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?full=1&set_albumName=album05&id=mx500_07&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php
Thanks to Guy Bruner for the cool site

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

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

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:In the US service manuals can be ordered from Canon, cost is on the order of US$55. To get one you may have to pass a gatekeeper that may ask you to sign a warranty waiver for any damage or alignment problem caused by attempting to repair or work on your unit.

The manual for the XL1, which I've seen, is very technical, does not cover all internal components and circuits, just the major ones, and would be useless to anyone but a knowledgeable technician with a bench of test equipment and specialized tools. If the XL1s manual is like the manuals for the old L2 and A1 series, it may build on the content earlier manuals by reference to them rather than reprinting material that is not changed from the XL1. The lens has a separate service manual

In the USA, start at 800-828-4040. Follow the prompts for parts if there is oneBob Deming says:I have the parts and service manual available. P/N DY8-1160-000;
# D16-0712 NTSC 1998 edition.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?

The Panasonic does not use the LANC protocol for camera and lens control. LANC is a Sony-owned protocol that must be licensed from Sony. So, no, Juan cannot just add that feature while he's in the camera's guts.

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Tanaka : The Panasonic does not use the LANC protocol for camera and lens control. LANC is a Sony-owned protocol that must be licensed from Sony. So, no, Juan cannot just add that feature while he's in the camera's guts. -->>>

Or if he could, he would be smart not to sell it. Sony might not like that too much.

-Rodger

The DVX has an "Aux" jack for remote operation but the protocol is very different from LANC anyway.

So the amnwer is no!!!!

just a querry!!! :)

Thanks

The chip-clip problem has been solved...:) I now have all signals probed with the camera closed, I am waiting on an adapter to interface the cable that comes out of the camera to either the logic analyzer or the capture board....it will be here monday.

one question...what do you guys think is acceptable as far as location for the external circuitry? Because of the way the camera is designed, there is NO WAY to get the signals out through any other place other than the bottom of the camera. The cable is a very thin flexible ribbon cable, so it will not prevent the camera being mounted on a tripod, but i'm wondering where the small box could be mounted....the box will be smaller than a box of cigarettes, it certainly can be made as small as a match box if my soldering skills can handle it.

Since the cable comes out through the plastic junction between the two shell halves, it can easily go either right or left, but there are no easy mounting points on either side...since one side houses the LCD which is movable, and the other is the handle....any ideas?

Juan

You could mount an extra box on the bottom, like the beachtech XLR adapters for the GL1, etc. That shouldn't be a problem. You'll just have to add a tripod mount to the bottom of your device so that can mesh nicely with a tripod.

Thanks for the suggestion, that makes things a whole lot easier. I was afraid I was going to have to route the ribbon cable somewhere else, but i didn't think about remounting the tripod on the bottom of the box.

Another question...i'm thinking about the interface part, and after doing some bandwidth tests i've come to possibilities.

1.The camera can have a Firewire 800 link to a desktop for recording. This is assuming you have a decent FW800 card and a fast hard drive. This approach could also be programmed to recognize a FW800 hard drive when attached directly, but is more complex than approach 2.

2.Mount an SATA drive directly on the camcorder. The drive would have to be removed and plugged into a computer to get the data off. With the highest quality data, a 160GB hard disk will give you 66 minutes. Of course, a possible problem would be powering a full size drive, so a smaller notebook drive might be the solution...i DO know that the new desktop drives can easily handle the bandwidth.

Juan

Approach 1 sure sound good.
A lot of flexibility:
You can connect to a desktop when in studio.
A lap-top (FW800 equiped) when on location.
And direct to a FW800 Drive when you don't have access to the above.
Can't ask for more, Why settle for less ?
Take Care

I think that having a drive on the camera is a good thing..makes it easy to shoot with! if you could program some sorta of enclosure for capturing the data on the drive or a "box" that knows how to "talk" with the drive and capture from the camera

Hi guys

If the hard drive is connected to the camera either way above i.e. number 1 or 2

How is record and stop going to function while recording and how are the files going to be named and created?

