I may have found a way for us people with consumer camcorders to take videos with progressive scan. Both my Cannon Optura 10, and my Panasonic PV-DV901, have the ability to take still pictures utilizing progressive scan. I have discovered that if I set either of these camcorders to the card photo mode (set the camcorder to it highest Quality photo setting). Then connect my camcorder to my computer with my Unibrain 33 foot firewire cable, and using VideoStudio capture a video directly to hard drive (not recording to DV tape first) the resulting video is progressive at 29.97fps. To confirm that it is indeed progressive video, I open the clip in VirtualDub and do a still screen capture of a bird in flight. When working with interlaced video the still would show signs of being interlaced, jagged lines on the bird in motion. But using the method above I do not see these jagged lines. By the way when I save my progressive video in VideoStudio I save it as "Frame" based not "Field Order A, or B". Another benefit of taking progressive videos is that the field of view with the camcorders lens is wider, although it is still coming from the camcorder, down the firewire to the computer as 720x480. I also notice the resulting video is somewhat noticeably sharper than it is when recording to DV tape. I would be interested if anyone can collaborate my findings, or repudiate them. Yes, this is a poor mans work around to achieve progressive video, and I know that you people with pro/semi pro camcorders can do this using your camcorder alone. But I find it nice to be able to achieve progressive video, albeit I'm tethered to my computer when doing so.

This sounds really promising. Would love to see a screen shot.

I see in the FAQ how to make an attachment to include a photo in a new post by pressing the [Browse] button at the bottom of the post composition page, and locate the file that you want to attach from your local hard drive, but in replying to a post I do not see a [Browse] button. I would be happy to E-mail you the progressive, and interlaced photos if you post your address.

Marco: Did not see the E-mail button at the bottom of your post, I just E-mailed you two photos.

Thanks. I'm looking forward to seeing them. (Can't check until Monday.)

People were talking about this as a way to get full-frame progressive-scan footage from the PDX10/TRV950, by putting it in PHOTO mode and piping the output through the firewire to another camera or computer to capture.

It didn't work.

It gave you de-interlaced, scaled-down footage that was much less resolution than a regular full frame. It was an interesting experiment, in that the footage LOOKED progressive, but under examination it was clearly much lower resolution than a regular interlaced frame. However, what was most interesting was that the field of view was much wider/taller than the regular video frame. It looked like what was happening was that it was taking the full image from the 1/4" CCD, then de-interlacing it and scaling it down to DV resolution.

I don't know if these other cameras are doing the same thing. If they are, it's pretty much a dead-end pursuit. If they're doing something different though, that'd be interesting to see.

post some frames, i'm sure many people are interested. There IS hope though, because what you are speaking of, my camera does....sort of. It's called d.wide mode, but it is picture mode in video mode. The picture is wider and taller, just as you said, and the image has no interlacing artifacts, and is not de-interlaced in camera.

screen shots! screen shots! screen shots! rah rah rah!
Rob

Well, I just looked at the screenshots, and I'm pretty intrigued. It does look deinterlaced, but its difficult to say if the resolution is lower. The picture is definitely softer, but the interlaced screenshot has clearly been sharpened. I can sharpen the progressive frame to look as sharp as the interlaced frame, but without all the smearing. All in all, the progressive frame is a much more pleasing image.

I will try to post some pictures shortly to a new thread, unless someone can explain how to post photos to an existing thread?

You could go to this website: http://www.imageshack.us/

Upload images for free and after you upload them it will give you a code to just copy and paste on the board to view the pictures...

Anyone know if the PAL version will capture progressive video in digital wide mode like it's NTSC version? It would be nice to have 25p on a budget.

Thanks, Will Robertson for the ImageShack image hosting tip! Here are two screen shots I took this morning to show that a camcorder in the photo mode attached to a computer by firewire appears to have progressive output. In the first screen shot taken with my Cannon Optura 10 camcorder in progressive\frame photo mode. The video was sent directly to the computer (Not recorded to DV tape) by firewire, and recorded directly to the hard drive using VideoStudio. I then did a still screen capture of this video using VirtualDub, with no processing, I then pasted the screen capture into Microsoft Paint, and saved as a photo. Notice you do not see any signs of interlacing on this screen shot\photo where the high action movement of the bird in flight is. The second screen shot\photo was taken with the camcorder in the regular DV videotaping mode, but it to was not recorded to tape, but the video was also sent by firewire directly to the computer, and stored on the hard drive by capturing directly with VideoStudio. I then used the above method to do a screen shot\photo of the video. On this screen shot\photo you can see the bird shows signs of interlacing as a normal DV video does because it is recorded interlaced. Here is what Cannon has to say about their progressive photo mode:

" The Optura 20 and Optura 10 camcorders offer Progressive Photo. A mechanical shutter used in combination with an interlace scan CCD produces still images with very little blurring. With an interlace scan CCD, a picture of a moving object will be blurred because of the 1/60th of a second lag between the reading of the odd and even fields that go into making one video frame. With Progressive Photo, this blurring has all but been removed because the time lag has been eliminated by the mechanical shutter."

