Hidden service menus?

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Ken Hodson

Anyway you could be of help by remembering and reposting the info or a least providing us with a link?

Sorry, I was going on a trip when I posted, and I have just got back, and am going out again, and have much to do for a while. Use search on my threads in Alternative imaging forum here. and look though the JVC HD forums over at www.Camcorderinfo.com there have been people posting there. The link posted here is to the French site, but one of those people is at camcorderinfo, and another with the separate project adjusting PD1. I wish you luck, I am not interested in the old JVC's rather wait to see new JVC's (or HC1). Any news on the PD1/HD1/HD10 replacement (the model under the HD100)?

Re-edit:

Just looked at updated repair net link, and yes, Looks like both mentioned there, and Leo is one of the people I meant.

[Ken Hodson]

Thanks. I had already searched and found the threads.

[Leo Bodnar]

OK, after few days of trawling the eeprom data I have finally found the parameter that controls the sharpening itself. Originally I was altering some colour values that seems to have been bringing the contrast down therefore reducing the amount of edge enhancement but it was still there around bright lights, contrasty edges, etc. The drawback was that it has thrown the colours off.

Now I have finally found the way to actually switch the sharpening off. In fact there are two independent sharpenings: vertical and horizontal. Each of them can be smoothly controlled from total off to total on, producing horrible oversharpened image. Default settings are at about 200 steps out of total 64K.

Have a look at the two B&W frame grabs at the bottom of the page:
http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/video/

Softer image has sharpening completely turned off. I seem to like it more.

I can now move on to finding HD1 to play with. :)

If somebody can send me an eeprom image of HD1 or HD10 it would help the process a lot, however this would require a cable which is a pain to make (or buy.)

Do you, guys, think it is worth spending time on it or HD10/HD1/PD1 are gone out of active use?

[Ken Hodson]

Great work Leo. I personaly think this is a very worth while project. These cams are still the only HDV progressive cams on the market, and soon to be the only models under $6000 USD. The HD1 has become quite the bargin especially in the used market, Ebay ect.. and getting rid of the EE will make that cam a steal!
I will do my best to get the eeprom image.

[Allen Lu]

Question on the cable needed for the HD1 to get to the eeprom, is it the same one as the one for JVC's DV cams?

I agree with Ken that the HD1 is a bargain once these edge enhancement and sharpening can be turned down or off.

Please continue the efforts, Leo.

[Xander Christ]

Leo - it's good to have you on board!!! You are definitely going to be an asset on this hacking project.

I took a brief look at the new images you posted with the enhancement turned off. Now, I understand why JVC decided to leave it on. The image with no EE looks like "soft focus". The HD10U is a bitch to focus on the low-res viewfinder and LCD screen, so JVC must've done the EE to make focusing manually easier (I always knew focus was good when I saw the EE). But I do concur that it has a very film-esque look to it which I think is what this group is after. The black and white image reminds me of the softness of Canon's XL-1 and 1s.

Allen - to dump the EEPROM, the JLIP service cable posted on pagina.vizzavi.pt needs to be used. The regular JLIP cables don't work (or at least they didn't work for me). Use the JVC EEPROM Manager to download the ROM. I have been in contact with Paulo Ramos who wrote the JVCEM and am trying to get more info out of him.

I found out that JVC uses Tao Group's Elate RTOS to control their camcorders; page 70 of the HD10U's user manual states: "The Camcorder is a microcomputer-controlled device." It might be possible to program functionality into the camcorder since it's running an "operating system" on a microcontroller, not just a bunch of ASICs doing all the work. Anybody know how to get a copy of Elate without paying developer fees? And I don't mean "pirating" either... just a single user license for like $100 or something like that.

I'll be checking the thread every now-and-again, but I got a DP job coming up and have just been buried in preproduction crap and production is starting early August, so I probably won't be able to devote a whole lot to the thread and the ROM hack until late August or even September.

