4:4:4 10bit single CMOS HD project

[James Ball]

Obin,

I just hadn't seen what you intended to use, sorry to be off topic. It's just that others here on the boards are very cryptic about their hardware.

I'm sure they have their reasons, but the projects here that have done best have been the ones that are the most open. ie. all the 35mm to DV adapter ideas.


Les,

This boarad really has it's share of attitude... and experts. No one here is an expert. We're all dabbling. It hardly seems fit to call the uninformed kooks.

Eat the hay spit out the sticks.

What the guys over at AJA HAVE DONE is to take a signal off the CCD board with the Model HD10A - HDTV 10-bit Analog to Digital Converter. http://www.aja.com/hd10a.htm

Anyone can do this, it isn't rocket science. The signals all still go to the tape transport so you can record in uncompressed video with the AJA and onto tape with mpeg2 compression. You would also be able to tape the audio in this way.

The camera is controlled just as before. Either of the JVC HD prosumer cameras will work.

The real question is how do you have all this crap: a laptop and hot swappable HDDs hanging off your camera and still use it. Some have integrated these all together and this board isn't the first to introduce this novel idea.

I'll try to post the link to a site on Monday where a guy took an existing PAL 3 chip box camera, and captured the signal off the main board streight to HDD. Not what we want but a forerunner.

LEGOs,

Building a camera system IS a bit like LEGOs. Every subsystem in a camera is rather self contained. Optics|CCD with supporting electronics| video recording. The specs on each subsystem really is determined by what you can afford, does it "go" together (ie doesn't do much good to put Zeiss optics with a low rez CCD), does it exist.

Sure, the big boys have integrated the subsystems. Much to the dislike of many. The problem with most prosumer cameras is that they are integrated in order to make them "consumer friendly"

For example, they make the aperture and shutter controlled by the firmware only. Not where you have access to BOTH the aperture and the shutter speed at the same time.

Integration BAD. Manual Good.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=25705

the above thread shows where some others have been already with real working cameras.

[Les Dit]

I looked at the ada link you posted, but all I see is a converter that takes analog inputs from the JVC and converts that to SDI or whatever. Unfortunately, the analog coming from the camera is already 'chopped' in the dynamic range, as in the whites and blacks being clipped. Whats the point of that?
so,

Is there a different link to the development that takes the 10 bit digitized ccd signal from the JVC chip and presents that to the outside world?

The reason JVC left out the full manual controls,btw, is to cripple the camera a bit. It's intentional, and not a result of the integration or design limitations. It's a bit frustrating that the JVC has a bunch of still camera functions built in, which surely takes up quite a bit of firmware code, and no manual controls, and no zebra stripes on the viewfinder. It's all marketing.
I hope a grass roots raw digital camera knock them off there tightly controlled market pedestal!

-Les

[Obin Olson]

guys here is the problem, untill I find someone who writes CODE I am stuck...this camera outputs NOTHING like VIDEO or any SMPTE standard, it outputs FRAMES..so untill I find someone who can write a program that fits on some standalone board that will take the "frame" info and turn it into "video" for somthing like the AJA to "capture" I will have to use the computer with cameralink software...anyone have an idea who could help build such a subsystem?

what needs to be done:

cameralink output needs to turn into "video"

and cameralink control needs to work with something besides a computer...a standalone device...

[Les Dit]

Why do you want 'video' ?
With more than 8 bits ( the whole reason to do this ? ) you want frames anyway. Feature films are finished with frames as a digital source, not video.
-Les

[Jason Rodriguez]

I'll have to agree with this one. Turning the cameralink data into video kind of ruins the who reason for recording on such a high-output device.

BTW, you wouldn't happen to have any frame-grabs that we can see the quality of the camera with?

[Obin Olson]

glad to hear that...but I do need "video" for a monitor out don't I?

I don't have a problem with frames BUT I need some sort of semi-realtime way to compress the frames for storage..I may be shooting a Feature with this camera soon if all goes well I and am wondering how in the world I'm going to deal with all the footage!

[Obin Olson]

There are two kids of tracking 2D and 3D. 2D is independent of the optics/CCD configuration so no problems there.

um what about 3d tracking when you have to set the lens and film-back size? how will I deal with this when I am shooting with a 16mm lens and a 1/2inch chip with crop??

[Wayne Morellini]

I too would like to see the AJA link on the HD10 stuff?

Now about programming a board to do what you want. A programmer/engineering from the video/camera sector would be best, as thy would know all the format requirements and technicals. But if you look through the threads in alternative imaging for homemade viper, Direct to disk for DVX 100, and my Homemade camera thead you find links to people who have done simualr work, andc an see what they used to do it.

