Get 9.5 Stops of dynamic range from your DVX100

Hello heisest,

Yes, we are still on schedule, the production units should be here in the first half of December. Upon arrival the Andromeda upgrade will be for sale on our website.

I'm sorry I can't give you an exact day yet. :)

Cheers,
Juan
 
It's actually due to hardware. Andromeda really pushes the limits of current USB architectures. Because of the numerous variations in PC designs, it would be very hard to test and see which systems are actually designed in such a way that they can keep up. Furthermore, a customized hardware driver would then need to be written for each system.

With Macs, not only is the USB architecture fast, but there are few models to test for compatibility. It is also unecessary to write customized low-level drivers.

It's not impossible to support PC, but mac was a logical choice to begin with, given these reasons.

Cheers,
Juan
 
Juan, do you know when you'll begin having some 10 or 12 bit images posted (if I remember correctly, this was being worked on).
 
Yes, we should have those up soon. I am currently optimizing the algorithms to use the Velocity Engine on the G4 and G5 processors, when that is done i'll post some 10-bit images.
 
Although my brain has been reduced to a smoking pile of rubble after reading through this thread, I managed to have the following thought: Why didn't Panasonic utilize the entire capacity of its CCDs? If I understand correctly, Andromeda essentially taps more of the gold in each vein, whereas Panny has the gold there, but doesn't mine it as effectively. Am I at least close in this analogy, Juan? If so, I wonder why Panny didn't. Barry? Jan? I'm assuming cost, but was just wonderin'...
 
As an engineer here is my best asessment of why:

This has nothing to do with Panasonic 'holding back', it has to do with the limitations imposed by the standards that cameras such as the DVX have to comply with.

For example, the miniDV codec is 8-bit YUV. Given this fact, you have to be careful how aggressive the encoding from the original RGB 12-bits is, because you can easily cause mach-banding artifacts.

There are NTSC/PAL standards for contrast ratios, gamma curves, etc. Panasonic has actually done a very good job of pushing these standards and even deviating from standard parameters(such as gamma cruves) to put more dynamic information on the format. However, these formats can only be pushed so far.

Remember, the raw output of sensors is format-less. With lossy compressed formats you ALWAYS make a compromise. This is the tradeoff for a smaller file. When you record all the data coming off the sensors and record it as is, you make no compromises in image quality, because you are obtaining all the information the hardware can generate.

To illustrate, DVCPROHD is 100Mbps always 60fps. When you record 24fps, this yields 40Mbps bandwidth. Andromeda records at 230Mbps in 24fps from the DVX100 sensors.

Hope this helps,
Juan
 
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