Now, I'm not still sure if I'm achieving true progressive\frame recording with my method. All I know is that the screen shots\photos, and the video I've captured, make me think I'm doing progressive\frame recording. As to Berry Greens post that in previous experiments with trying this method, the resulting video was of much lower resolution, I don't see that. What I think is going on is that the Optura's 1.33 mega pixel photo mode is sending a 1280x960 image, (The Optura's highest quality photo setting) by way of firewire output at 720x480 to the computer. This would explain the wider field of view on the progressive video\screen shot. As a side note I would like to thank Britney Spears for taking time out from her busy schedule and coming over, and appearing in my photos to add the obligatory, "good looking girl in a photo", presence!

Frame Mode (Progressive) Screen Capture:

http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/5741/Britneyframemode.JPG

Interlaced Mode Screen Capture:

http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/673/Britneyinterlacedmode.JPG

Wow the images are promising. The interlaced frame looks a bit flat for some reason? Same color space why would the colors modify themselves from the still mode? Maybe i am seeing no good. I have always been deinterlacing vs Tomsmocomp also known as the "smartbob", though this seems like some native stuff. I might have to give it a try with my 950. Do you cary around you an external hard drive? How exactly could this be done on location?
Seems like this would cut down on all the vdub avisynth processing i am using, interesting.

Dmitri Henry: The two videos I took were done from a tripod pointing out my glass sliding door facing the lake. I did not move, or zoom the camcorder between photos, I just flipped the switch that changes it from photo mode, to video camera mode, and all settings remained the same. I too notice that the interlaced screen capture is not as bright, and the color is some what subdued, I don't really know why that is, both screen captures were not processed in any way. You will notice that photos look somewhat squashed in perspective. This is because I did not want to alter them in anyway, they are 720x480. If you wanted to see them in there right perspective you would have to resize them to a 4:3 aspect ratio like 800x600. The screen shots were actually taken yesterday morning, and I typed up my previous post, but I could not post it till today because I could find no way of including the photos. I used a Unibrain 33-foot firewire cable to send it to my desktop computer. The Unibrain firewire cable is the only one I know of that can get beyond the 15-foot normal firewire limitation without using repeaters. As for using this out in the field, you could use a laptop, or another DV cam connected together with firewire, I also think there are portable hard drives on the market that can do this. I would also like to add that you will not see the real benefit of progressive\frame video in a screen capture, but will see it when playing back your video on a stand alone progressive scan DVD player, or playing the video on your computer.

One thing I did not notice till I burned a DVD containing progressive video was that by using firewire to transfer the video\audio directly to the computer your camcorder motor is not running. This means no transport sound is being picked up by your internal microphone! I usually use a external mic when I'm taping, I could not stand the high pitched sound of a camcorder transport running, it was now totally silent except for the birds singing, what a difference. The progressive footage really looked good on my stand alone DVD players even though I do not own a progressive scan DVD player, it also looked very good on my computer DVD player.

The two videos I took were done from a tripod pointing out my glass sliding door facing the lake. I did not move, or zoom the camcorder between photos, I just flipped the switch that changes it from photo mode, to video camera mode, and all settings remained the same
Robert, I am getting more and more convinced that your camera does exactly the same thing as mine. The added evidence lies in the fact that you did not move the camera position, yet the FOV became larger in picture mode. If you would, please check out the screenshot on my post http://www.dvinfo.net//conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24880&perpage=15&pagenumber=1 and maybe try to do some sort of similar test? The picture is the 2nd one I posted in the thread called "480P.jpg".