Keep the ball rolling!!! I think this thread might be organizing the talent needed to give us the HD camcorder we really wanted out of JVC.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Leo Bodnar

Do you, guys, think it is worth spending time on it or HD10/HD1/PD1 are gone out of active use?

Yes, when cheaper competitors are released the secondhand price should be much less. I understand the newer HD1's might have improved performance in their sensors.

Personal request, any information on the possibility of 24fps conversion, or enabling gain (the reason it is stuck at 35lux) or the manual controls?

Thanks

Wayne.

[Wayne Morellini]

Originally Posted by Xander Christ

Leo - it's good to have you on board!!! You are definitely going to be an asset on this hacking project.

I found out that JVC uses Tao Group's Elate RTOS to control their camcorders; page 70 of the HD10U's user manual states: "The Camcorder is a microcomputer-controlled device." It might be possible to program functionality into the camcorder since it's running an "operating system" on a microcontroller, not just a bunch of ASICs doing all the work. Anybody know how to get a copy of Elate without paying developer fees? And I don't mean "pirating" either... just a single user license for like $100 or something like that.
..

I wish it were so, more likely it is a customised version of Elate for the camcorders that is not compatible with most others (you could still probably get around this on another Elate development package, but likely to be time consuming to do anything elaborate). The Amiga software player is based on Elate, I think that is available for $100 development kit (www.Amiga.com).

The camera might still have functionality locked in ASIC chips, and Elate might do little more than run applications beside them. Look at the data sheets for the central third party DSP that runs the camera, if it allows programming, a programmers manual for it would be a good place to start. You can probably find it's name from the HD1 announcements.

Thanks

Wayne.

[Leo Bodnar]

Originally Posted by Xander Christ

Leo - it's good to have you on board!!! You are definitely going to be an asset on this hacking project.

I took a brief look at the new images you posted with the enhancement turned off. Now, I understand why JVC decided to leave it on. The image with no EE looks like "soft focus". The HD10U is a bitch to focus on the low-res viewfinder and LCD screen, so JVC must've done the EE to make focusing manually easier (I always knew focus was good when I saw the EE). But I do concur that it has a very film-esque look to it which I think is what this group is after. The black and white image reminds me of the softness of Canon's XL-1 and 1s.

Allen - to dump the EEPROM, the JLIP service cable posted on pagina.vizzavi.pt needs to be used. The regular JLIP cables don't work (or at least they didn't work for me). Use the JVC EEPROM Manager to download the ROM. I have been in contact with Paulo Ramos who wrote the JVCEM and am trying to get more info out of him.

I found out that JVC uses Tao Group's Elate RTOS to control their camcorders; page 70 of the HD10U's user manual states: "The Camcorder is a microcomputer-controlled device." It might be possible to program functionality into the camcorder since it's running an "operating system" on a microcontroller, not just a bunch of ASICs doing all the work. Anybody know how to get a copy of Elate without paying developer fees? And I don't mean "pirating" either... just a single user license for like $100 or something like that.

I'll be checking the thread every now-and-again, but I got a DP job coming up and have just been buried in preproduction crap and production is starting early August, so I probably won't be able to devote a whole lot to the thread and the ROM hack until late August or even September.

Keep the ball rolling!!! I think this thread might be organizing the talent needed to give us the HD camcorder we really wanted out of JVC.

Xander, I am glad we can pull the efforts together!

Softness: even taking CCD fuzziness out of equation you are still looking at the image produced by average quality lens on an area the size of few match-heads. I would compare the result to Super8. Anyway, it is much more convenient to increase the sharpness during postproduction if necessary. I am definitely happier with softer image. Again, some sensible degree of sharpening is OK but it will still show up as black contours around washed out areas like horizon or street lights. I will doublecheck if LCD image has the same softness as written on tape.

