DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

D

deepfreezevideo

New member
I recently heard that people are now patching
uncompressed hard disk arrays into the new DVX-100 camcorders at the first stage analog to digital conversion circuitry and I wanted to know if anyone else has heard of this
being done and the basic how to's involved.

I have seen firsthand what the uncompressed output
of a Thomson Viper Filmstream camera looks like, and now that I hear it is being attempted with a prosumer camcorder my interest is very piqued.

I am willing to bet that the improvement is on an
order of the "nth magnitude" better than the NTSC-DV output.

JeffH
Ch.S.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

Okay, this thread at dvinfo is huge but it pertains exactly to your question.

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20332

I would hope that someone could break this down in plain English so that I could understand what it takes to do this / if the footage can be edited in NLEs and what the storage necessities are. Any specific information would really help.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

I just finished reading about 40 pages of it and it DOES have the capability to work with super fast SATA arrays or even single drives. Edit programs like FCP, Premiere Pro, AVID and AE are resolution agnostic and it just boils down to a question of "horsepower".

JeffH
Ch.S.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

okay I just read/browsed through all 79 pages and it is pretty amazing what he is doing; for those who haven't read through the entire thread he is modifying his dvx to output raw video from the ccds either to a firewire800 hard drive or to a pc. it looks like he will have a web site up shortly with the cost and specific information; it also looks like he will do the adaptation for you and that an xl2 version will be available.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

Out of the box, your DVX100 gives you 5:1 compressed DV video, whether you record it on tapes or a whoppin' RAID array. You will NOT see any quality difference, except for the possibility of avoiding tape dropouts if your tape is flakey, and your RAID array is ultra-dependable.

Hacking the DVX to feed you an uncompressed video stream from the CCD is a whole other beast, and I don't know much about that side of the equation. However, remember, that if you bypass the electronics of the camera, you are forgoing Panasonic's fantastic Cinegamma processing. And folks, the Cinegamma in the DVX100 is probably the same as that which is used in Panasonic's high-end cameras.

On the other hand, you are getting as pure of a signal as one can get from the CCD, which I'm sure is not being completely challenged by the DVX100 electronics.

I'd have to see some real-world results which demonstrate that bypassing the electronics is worth the effort.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

read the thread they have some very big tiff files, straight from the camera 4:4:4 uncompressed @ 12 bits (i think, from memory), its almost finilized, i saw a picture of the mod "box" attached to the bottom of the DVX (if i remember correctly).
With that much raw data, i also read in the article that the raw pictures gained about 1/2 to 1 wholes stops, anyway very intersting stuff go read!
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

The stop increase is many times larger than that. In fact its makes such a incredible difference its reason enough to shoot uncompressed (or at least "lossless") even if dont plan on doing heavy color correction or going to film. Theres also a "apparent" increase in resolution when you do uncompressed.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

I saw the TIFF pic they posted, supposedly a grab direct from the uncompressed 4:4:4 and i was not impressed. i have seen better grabs here. besides I would wait until someone do some practical comparisons between the 4:1:1 and the "4:4:4" mod they claim they have worked on.
 
Re: DVX-100 direct to uncompressed??

If you have the disk space and computing power available to be able to USE the 4:4:4 footage, why not rent a varicam? ::)
 
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