Here is the direct link if you don't want to wade through the post:
http://www.aloofhosting.com/robh/480P.jpg
(Right click, save as)

Good luck!
Rob

Thought i'd give you all some pics...this is the difference between d.wide (camera mode) and picture mode on my camera. Notice the difference in sharpening and compression artifacts...I have a few ideas...Robert, would you want to try that one too? Maybe there is a compression difference?
http://www.aloofhosting.com/robh/dvpicture.gif
(Right click, Save As)

Rob

Rob: I did not do the same test as you did, but what I did was do a screen capture of a frame directly by firewire to the computer in the photo mode. The screen capture was 720x480. I then without moving the tripod took a still picture to the memory card at my camcorders highest quality setting 1280x960. In comparing the two stills the field of view is the same. What this tells me is that when I capture video in the photo mode directly to the computer the camcorder is resizing the 1280x960 CCD image down to 720x480 then sending it out the firewire port. I wish I had a camcorder like your JVC that had the d.wide mode so I would be able to do it all in camcorder without any extra equipment.

Rob: I did not see your 3:11PM post before my last post. Were you saving your photo mode still to a memory card and your d.wide to DV tape. If so that would explain the difference in the quality. The photo still uses about 500KB~900KB per picture, DV video I imagine uses much less per frame, that in itself would explain the compression artifacts.

No, I was capturing through my PC with Premiere Pro in both Picture mode, and D.wide mode...my best guess is that the resizing from the picture sized ccd is happening at different points down the encoding chain?

In reply to the previous post, I think you'd need to go back and read the other thread...I was comparing 3 video modes on my camera. Ones only appear bigger than the others because they were resized in accordance to their FOV, or effective CCD sample side.

Also, when you talk about mechanical shutter, I have a third test for you to do. Can you adjust shutter speeds in picture mode, and have a real difference in the blurring of the captured-on-pc video? On my camera you can...I have a bunch of snapshots up at my website http://robvideo.netfirms.com I am referring to that quote you took from Canon...if you can adjust the shutter speed...something more must be going on, correct?

Rob

Rob: I'm to the point where I say, "If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck!" With work, and 6 hours of wild fowl footage to edit down to one DVD I have to stop testing, and put what I've learned into practice. I enjoyed your web sight, and see you have done extensive testing into your camcorder and it's progressive scan possibilities, keep up the good work! I did look at my Optura and it has 60, 100, 250 shutter speeds in photo mode. All testing I did was on auto shutter. In conclusion, the results of my tests with my two consumer camcorders shows that they can take, what appears to be progressive scan video using the method outlined in my first post in this thread. I'm seeing no dropped frames, or duplicated frames at 29.97fps, it to all appearances is frame-based video without any interlacing. Now, the question of whether it is worth the effort needed to achieve this will have to be left up to each individual. For the great majority of people with consumer camcorders the answer is no.

In a thread started by Steve Nunez on the optura 300 the progressive scan (frame mode) video was similarly produced with that Canon camcorder. The discussion on that thread is very similar to this one.

Hmm,

this is something Rob and I have touched base on a couple of times on another forum. An interesting thing that happened a few weeks ago - I was running some tapes shot on my old JVC DVX8 camera - a 'true progressive' 1 chipper - (had it written on the side and everything). When I ran them through my DV3000 - a JVC with the enigmatic 'D.Wide' mode - a little "PS" showed up in the viewfinder - stating that the camera recognised and was playing back 25p footage just fine. However, when you record something in the D.Wide mode - it doesn't show this "PS" in the viewfinder. What does this mean? Well, I don't know for sure. Either a) D.Wide is NOT progressive and some sort of 'Frame mode' or b) the Camera recognises footage shot in d.wide and just doesn't need to tell you it's progressive. The look and motion signature of the footage is identical by the way - between my old cam's (true) progressive footage and the d.wide on the 3K - no difference to look at whatsoever.

Anyway, thought I'd add this for yuks...

Best,

DW.

Oh, and another thing,

the image will be slightly different coming off 'still' mode than off the video mode as they use two different filters. I think, (from my observations) that the 'still' mode is slightly 'harder' i.e. a little more contrasty with more edge enhancement than the video mode, which to me appears a little 'softer'.

best,

DW.

I have just come across this thread and have some more input. I have a PV-DV851 (same feature set as the 901 -3.5" LCD). The camcorder has a 1/4" megapixel (1200x900) CCD. I captured video using WinDV straight from the firewire port in both the SD card mode (which has progressive photoshot), and regular tape mode. The stuff in the card mode shows no signs of interlacing and is pretty, although I don't know if I'd lug around a laptop just to record in "progressive" (could get a firewire HDD recorder).

