan can rent his modified DVX100 for say $1500 per day with suitable storage media. If no one can see much difference on a theater screen when a film transfer is projected, why would they pay $3000 per day?

From DVX 4:4:4 uncompressed to HD pricing list.
 

This thread is going out of focus.
After tomorrow Panavision will relese UHD camera, with interchangble lenses for 5000$ and i'll buy it but today i've got DVX100, that i've payed 4500€ (Pana reg price in Italy - something about one year of working on my regular part-time job) and i've got to match with it on my AMD 1700 NLE (OK i'm planning to upgrade..)
No one will refound me for the "DV jaggies".
Juan is giving to the regular DV community the possibilty to overlap their own limits obtaining more freedom and production capability staing with their own devices. Jaun is acting in a revolutionary point of wiev it is bettering the past without destroing it...
I'm thiking to film transfer but if i've got the money for this it's probably that i've got also the money to rent a Varicam...
Actually my production is all for TV but i need more control, precision, latitude and freedom to be pleased with DV (also with the progressive DVX) and i think that uncorrected, uncompressed 4:4:4 720P should work great for me!
So please stop stressing with other commerci-ative HD solutions ((it's hard to compete with the industries)) and starts new threads!
I don't know if Juan will share the project or if he want to estabilish the Pertierra Inc. and change him life selling 200 "HDVX gear" but i'm more interested in spending money to upgrade a well made and powerfull camera than to buy one HD 3/3" chip to hang me to the neck.
So please Juan stay with us, poor DV people ;)
P.S.
Juan: the clip that you've upload is too big for me (it takes more than 10 hours to download) and so i can't help you with this one but i could if you upload new RAW and DV stills (and so i can see your progress that are so exciting for me).
Mauro

I 'll second that strongly.There's too many great topics in this thread, please let's stay focused on Juan's DVX Mod.
No Hard feelings
Emmanuel
P.S.
By the way I can't import the pictures in FCHD, am I supposed to ?
It wont open in photshop 7 either.