going to mod my cam like reel-stream

G

gkskrishn

Carbonite Member
I cant wait until reel-stream release their enlightening product!! but i can t wait. I think i know how andromeda went around tapping into DVX's full power. And i am going to engineer an uncompressed image out of my camera this weekend by opening up this bad boy!. I have a friend, who works at hp, said is willing to help me. wish me luck guys. !!! :thumbsup:
 
A hack for the hack? Now that's just good, sound thinking. Word of caution: please be aware of the CCD ribbon cable. They are frail and replacing one costs about as much as another camera, so be very, very careful.

Otherwise... well... Good Luck!
 
Hey guys I’m back--my friend and Me have made great progress!! We are getting a modded image out of the dvx!! The camera is still not fully assembled but we are getting an image that is very, very clear! it is amazing!
The only problem is that I scratched the lens a bit in the center when taking the camera apart, and it is totally visible!! I’m going to look around and put on a higher quality lens if found, if not I’ll just order the same from Panasonic somehow. But, other than that it totally works. I did comparisons with my mini –dv cassettes and the live feed on two different televisions and the results are very unbelievable. I still have to do a comparison with Obin’s footage with the mini35 to do comparisons. I’ll edit a short visual comparison of both the feed mini-dv cassette and the live CCD feed and post it later on this week if I have the time.


Cheers DVXers!
 
i wonder if users of other brands of cameras love thier cam so much that they trick it out. I think its cool that the DVX has such a strong user base that the owners are willing to create mods for it.
 
I too have considered modifying the DVX to output the raw CCD data stream. When I did an initial look at the mechanics of the camera, I came to the conclusion that it could be done, but there were some serious considerations as to the method used for intercepting the data. Another approach that I have considered is to rewrite the firmware within the camera to output the data on the existing 1394 interface. A downstream application would need to be written to capture and parse the data and save it (in real time) to an attached storage device. Through an industrial contact that I have, I obtained an application that can be used to both QC and service the camera. It contains the necessary hooks to a number of the internal subroutines that should make the task possible. What would make the task all the easier would be to get a fully commented set of the source code, however, as this is proprietary, I don't think that it would be easy to obtain. The advantage to a firmware rewrite approach would be that no modifications (other than a reflash) would be required and all that would be necessary to return the camera to its "stock" configuration would be to reinstall the original firmware. In essence, this could be a virtually zero cost (software only) solution.

I am wondering if there are any other EEs on this user group that would be interested in discussing the possibility of a joint effort. It’s probably a bigger job than I would want to tackle solo. Obviously machine level coding skills would be required as well as a decent background in mixed topology architecture. If anyone else has gone down this path and are willing to share, I would be interested to learn how far they have gotten.
 
Sorry to hear about your lens.

But that brings up a question a friend once asked me. I asked this before, and I believe I never read anything about why you could or could not to it.

My friends question is "why hasn't someone made an adapter that just replaces the lens with a mount so you can put other lens on it?"

Kind of like what the guy fro Italy did with his Sony HDV camera.
 
Is a USB module the best and most efficient way to transfer huge, raw data? Did reel-stream try any other methods?
 
Isaac_Brody said:
Hey gkskrishn,

How about posting some grabs? :)
Click to expand...

I will post grabs soon as possible --various things are delaying me from my experiments.:evil: :grin: and plus, it's very hard to access internet on my pc, because of recent wireless internet router problems
 
I second that.

It's taken Reel-Stream, a bunch of incredibly intelligent EEs, months and months to figure out how to extract a raw image from the DVX100's CCDs, let alone write software to convert that image into something viewable. You've done all this in a few days? HMMMMMM.

It must be pretty boring in 'Hasharpur, India' if you have nothing better to do other than visit DVXuser.com and post false claims like this. Also, you might want to correct your profile - your first post on these forums states that you're 17, yet your profile says you're 21...
 
I don't want to directly comment on the post by 'gkskrishn', but from what I have learned, the task is a considerable one and it would be very impressive to accomplish anything close to useful in a matter of days. I am still interested to learn if there are any other EEs that would be interested in collaborating on a "software" solution?
 
Ditto. If someone can capture and upload a few frames worth of raw data from the DVX100, then I could pass it onto a good friend of mine that would most probably be able to write a program to dump it to disk as images or video.
 
To be fair to gkskrishn, Juan had tapped into his DVX CCDs a long, long time ago. He was posting grabs fairly quickly. It took him a long time (a year or more) to mature the product into where it's ready for beta-test, but it didn't take him very long to perform the initial modification.

And, let's remember it took hundreds, if not thousands of years of trying before someone finally broke the four-minute mile. But within six weeks a second person had done it.

So let's give gkskrishn a chance to show some clips. It sure seems possible.
 
I know this thread is crazily old, but was the software modification suggested by khmuse ever attempted? If that could possibly be done with a firmware rewrite just think of the possibilities....
 
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