If you were trapped in a subway tunnel with seven other people, and you were determined to make a movie in the face of imminent death, what would you do? Maybe you'd build a tapeless camcorder using a security camera and some cardboard? Dan Vance, a sort of cinematic survivalist, has done just that: his homemade VC25P is a direct-to-disk progressive-scan PAL system optimized for DV-to-35mm transfer.

"I realized that there might be an opportunity to have a slight advantage over the thousands of other no-budget DV filmmakers by having a unique camera with a higher quality image. And I set out to see if I could achieve that."

Vance is a self-described "celluloid filmmaker turned engineer turned digital filmmaker." In the BRAINTRUSTdv interview, Vance explains how frame integration improves the quality of the digital image.

"Frame integration mode is a CCD timing technique that serves two main purposes: in scientific applications where a camera is used to track small particles, it increases the effective resolution of the camera, which allows for the tracking of smaller particles; in surveillance applications, it increases the low-light sensitivity of the camera. In frame integration mode, the exposure time is an even multiple of the field rate, so any moving objects exhibit pronounced motion blur. In the VC25P, the external shutter excludes half the light, eliminating the motion blur while preserving the image from two identical fields, resulting in a progressive scan image."

You don't have to be familiar with the technical intricacies of DV to be inspired by old-fashioned ingenuity. The story of the VC25P reminds us that the scope of human dreams need not be subject to the limitations of over-the-counter technology.

Read the Dan Vance interview at http://www.braintrustdv.com/interviews/ingenuity.html

This is some interesting stuff. Thanks for posting it.

You can see the evolution and some information on this guys
personal site here (http://home.teleport.com/%7egdi/vancecam.htm). It isn't too great looking though!

Funny aint it how just when you come up with an idea then you read about it the next day that some else has done what you where talking about the day before!!

(ok its not strictly the same but on the same principles)

DAMN EVERY IDEA I'VE EVER HAD......

Take a look at this old post of mine then you'll see what i'm talking about

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19471

seems like this guys been workin on this cam for a long while, so he probably had the idea wayyyyy back..

The idea of converting an interlaced CCD device to progressive
is interesting. I do find it a bit worrying that the digital signal
from the CCD's is being converted to analog component and
then re-digitized to DV, that's a bit odd. Also I'm wondering why
he is going through all this trouble when the final output format
is still DV25. He might have increased opticial resolution, but
there is only so much bandwidth in 25mbps DV @ SD resolution.

He talks alot about how "bad" normal DV camera's are, but he
doesn't talk at all about how this system turned out. Why no
screengrabs from the test shoots? I'd like to see some pictures
or RAW footage of the thing to see if it is really that great.

Another funny line is this:

" There are devices on the market that use an optical relay system to allow use of 35mm lenses on smaller format cameras while preserving the lens' depth of field, but a brief review of basic optics will reveal why this technique can't be considered for serious video-to-film work "

He seems to be talking about the mini35 adapter here...

> He might have increased opticial resolution,
> but there is only so much bandwidth in 25mbps
> DV @ SD resolution.

This got me thinking last night. As I understand it, DV25 uses no interframe compression but uses intrafield compression, so by going progressive, we should gain quality at the compression level, perhaps getting something as good as 60i@50mbps. I would like someone with more in-depth knowledge of the codecs involved to think about this... but it seems to me that this aspect of going proscan has been overlooked... My hypothesis is that not only are we getting a more 'film like' motion and eliminating artifacts due to interlacing, we are also making more efficient use of the DV codec. Comments anyone?