Thanks

Approach 2 won't work in a practical sense for a couple reasons:

1) if you're in the field, you're stuck, because right now there aren't any SATA interfaces on laptops-at least there are firewire 800 cardbus cards, and the powerbooks have built-in firewire 800

2) You're basically going to have to pull apart a PC to mount those drives. Plus you'll probably have to add another SATA card to the PCI bus since most computers that have SATA are using the bus for the current drives.

So in a practical sense, you'd be much better off using firewire 800. What you could do is make a firewire800 to SATA bridge board (if they exist) that would let you mount the SATA drives, but connect to others via firewire 800.

While approach 1 with programming to recognize a hard-drive when connected might be a bit more complicated, I think in the long-run it will pay off a lot more since it will be whole lot easier to use, and more practical in the field.

Just to add my two cents to this discussion. What about noise and vibration that will be generated from having a drive that close to the camera. I think the lap top scenario is the best bet.

SATA will work. My year old Gigabyte MB has external SATA connectors and the new SATA version includes detailed SATA external drive specifications.

A number of SATA card with external ports are floating about and external SATA enclosures for existing IDE drives are available.

firewire is the best option for me.

you can put any firewire storagedevice on it so it's more future adapt.

who knows when sata become's sata2 with a diverend protocol and/or conector

Michel

How about wireless USB 2?:

http://anandtech.com/showdoc.html?i=1981

USB 2.0 does not have the necessary bandwidth...unless I use two interfaces.

I consider the option of dual USB/FW a last resort, because it requires the target computer to have two separate USB/FW cards...not that they are extremely expensive, but just a last resort.

Juan

I still say firewire is the best bet. It's a good peer-to-peer protocol that doesn't require a computer as an intermediary. If you plan on using this mod in the field, and you're using SATA, I think you're going to start running into some big problems that firewire 800 could easily avoid.

If all you're planning on doing is using the camera mod for green screen on a sound stage, then sure, having a PC close-by is no problem. But in the field, having I think it would be easiest to simply hook up via firewire and go.

I was just joking about wireless USB, though the future standards that support 1000 Mb/s sound interesting.

But for this, I still like SATA because of the lower CPU utilization than firewire, less expensive and I'm sure it can be made PC less as well.

I'm not too sure about the "PC-less" part, because SATA was not designed as a peer-to-peer protocol, there is suppose to be a dedicated host (i.e. PC) on one end of the connection-which again will seriously screw people up who want to be on location without dragging an ATX case and a 120V generator around with them wherever they go.

I know virtually nothing about firewire 800. My main interest in this development of Juan's is the potential to get a DVCpro50 signal out of the DVX. Could there be options within this device for that, or would I need to just run the raw data out of the cam into a computer and convert it to DVCpro50 afterward?

It seems to me (and my limited hardware ninja knowledge) that firewire is the way to go.

Alternatively, here are some very fast, and cheap drives ... http://www.softwareandstuff.com/DRV10382.html

I aware that firewire is the current best option, but to support future higher bandwidths, I think SATA is an option.

SATA could easily be made PC-less via embedded firmware controllers, or even more interesting could pack a PC in the case http://www.flipstartpc.com

Having a full function XP/Linux/OSX machine with a SATA drive would only be slighty larger than the Flipstart and would open all sorts of options, from RAID (via Seagate's 2.5" drives, 10,000 RPM drives if they release a SATA version or 2.5" notebook SATA drives which will arrive this year) to easy editing and output to tape in the field on battery without a notebook.

I've used firewire drives on several systems and they are not ideally configured for speed. SATA is much faster on my system (i have had the same drives internal and external and the difference is dramatic. Firewire 800 does not solve the latency issues inherit in firewire from the reports I have seen (if you have firewire vs SATA benchmarks that prove otherwise, let me know).

So, for Juan current needs (and future HDV and HD data rates), SATA via 2.5" RAID drives seems like a great, portable, fast and low cost solution.

Stephen has some really good points...the whole reason why I am even considering SATA is because of implementing FW800 is harder, and as a matter of fact i haven't found any general-purpose transceiver yet...the only kind i've found is the one that interfaces to PCI, which is intended to work on a PC...if I use this, i have to implement a driver somehow.

One thing to note, however, is that there really isn't any need for upgradeability. I know, i know, usually these are famous last words...but the truth is because of the nature of the application there isn't. The raw data rate is constant, and it will never increase....it is the same data rate for all modes(60i,30p,24p), so as long as there is a system that can record at that rate, there is no point in making it record any faster...unless there is something I am missing?