I am happy to reverse engineer the code if I could only extract it from the microcontroller (something I do for pleasure for years!) I feel they have two microcontrollers - main one with internal flash memory and mpeg chip with its software inside onboard flash chip. Again, so far we are only looking/playing around with the parameter memory, so to say .ini file for the camera, while its internal software is still completely unknown. There is a serial I2C protocol bus on the service connector (with a line called "Flash WR") but how do I use it?!

In theory I am not afraid to mess up EEPROM memory as I have its full copy and if needs be I can simply reprogram it back either in-circuit or having desoldered it off the board. If I mess up uC program flash memory, the camera will become a doorstop...

Anybody who has any ideas or hints, please speak up - let's move this forward!

I have tried to get JLIP protocol details from Paulo but he basically told me to go and find them myself. There are generic details of the protocol around but his software uses undocumented commands to switch into service mode. I also have service software for other JVC cameras (not for PD1/HD1) and it allows to read/write EEPROM too. I have logged serial protocol commands and it seems that Paulo and JVC software use slightly diffrent commands. JVC software also has some interesting features like monitoring live CCD sensor exposure matrix (6x6), focussing matrix and other useless stuff...

[Leo Bodnar]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

Personal request, any information on the possibility of 24fps conversion, or enabling gain (the reason it is stuck at 35lux) or the manual controls?

I have a feeling that there is no single switch that would enable NTSC/PAL or 24 operation. There could be literally hundreds of memory locations to adjust with time/pixels/frequency parameters. I can comment on the possibility after I will have compared PD1 and HD1 or HD10 EEPROM memory dumps (I have PD1.)

Service manuals show the only difference between the three models are in controller chip index (like 12345-A or 12345-B) however this could be simply due to a fact that naturally chip revisions move forward (service manuals are from different dates.) Again, it could be simply a reference to a preprogrammed chip contents. If chips can be re-flashed, one can simply be turned into the other.

[Leo Bodnar]

Originally Posted by Wayne Morellini

The camera might still have functionality locked in ASIC chips, and Elate might do little more than run applications beside them. Look at the data sheets for the central third party DSP that runs the camera, if it allows programming, a programmers manual for it would be a good place to start. You can probably find it's name from the HD1 announcements.

For GR-PD1 camera:

main controller: NEC uPD70F3038F1A34 (flash version)
DV processor: JCY0172 (304pin BGA)
main bridge: JCY0173
DSP: YQ44920A
super encoder: NLC0459APB
lots of smaller ASICs (firewire, usb, DACs, ADCs, LCD controllers, etc)

NEC 703038 is a good start as it should be a generic controller and seems to be an overall managing controller but I can't find any info on it. When I was hacking Nikon F90X I got all the hardware and user manuals for their NEC chip directly from NEC.

correction: I did find NEC info but I think I did not find details of their FLASH programming (we actually want to read the flash memory.)

[Heath McKnight]

Just an FYI, what you guys are doing may void your warranty, and we at DV Info Net strongly suggest against doing that.

Thanks,

Heath

[Xander Christ]

Thanks, Heath. A dose of reality is needed every once in a while. ;)

Everything expressed in this semi-public forum is merely for the adventurous and is not endorsed by JVC or dvinfo.net. Use your best judgement as no one is responsible for it other than yourself. Remember, modifications made to any hardware or software is at your own risk. Again, owners and members of this forum or other forums similar to this will not be responsible for your actions. If your warranty hasn't expired yet or you got one of those extended warranties, don't try mods at home. Mods are not guaranteed in any form or fashion by either the modder, information provider or the original manufacturer.

Anybody want some "hot coffee" with their PD1, HD1 or HD10U?

hehehe... we're just trying to enable the good stuff... hehehe...

;)

[Ken Hodson]

Lawyers and mothers. Ya just can't get away from them ;>)

[Heath McKnight]

Xander said it best. I will say one thing, someone tried to make his XL-1 24p, and after "slaughtering it," we didn't hear much. This is well before the XL-2.

heath