I am looking forward to this "mod" so so much!

Microcontrollers
 

Hello boys,


I really dislike repeating myself, but


as there is already a working DVC50 (6,5 MB/S, 4:2:2) firewire protocol directly supported by FCP4,

and several harddisk recorder units, like for instance the Quickstream DV, are available on the market for some time now,

plus, thanks to your ingenuity, Juan, we know the Y/C stage signal is still uncompressed,


it should be worth a thought whether it might be possible to alter the way the information is processed before it is send over firewire, hence obtaining DVC50 quality with the DVX for a start.


Therefore, Juan, again it would be very helpful, if you could post the names of the various chips within the DVX´s circuit and perhaps a schematic, so that these can be compared with 900´s system.


Best thanks again for all your devotion to this bold project. My suggestions are not meant to question your primary approach, but to open up some sideways for those prefering a lighter and less demanding modification, perhaps for the price of a comparatively lower efficiency.

Lucia,

The data coming out of my mod can be toned down and piped through watever standard you wish, however there are only a couple of places where you can get the raw data out, and this mod covers both. Anything dealing with using DVC50 over firewire, or any other standard is simply formatting of the data that can be done in the external circuit once I have the data coming out.

The main chip on the DVX is an Altera APEX 20K which is an LPGA, and it's function depends competely on what panasonic programmed into it which we do not know, and for this application I am not interested in as long as I know the data pins.

In other words, this is not some standard chip that you can look up the specs of and know exactly what it's doing...there ARE specs for this chip but everything it does, is based on the software, which of course is heavily protected. But we don't need this to do the procedure.

Juan

I contacted the company that manufactures the chip-clip, and it seems that they have one that is perfect for this application.

Their design will allow for my idea of having the camera completely assembled and with only a small ribbon cable coming out the back or bottom. I think it even can be routed out without any modification to the camera.

it will take them around 10 days to assemble one, so it's a waiting game for now.

Juan

would have been too easy ..
 

Juan, thanks to John´s link I am a bit wiser now. Apparently I underestimated the complexity of the issue, so the more your efforts are to be welcome. Did I understood you right that your construction does imply some kind of ASIC to format the data? For any compression technique will need the proper codecs to be recognized from the editing suite and the raw or Y/C output probably does not match any standards according to your results. Or is your favorized method of single frame sequencing only a matter of proper timing alone, for example sending one output sample every 40 or 41,7 ms?

Hello all. Just catching up on the posts as I haven't been around in a while.

Juan - Fantastic! I experimented on such a concept in 1996 with another 3 chip from Panasonic (the AG-3). The result on the computer was much better than the camera's taped recording ability. At that time I was recording 4:2:2 (but compressed at 5:1) - which for the day was respectable.

Please keep up the excellent work!

BTW, what are the images straight off the A/D converters going to look like? Will there be problems with noise, banding, etc.? You're probably already going to do this, but could you post some pictures/movies when you finally get this thing working? Also will this mod work with the DVX100A?

John...do you still have the 4:2:2 version working?

Jason,

At this point I am not sure, but from what I've seen in outputs straight from CCD's(such as the Thomson Viper) the raw output needs color adjustments and frame resizing...however if I do use the raw output I plan to have all of these corrections done in software either at capture time or right after.

An interesting note...if we use the raw A/D output, it doesn't matter which camera you have, the DVX100 or DVX100A, because afaik they both have the same CCD's and 12-bit A/D converters. If we endup taking the signal after the Altera chip which does all the color corrections, then the DVX100 will have 10bit color, but the DVX100A will yield 12-bit color.

Juan

In reply to Lucia's last post....

My implementation will only include the necessary hardware to interface the digital video stream to firewire 800(and a driver to capture it). There is no need to design additional hardware to do any compression, because that just complicates the project, and besides, any re-formatting or compression can be easily done in software once the raw data is captured on the computer.

Juan

Hi Obin. No, unfortunately that's long been dismantled. I still have the parts (somewhere - lol). I've gotten more into rigging cost effective alternatives to various studio equipment since then. ie - batteries, dollies, grip carts etc.

I trust Juan is on the right trail on this one. High quality film transfers is what I'm looking for and this sounds like the way to go.

Juan, export to firewire 800 is a great boon to this being a viable device modification. You state that the reconversion of exported data to a usable media will be done in some sort of software recompiler, what if you are shooting and need to see playback on set? Any idea on when your testing will be completed? As I would like to try this mod on a project in the early summer.

Thanx for your amazing research. A proud DVX owner.

I believe that Juan had said that there's a posibility the camera would function normal with the mod in place. Could playback occur from the normal DV tape? Or perhaps a secondary recorder fed from the video out of the camera?

That's right John...the camera would work just as normal, and you can record to tape normally while this is all going on. You can also have a monitor coming out of the camera or use the on-board LCD/viewfinder as normal.

If you want to preview the high-quality output, that's going to be difficult with my initial device, because it's going to be in a very fat raw format which would need a custom monitor for it. However, once i get this working it is possible to implement standard outputs in hardware like some have suggested.

Will the RAW files from the DVX100 have any more dynamic range than the normal DVX100 in use? Just wondering since I've played around with RAW Thompson Viper files, and those have a tremendous amount of dynamic range, roughly equal to color negative film stocks like Fuji F400 or Vision stocks-and those are both coming off 12-bit A/D converters.

BTW, to view files, I would just assume that you would simply hook up a laptop to the camera and view the frame grabs that get recorded on the hard-drive. Once you have a couple "shots" that give you an idea of what the scene will look like, then you can easily use the DV tape to preview the movement, etc., and then have the uncompressed files later for onlining purposes.

