Finally! CCD specs and DSP released!

Emanuel said:
OK Bob!

Can we presume in non-technical terms from those numbers...

LINK1


LINK2


...the confirmed exact numbers are:

960 x 540 = 518400 [x2=] 1036800

Am I wrong?


You are correct, my calculator also says, 1,036,800 unique points for pixels.

So, the T-Shirt should read, "I bought an HD Camera an all I got was 1,036,800 unique points for pixels!" :)

What can I say, Steve's model was correct and mine was off. :crybaby:

Steve ---> :nads: <--- Bob


Oh well, you can't win them all...


Bob Diaz
 
:dankk2: Bob!

BobDiaz said:
What can I say, Steve's model was correct and mine was off. :crybaby:

Steve ---> :nads: <--- Bob


Oh well, you can't win them all...


Bob Diaz
Amusing smiles that Jarred gave us to play, BTW fair play Professor! Our dvxuser.com Professor. One of the best last Jarred's recruitments. Lucky guy... You are a value-add...:Drogar-Thinking(DBG...in Europe he should pay VAT...:furious3:
 
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dhffhd said:
Maybe it's just the gin and tonic talking, but if Panasonic is just using some fancy schmancy computer software to uprez the 540 chip, why can't an average joe like myself shoot on the DVX, and if the finished product strikes a chord and gets some interest, use fancy schmancy computer software, after the fact, to uprez the finished product.

Well, there's compression in there; that's the rub. You can do a lot more interesting stuff when playing with the raw output of the CCD than when trying to play with DV-compressed footage.

Basically, any modification to the signal can't be undone. So you can't even do as much with an uncompressed image as you can with the raw CCD info; and you can do even less with compressed footage.

The Andromeda approach is sort of what you're talking about - I don't know what format exactly you capture from the thing, but you have to use their fancy-schmancy software to turn it into an image. I don't know if the Andromeda still lets you record to DV tape at the same time... but if it does, that's your dream come true...?
 
ullanta said:
Huffman coding? Are you serious? Not at all a useful compression for video acquisition... certainly not the best!

I'm very serious. Lossless huffman on bonzaidrive and other implementations works beautifully. What would the best be in your opinion? A lossy format?
 
BobDiaz said:
This means that every scan line of 1080 receives new color information.


So, don't use Blue Screen, use Green screen for the full 4:2:2 color.

This does not work Bob. What you are keying contains all possible colors. The detail of these colors is still spead over a 2 pixel block. You can get what you call transition, by resampling in post or simply smoothing by filtering.
 
limo991 said:
I'm very serious. Lossless huffman on bonzaidrive and other implementations works beautifully. What would the best be in your opinion? A lossy format?


No, not lossy, but a better lossless algorithm. Huffman requires precise a-priori knowledge about distribution of data to be effective, and thus requires too many passes through the data to determine optimum data block size and such... Yuck! And the unique prefix requirement is at odds with optimal compression. There's plenty of better ways to losslessly compress!
 
Neil Rowe said:
could depend your keyer and settings. it works out beautiful for me here.
The chroma blockiness is an artifact coming straight from the camera. It can be seen without keying. Although the HVX outputs a 4:2:2 signal, the CCDs are generating an image that's visually somewhere between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0.

But more to the point, people can get good keys despite the HVX's inherent chroma blockiness. A lot of good keying software can now blur the chroma channels to overcome the sampling issues of 4:1:1 and 4:2:0. (This is an issue Philip Williams and I did a fair bit of research on in early 2000.)
 
Neopics said:
The chroma blockiness is an artifact coming straight from the camera. It can be seen without keying. Although the HVX outputs a 4:2:2 signal, the CCDs are generating an image that's visually somewhere between 4:2:2 and 4:2:0.

But more to the point, people can get good keys despite the HVX's inherent chroma blockiness. A lot of good keying software can now blur the chroma channels to overcome the sampling issues of 4:1:1 and 4:2:0. (This is an issue Philip Williams and I did a fair bit of research on in early 2000.)


I think you have sait it the best way; the HVX's 4:2:2 sits between a full 4:2:2 and 4:2:0. On the edge of a red card over a greenscreen, one scan line down from the green pixel, there is a red pixel, but not a a green pixel. It is additional color information, but not the full color information.


Bob Diaz
 
haha, guys, i'm sorta late jumping back into this thread. just wanted to say that i just patented my quote, so if you suckas are going to make any bumper stickers or t-shirts, i require atleast 15% of the profit.....

but seriously, with all this technical mumbo jumbo, pixels HAVE to kiss my ass. only because i have no idea what any of this stuff means, lol. i just use the camera, i don't give a crap what the resolution is. it's a matter of how you use the equipment to it's best ability, in my opinion that is.
 
It is generally accepted that 4:2:2 is better than 4:2:0, yes. And 4:2:2 is better than 4:1:1.

But 4:2:0 and 4:1:1 are fairly equivalent to each other. Both reduce chroma to 1/4 the luma res; 4:1:1 does it by giving a new chroma sample every line, and each sample is 4 pixels wide (so 4x1); 4:2:0 gives a new chroma sample every other line, and each sample is 2 pixels wide and 2 pixels tall (2x2).