What really gets me thinking, though, is that at the widest lense setting (lowest zoom) the pixel count can change in camera. I captured video in the SD card mode set first at 640x480 (same pixel count as DVtape), but then boosted the the pixel count in camera to 1200x900. The lense provided a wider field of view naturally because the entire CCD was being utilized (the rest is usually just saved for EIS and sharpening in tape mode). I was using WinDV to capture, so the video was captured at 720x480 no matter what mode the camera was in. Here's the kicker... with the new HDV spec being accepted by all the updated NLEs, could we somehow set them to capture AVI at this higher pixel count 1200x900, thereby getting HD in AVI format?

Just running with that idea...(well, why the hell not?)

what about those NLE apps that can do - (or soon will) DVCPRO 50 through firewire? FCP and Avid XpressPro. Couldn't you just hook up the camera via 1394 and record straight to the 4:2:2 uncompressed format? I could be way off here but hey, it's a thought...

D.

I'm wondering if the camcorder is actually outputting the signal at 1200x900, or if it is being downconverted to a normal DV25 spec. In the photo mode, the camcorder definitely records stills to the SD card at the higher resolution, but once that signal goes through firewire...who knows? All we need is a capture program that could capture at a higher resolution to test this. Does anybody know of such a program?

Yeah, I dunno about this.

There are other (read: smarter and more knowledgeable) guys lurking on this forum that would best be able to answer these types of questions. I seem to remember something about a video signal transferred via Firewire is both interlaced AND compressed at 5.1 PAL/NTSC. Then on the other hand you hear about uncompressed being shot thru FW800 and (again) DVCPRO50 going through standard FW to FCP and (soon) AvidXpressPro. I don't know if it's a case of the 'receiving' software being critical - or the FW protocol. Makes you salivate just dreaming about the possibilities..

best,

D.

Where are these other members who know better than us? Don't we all want cheap HD? Anybody that knows about this stuff please reply. All we need is a capture program to test higher res DV captures. I can try to find something like Photoshop and see if I can grab a still from the incoming firewire signal, and then check its resolution...it's a stretch, but...

Hi fiery Jesse,

I D/L the mainconcept dvcpro50 codec demo which I will run into PremPro and see if I can capture 4:2:2 dvcpro. It's supposed to work with any directshow supported NLE. We'll see. I'm thinking that looking at the file size will give me an idea if it's capturing dvcpro50 through firewire - i.e they will be bigger than the standard dv of the same duration.

Although, this is still not anything like HD - it's stll sd frame sizes just a different datarate and less compression. I still have the irritating feeling that it'll be (for me) 720 x 576 and not a larger frame size - 'cos the fw output is substantially down the image chain from the chips - which are capturing the larger resolution. I think only a mod like "the incredible Juan" is doing on the DVX-100 is going to actually pull the larger frame size off the chip/s. They don't engineer these things to be easily tampered with and modified. It's not in their best interests...

I'll let you know my findings.

Best,

DW.

Another alternative is to test the analogue output from the camera into an analogue capture card/uncompressed deck. You could dictate the frame size in your nle in setting up your project and then capture away. Not sure if it will go thru the same hoops as when the signal comes down firewire. I just don't know enough about this stuff.

Okay so that was a big non-event.

I don't even think I got the codec recognised as being able to be used - certainly not for capturing DVCPro50. Maybe it has to be a distincly DVCPro50 stream if there is such a thing - and only then will it be recognised.

Anyway, a couple of distinctions - clearly capturing the live output from the fw port results in no greater image size - as I suspected, the image/signal has already gone through all of its compression/resizing etc. before it ever gets to the port so that's that. Goes back to what i said before - only a mod like the "Juan and only" is building to grab the signal off the chips that is going to change anything.

On the upside, I had a really good look at the difference between the two filters the camera uses for the 'still' mode and the video (D.Wide) mode. They both provide the same FOV - i.e. use the entire chip area BUT (and this was a surprise to me) the image from the video mode is definitely softer and IMO not as good as that in 'still' mode. There is a lot more detail when running in the photo capture mode. It is a little 'harder' as I alluded to before - but in terms of retaining detail, I think it's actually better than the video mode.

You'd have to experiment with your particular camera but it would be little hassle to connect something like a Quickstream DV disc to the camera in still capture mode and record the signal directly thru firewire - for what I can see as a better image than that ending up on the Minidv tape. And of course there's the 'progressive' image signature thing happening aswell.

Best,

DW.