That's a good question, but i was under the impression that the extra dynamic range of the thomson was because of the CCD's characteristics, i might be wrong.

In the meantime while the chip clip gets here, i've been doing some more experiments. Since i don't have enough surface mount probes, my experiments today consisted of probing the BLUE A/D converter, and at that only had enough probes of 7 bits(of 12).

The images seem to be 771pixels wide...i am definitely getting more pixels than that, but they seemed to be masked off. It's kinda hard to tell from the blue CCD only, unless i have a special test scene which I didn't. All i did was shoot a spray can that was in the lab, which happened to be blue/white. :)

I am going to try this week and setup a blue grid and do some more tests....

Juan

good tips Jason,

Juan is it just a simple piggyback ont the chip? What is it tapping into?

Would you please post a pic of you probing the chip? I just want to where to put the test leds, I can host it for you if you need

Right now i am just using 'grabber' probes. The final application will be a piggy-back clip, so there is technically no modification made to the DVX itself, since there is no soldering done.

I'll take some pictures of my test setup whenever i work on it again...

Juan

I want a DIRECT output that NEEDS color correcting in POST..I don't want the camera to do ANYTHING to the picture...this will assure me of the BEST chroma key you can get and that is about all I would use this "mod" for anyway..unless you make a portable storage unit for it ;)

if anyone cares, heres how the DV953 will get 768x934, its the lower left pic of the gal, it shows the real resolution of the camera before processing to DV format.

it could be the same for a DVX100?

With an Anamorphic Adapter we could be reaching into HD territory (HDTV 720 x 1080)

http://www.fortvir.net/modules.php?f...view_photo.php
Thanks to Guy Bruner for the cool site

4:4:4 12-bit Uncompressed DVX100
 

Hello Juan, thank you for all you're doing.
Just one thing :
PAL VERSION ???
Please say yes.

Yes, the hardware would be exactly the same, the only difference will be programming the driver so it correctly detects the PAL version.

however, it might even be easier than this...since the CCD's are so large, i would think that they would cut costs and use the same CCD's for both the PAL and NTSC versions of the DVX...if this is true, even the same software will work because the only differences between the cameras would be the programming of the chips and how the DV is formatted.

Great !!!
Put me on that list of your future clients
and again Thank You

On the List
 

Hello Juan, I've monitored this thread and like what I see. Please put me down on the list of interested parties to purchase your discovery.

I wana be on da dagon list toooooo ;)

For those of you that wanted to see one of my test setups, here is what my workbench looked like today:

http://expert.ics.purdue.edu/~pertierr/dsc00005.jpg

I did some more tests capturing 7-bit/blue sections of frames and recording DV output at the same time. I confirmed that the camera indeed will work perfectly as normal while the raw RGB output is being piped out. It definitely seems that the raw frames are 771 pixels wide and a bit taller than 480(486?) but not much taller. There is a lot of the CCD (horizontally)physically masked off...maybe the masking can be removed somehow for a wider image???

Tomorrow i should make a lot of progress, because I am hooking it all up to my desktop for continous capture(instead of sections of frames with the logic analyzer in the picture), and also, the big brown truck comes tomorrow with some parts that might solve the whole probing issue....looking good so far.

Cheers,
Juan

Put me on the list.

Nice shop Juan,

I guess I'll have to wait for more detail

John

Rotating the CCD's
 

Juan-
Since you have first hand knowledge of the ins and outs of this camera's CCD's I have a question for you.

How hard would it be to physically rotate the CCDs 180 degrees and remount them?

This would be very helpful for the all the DVX100 people over at the Homemade Mini35 forums.

Thanks and sorry about the off subject question.

-B

It doesn't look hard at all. The CCD's are easily accessible, and seem to be glued on to the prism. The trick would simply be to find some way which they can be re-attached(or glued?) while allowing time to align them correctly....i think the alignment of the 3CCD's would be the critical part, i'm pretty sure it needs to be done with test equipment.

Juan

Continous capture works. I was able to capture continous frames for the blue A/D at 7-bits. The raw frame size is:
771x494

I might be off by a pixel. From what I see, a small part of this is cropped when put onto tape, and the rest is compressed to fit in 720x480.

The only part left is to set it up to capture all RGB signals at full precision, which I am working on right now.

Juan

You could probably sell this mod ya know, after all this hard work you are doing it could be a good pay off!

Juan knows this I think! I am for one inline to buy it!

<<<-- Originally posted by John Gaspain : You could probably sell this mod ya know, after all this hard work you are doing it could be a good pay off! -->>>

If this is adaptable to an XL1s I have the money waiting ;)

(although i've been silent untill now, because i'm waiting to see what success Juan has with his setup before i jump in bugging about the possibility of porting it to an XL1)

This is totally portable to the XL1s...the only problem is that i haven't been able to get the service manual which i need...if anyone can get a service manual for the XL1/s, please let me know asap.

Juan

A quote from Don Palomaki:Bob Deming says:Keep in mind that this is the XL1 manual, not the XL1S. There
doesn't seem to be a service manual for it.

Thanks Rob...

I contacted Canon directly a while back ago and they told me that they do not sell service manuals to the public, but i'll try and see if this can be ordered directly.

Juan

Hi Juan

I have been following up on your progress with great intrest. I have one question ...not related to what you are doing but close


can you alter the communication protocol to lanc control some how ..if possible ...???or is it simply not possible ...that could make life incredibly easy .....

just a querry if it would be possible or not......

thanks

Can you elaborate on what you want it to do? I'm not very familiar with LANC but i beleive it's an interface to do remote controlling of common functions like focus, zoom, VTR, etc....i might be wrong.

I beleive the DVX already has a LANC port, what do you want it to do differently?