I did some benchmark tests with my external LaCie 200GB FW drive, and it peaked at 67MB/sec in writing..i am unsure of whether this is continous or so. We need about 40MB/sec....

Another things to consider is that this is a one-way interface...so far we do not need the target computer/drive to send any info back other than control signals.

Juan

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra :
Another things to consider is that this is a one-way interface...so far we do not need the target computer/drive to send any info back other than control signals.

Juan -->>>

Kinda sounds like a 800 MPH rocket sled and the rider has no cut-off and no parachute to me.

If you have no redundant capture capabilities and no way to slow/pause the datastream, you better have a drive that has way more throughput then 40 Mb. Even a drive with a huge buffer could have problems unless the controller is smart enough to store data in an contiguous stream from shot to shot. Just a little to much seeking and any normal HD buffer will overflow at the 37 Mb or so transfer rate.

Maybe a raid system would have a better chance?

BTW - Glad you're making progress Juan. Just looking at some of the hurtles you may have to jump.

-Rodger

In addition to my previous posts I would like to point at FCP4´s direct support of uncompressed 4:2:2 YUV 10- or 8-bit signals - http://www.apple.com/finalcutpro/specs.html. For recording, a portable hard drive like for instance the Quickstream Dv should do, so there would be no need to re-invent the wheel.

That would be nice, but I don't think it's quite that simple...anything that is streamed through a cable to a computer/drive has to be controlled somehow...either packeted(fw,usb) or with control lines(RS-232,etc). I doubt you can just drop raw 4:2:2 through a cable and expect the drive to record it.

besides, we have the problem of frame size...most of these standards are NTSC frame size, and we want to be able to record the 771x494 the camera puts out, so i have to make my own standard.

I've been thinking long and hard about how to do this, and i've come across some possibilities...it seems one of the best ones is just to program an Altera array interface the data to PCI, which can then be hooked up to either a SATA or FW controller easily. I think as long as I can interface to PCI somehow, the best option is FW800, because then the Altera chip can be programmed to just stream the data if a drive is connected into a raw file. The file can be converted to any standard format(or unstandard 4:4:4 frames) using a simple program that i'll write.

Juan

<<<-- Originally posted by Juan P. Pertierra : we want to be able to record the 771x494 the camera puts out-->>>

Maybe it was discussed several pages back and I missed it (my apologies if so), but I would assume the raw image size to be AT LEAST as large as PAL on the vertical and horizontal, since afaik the PAL cameras usually share chips with NTSC cameras.. so i would expect the frame size to be at least 771x576.. no?

Also, i know it's 99% likely you have already thought of this, but please keep us XL1s (and other cam users) in mind, and make sure that this item can scale to other cameras if possible.. i.e. software/hardware drivers will be compatible with chips that may produce frames of 771+ or 576+ size ;)

Sorry if i mentioned anything that was already covered..

Adam,

Logically, that's what makes sense...however in practice, the frames ARE 771x494. I've been capturing continous frames for a while now, and i'm absolutely sure that is the res.(at least in 24p)

one thing i haven't tried is to switch between fine mode on and off....see if this has any effect on the raw resolution...however i'm pretty sure it is on fine mode 24P right now.

I am already capturing frames at 10-bit color...for now this is going to have to do because my capture card is 32bit and won't handle all 36 lines. Also, the $50k+ logic analyzer in my lab died so i can't use that(has 64 lines).

Right now I have one small glitch to get over: two of the connections are intermittent and causing some speckles in the image...i know how to fix it but I have 3 exams this week, so i'm going to attend to that first.

The images look fantastic but i'll let you guys be the judge once I upload some frames. Remember that these are going to be 10-bit color frames...the camera actually does 12-bit but my card doesn't have enough lines.

Juan

Hi Juan , I'm living in Quebec and I'm very interesting of your work , when you will be ready for pictures grab , it will be very intersting to have a 2 sec QT uncompressed file or a Targa sequence file that we can download to make some compositing or Color correction ; )
So if your DVx-100 modifications works
I will be interest to pay for it and I'm sure that a lot of people here will be.

Thank you