4:4:4 12-bit Uncompressed DVX100

[Randall Larsen]

Juan and Listmembers,

Can you tell us which model of the Altera Apex 20K is used? Is it the 208 pin package. What is the package type?

Ironwood electronics makes probing adapters and prototyping adapters for altera devices but you have to know exactly what device and what package to order.

http://www.ironwoodelectronics.com/catalog/indexes/main.cfm?ID=30&ProcessID=11

I assume the probing type adaptor is what is needed.

I am also wondering if the Altera Device is in the same package in my DVX100A vs. DVX100?

Can the 10bit/12 bit processed video be accessed from the same clip on adaptor or are those signals on another device?

[Juan P. Pertierra]

Just an update,

I've found a way to correct for the shift, i'm now trying to fix a bug which causes the corrections to cease after a few frames at the beginning of the clip. I think i know where the problem is, but the code is getting pretty large so it just takes debugging...

Randall:
If i remember correctly it is the 208 pin type. However there are unsurpassable problems to using that probe, as you will find...

Cheers,
Juan

[Randall Larsen]

Juan,

Sounds like you are making rapid progress on the software side.

Are you coding in C?

I looked around a little more for probes. What do you think of

http://www.winslowadaptics.com/uk/clip1c.asp

Where would the capacitor be placed?

The picture makes it look like this probe is too big to fit in the camera case. Perhaps a cable could be made that connects to
clip pin assembly.

Tapping on to the Altera chip, what sort of glue will you need to take the raw data into the TI firewire chip?

When you post the clip, you could say "one small step
for an engineer, one giant leap for the creative community."

[Randall Larsen]

Juan and Listmembers,

Does anyone have a service manual and schematics for the DVX100 or DVX100a? Are the service manuals hard to obtain?

I am just thinking ahead to when you might like to tap into processed video.

[Randall Larsen]

Juan,

Here is another site with the Delta Clip chip adaptors. A flex ribbon cable out looks like it would work.

http://www.adapters.com/catalog/test_clips.pdf

[Juan P. Pertierra]

Doesn't work and costs well over $2000.

[Juan P. Pertierra]

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

[Randall Larsen]

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.

[Randall Larsen]

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?

[Juan P. Pertierra]

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

[Obin Olson]

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!

[Jon Yurek]

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)?

[Les Dit]

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

[Juan P. Pertierra]

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

[Les Dit]

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

-Les