In interlace mode 4:2:0 is, as Graeme Nattress calls it, "ghastly." In progressive it works well.

You can see comparative examples of 4:2:2 vs. 4:2:0 vs. 4:1:1 at http://www.eleventy.org/dv-en/index.php?actie=resultaat
 
BobDiaz said:
Looking in the vertical direction the pixels would be as follows:

Scan line 1, Green Pixel goes for 2 lines down
Scan line 2, Blue and Red Pixels goes for 2 lines down
Scan line 3, Green Pixel goes for 2 lines down
Scan line 4, Blue and Red Pixels goes for 2 lines down
...
Scan line 1079, Green Pixel goes for 2 lines down
Scan line 1080, Blue and Red Pixels goes for 2 lines down
​
While we have 540 green scan lines of pixels, it's easy to forget that we also have 540 red and blue scan lines of pixels OFFSET BY 1/2 a CCD pixel. This means that every scan line of 1080 receives new color information.

Thus, a green screen clip would be OK and 4:2:2, because in the vertical direction there is new color information. There are three cases that can be made here:

(1) Green - Red or Red - Green: New color infromation is found on every scan line.
(2) Green - Blue or Blue - Green: New color information is found on every scan line.
(3) Blue - Red or Red - Blue: New color information is found on EVERY OTHER SCAN LINE.

So, don't use Blue Screen, use Green screen for the full 4:2:2 color.

Bob Diaz


A few questions and thoughts with response to the CCD specs:


Is this post by Bob Dias (quoted above) correct?

Will a BLUE SCREEN shoot create a lesser quality of chroma-keying?
I tend to use both green and blue screens (depending on the colors of the foreground subject) and was planning to use blue screen in outdoor scenes for keying purposes.

For a narrative project with a film-out delivery, will I be better off using the XL-H1 (for the additional resolution?

When using HVX200 will there be a noticeable difference between keying Blue-screen footage vs. Green-screen footage?
 
Barry_Green said:
You can see comparative examples of 4:2:2 vs. 4:2:0 vs. 4:1:1 at http://www.eleventy.org/dv-en/index.php?actie=resultaat
What you actually see there is "A quality comparison between DV-25Mbps and DV-50Mbps " to quote the website directly. Hence the difference between the posted examples is down to far more than colour space. The 4:2:2 samples benefit from double the bit rate compared to the others, and far lower overall compression. It is not possible to say on the basis of these results how much the improvement is due to 4:2:2, and how much to other factors - like is not being compared with like.

If 4:2:2 was employed within a 25 Mbit system, it would lead to greater compression being necessary generally to cope with the increased no of samples (33% more, relative to 4:2:0 and 4:1:1). It would be interesting to see how the relative samples compared then.

I will agree DVC PRO 50 gives superior results to DV25. I don't agree it's all down to colourspace.
 
harddrive said:
I will agree DVC PRO 50 gives superior results to DV25. I don't agree it's all down to colourspace.

I've done more than a few PAL DVDs from Digibeta (4:2:2), at first I was acquiring as 4:2:2 and chewing up a lot of disk space. Then I tried just using the DV25 via 1394 from the J30s and to be honest one really couldn't pick the difference once it was encoded for DVD. I'd imagine though that if the comparison was starting from NSTCs 4:1:1 then the difference would be noticeable.

I wasn't doing anything to the footage though, all editing, FXs etc were done at 4:2:2
 
David Jimerson said:
OK, Neil . . . now that you've played with it for long enough . . .

Is it an HD DVX?

well, yes...and no. at a glance, it surpasses the DVX in terms of lattitude and dynamic range, and it has SO MANY MORE features...some hidden like the better signal processing and such. but the P2 workflow is by far the coolest thing. its definitely HD though. simply crazy definition compared to the DVX. plus the longer zoom, and well, i could go on for a while. but ill just say that i love the thing and if youve shot DVX youll feel right at home with it, but youll also feel like youve just stepped up to a much higher level, and opened up a whole new world of seemingly endless possibilities with the cam. i cant say that ive even swithced the thing into any SD mode once since ive had it.. and tape? hahaha.. yeah right. that would be like running a race car off of butter. what can i say. its a little dream cam with an affordable price tag. if you want to make motion pictures that can stand up image wise in the theatre then this thing can take you there. im sure i sound a little excited, but quite honestly.. i am.
 
color sampling models

color sampling models

Here is the output of a matlab model of color sampling. It is for UNCOMPRESSED since it does not simulate compression. The models involve smoothed chroma. So, this is the theoretical maximum capability of color sampling. The model was run on a PAL test chart. This chart has color bars with single and double pixel lines which really show what we loose in chroma with sampling. This model represents progressive quality.

4:4:4 http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/1424/palcolorchart4449xl.png

4:2:2 http://img528.imageshack.us/img528/8349/palcolorchart4222vr.png

4:2:0 http://img457.imageshack.us/img457/378/palcolorchart4202sd.png

4:1:1 http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/7529/palcolorchart4117jd.png

The actual data size is:

4:4:4 100%, 4:2:2 67%, 4:2:0 and 4:1:1 50%. This practically means that a codec of same compression (quality) would have to use 2x the data rate to jump from 4:1:1 to 4:4:4.
 
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