I shouldn't mention this, but JVC used the Toas Intent VOS for the GRDV3000 (for the firmware I think), and so I wouldn't be surprised if they used it for the HD10, a bit of study, and lots of research (parts, circuits, and memory map), reverse engineering and you should be able to reprogram it.

http://tao-group.com/

Notice the DV3000:

http://tao-group.com/solutions/solutions.php

Here the DV3000. is shown running a game or something (I don't know exactly what it is haven't read it all):

http://withintent.biz/index2.php?Cat=7

It's list of partner links tells everything:

http://tao-group.com/partner_links/partner_links.php

Actually, if you could reprogram the DV3000, it might be possible to produce a close to 720i signal direct to disk off of it (with 5 lux lowlux), assuming most of the pixels were available to download live, and reprogram it's manual controlls. What's a secondhand DV3000 going for now days?

[Obin Olson]

Wayne, do you know people that could do what I need?

[Wayne Morellini]

No, not at the moment. I'm pretty far out of it, If I spent a year I could catch up with the programming.

Ask at www.sourceforge.com forums, they do a lot of openware projects. You could also try hunting around on the pro video forums (and av forums) (advertise) for somebody in the video industry. Some of the engineers that do this sort of work must hang out somewhere (but most probably wouldn't even be interested in replying). Next there is newsgroups for variouse professions and catergories.

Go through the links in the other threads, there was a link to a Russian guy that did a complete camera project in Programmable Silicon, as an Openware design. Here it is:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2441343146.html

http://www.elphel.com/

There is more links in the home made camera thread. In Linux devices and Window devices, there are also many processing boards listed, and in that community you have many hardware oriented people.

A word of warning is that: probably only 1 in 10, or 1 in 20, programmers are good enough to do a good job, but fortunately there would be a lot more in those communities. 1% will probably be able to do a good job in machine code (which should yield even better results).

These are my best suggestions.

Just re-read your initial post, go to the homemade Viper thread, in this forum, and look up all the links I suggested there for PC components etc. Linux devices (and I assume Windows Devices) should have links to a number of compact PC products. I will continue to attend the Viper project, as it has more lattitude for 35mm SLR lense adaptor, but we can learn from each other heaps. Any suggestions for sensors, etc, could also be posted there.


Thanks

Wayne.

[Rob Hester]

Wayne, if you have seen my other millions of posts about my camera, you'd know how exited I am to have read your post. Do you have ANY more information about this? I'd REALLY like to look into this some more and I bet a few other 3000U owners would too.

In my father's photography magazines I saw the 3000U going for $609, but that was a few months ago.

Thanks,
Rob

[Obin Olson]

thanks to someone on this list I just found a company that makes a camera with a cmos chip that is global shutter AND is 12mm x 15mm, it's the new Micron chip. I think it will work for what I am doing alot better then the 1/2inch chip I ordered .... James what is the size of 35mm film? if this chip is big enough I could put it in a camera with 35mm lenses! that would be WAY cool ;)

[Rob Hester]

About Wayne Morellini's programming ideas

Here is a piece of software for Linux which codes with Tao's Intent RTOS, as he says is on the 3000U and possibly HD10. Maybe this will be of some use to someone?

"Codewarrior"
http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/download/default.asp

Rob

[Wayne Morellini]

The "What's a secondhand DV3000 going for now days?" comment was a bit of a throw away jest. It would take a very long time to do (a year+) unless you were a professional programmer in this particular feild. There are also other limiters I should have gone into, the CCD maybe bandwidth limited to stop the whole frame from being taken off the chip more than a few FPS, or there is no mode at all for video greater than DV spec. The results are going to be worse than the HD-1 in some ways, the firewire interface might be limited to 100Mb/s rather than 400Mb/s, the on chip processor would not be able to cmpress to any great degree (thats is, if it can be reprogrammed to a ew compression format, at all, could be hardwired in to DV codec). All this stuf is done deliberately to stop ypu from doing what I suggested. Like is complex, unless you make it simple to begin with. So unless your an expert camera firmware programmer/designer, or have a year and programming and electronic debugging expertise, then unfortunately it is a bit of "Pie in the Sky" idea, but I mention it to get people thinking, and in case there is a certain someboy out there with the right skills to do it. Still Juans Pana 100 poject, might be smpler to adapt to the 3000, then doing the above.

Codewarrior is supposed to be a good environment. That did look like a 3D FPS game, on the 3000's screen.

[Richard Mellor]

hi everyone

I found this link to the camera http://www.k3camera.com/k3/dis.stm