Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

G

Gary_McClurg

Well-known member
Can't seem to find out where I read about this guy named Juan taking apart his DVX a few months back and saying he was getting or trying to get a 4:4:4 image out of his camera by not going to tape.

i was looking at a topic on cinematography.com today and this guy started a topic on low cost HD cameras and there was Juan's name. Then it became a free for all because I guess this guy has been posting this stuff for years under different names so, on and so on. So really not sure if what this guy posted is just rumors are what.

The below is a part of what he posted on cinematograph.com. Just copied only the information about cameras and prices.

Future Juan's conversion of Canon XL2, 960x 576 pixels, 12 bit, 1:1 compression, with wide angle conversion lens, P+S Mini 35 mm adapter and 35 mm SLR lenses, $22,000

Future Juan's conversion of Canon XL2, 960x 576 pixels, 12 bit, 1:1 compression, with wide angle conversion lens, future Mini 35 mm adapter by a new small German company, and 35 mm SLR lenses, $16,000

Future JVC (3) 2/3" CCD HDV camcorder, 1280x720 pixels, 8 bit, 17:1 MPEG2 compression, some $35,000

Future Juan's conversion of Canon XL2, 960x 576 pixels, 12 bit, 1:1 compression, plus wide angle conversion lens $12,500

SDX900 PAL, 720x576 pixels, 8 bit, 3:1 compression, $35,000

Future JVC (3) 1/3" CCD HDV camcorder, 1280x720 pixels, 8 bit, 17:1 MPEG2 compression, will probably only have 30p, some $7,000

Juan's mod of DVX100A PAL, 773x446 pixels, 12 bit, 1:1 compression, $8.500

So my question is did Juan get his camera to output 4:4:4 or what?
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

If he did 4:4:4 everyone would have heard of it. Has he posted finished pictures of captures and/or camera? Since DV cameras are designed as DV cameras it's very unlikely they have a full, high quality pipeline until the last moment when they go to tape. i suspect interally they make some design decisions (CCD, color correction, etc) based on the fact that it will be DV and it's unlikely someone could just patch in at the end and recover a high quality 4:4:4 signal.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

I don't know about pictures, captures and/or camera. That's what I'm trying to find out.

There was not much about it on cinematoprahy.com pro or con. Because like I said it became this slug match because I guess the guy who has nothing to do with Juan has been posting stuff about film is dead and long live HD to these film camerapersons for years under different names.

I just remeber seeing this topic somewhere about Juan taking apart his DVX. So I'm just interested to see if its true, false or whatever.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

It was on dvinfo.net and I never saw any footage from it. Although I haven't looked in a long long time....
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

theyre a number of screengrabs on the dvinfo.net topic. however the enhanced resolution and contrast have downsides, as most of the incamera settings are nullified b/c ur capturing directly from the CCDs.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

He did get his camera to output uncompressed RGB. He has posted pics of captures as well as the camera. He didn't "patch in at the end", rather he patched in at the beginning-- right off the CCD. The captures look incredible... Such a better picture w/o being degraded by DV compression. Not to mention his tests have shown that the CCDs are capable of over 2 more stops of latitude than what the processed DV version is outputting. All-in-all incredible and fantastic. Although those prices never showed up in the dvinfo thread.

If it's all legit, and he pulls it off it's reeeeeeally cool stuff. He said he'd have a dedicated website up soon...
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

i wonder: if you capture onto another format (like a dockable BetaSP) then you could actually achieve it. needs cables and stuff, but for bigger productions it could increase the value of the cam.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

If he's patching in at the CCD's why is he even bothering with the camera? It's only providing the CCD and lens, both of which he could get a lot cheaper. It sounds as if he has to have a lot of the electronics since he's doing the entire digital pipeline at that point.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

I found the site on Saturday the one jdk2man posted this morning. Going though it. It's 70 pages long and I'm halfway through it. On the last page looks like a website is coming.

Here is a frame grab Juan posted.

A noise free 4:4:4 10-bit uncompressed -> HD frame, with some of my own color correction...

http://expert.cc.purdue.edu/~pertierr/cap10_RAW.tif

Not sure how to link it up so you can just click on it. Sorry about that.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

Actually you can just click on the link and it'll take you to the framegrab. I guess I did do it right.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

Yeah I read all ridiculous 70 pages. Just save yourself the hassle and wait til he gets the site up... which he said will be any moment now.

Scott: yeah just the CCD and lens. But his mod apparently leaves the DVX untouched... you can still record to tape (and should cause his mod does nothing with audio) and otherwise use the DVX as normal. His mod is a big box that mounts under the DVX, and has a firewire plug to record out direct to disk as sequential uncompressed 12-bit TIFs. So yes, he's doing the electronics for the entire digital pipeline himself.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

I went and read the whole cinematography.com thread. It was started by some guy named Pete. It seems that he gets there a lot of bad rap. It seems that all the people there are DPs or wanna be DPs who hate video, DVX, and even HD.

If you read that first post carefully, it is clear that this guy talks about a whole system, not just a conversion of the DVX camera. He talks about the camera, the conversion, and a hard disc recorder that will record uncompressed stream, etc. I think that he may be correct about the total prices.

There are some other intersting posts there about Lumiere technical guru that has inside info on 2 new JVC HDV cameras that are to be coming out soon and should have image quality that is similar to Varicam, that costs $60K.

There are also couple of 1080/24-60p $4,000 cameras that use the same 2/3" Rockwell chip as Kinetta that will be coming out in couple of months. You have to record uncompressed to a mini computer.

There are also some interesting posts on Canon XL2 and aliasing issues and moire artifacts. It seems that the DVX is a better camera.

I went and read some older posts there and these guys there hate digital cinema. The older the posts, the more rap they give this guy that talks about HD while they prefer Super 8 to HD, but they admit that they normally shoot interlaced DV and don't even get paid for their jobs most of the time.

There were also some intersting posts by another guy who promotes Sony X300 box camera connected to Mac to record uncompressed, at an amazing low price. That guy got even more bad rap than this Pete guy.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

"I went and read the whole cinematography.com thread. It was started by some guy named Pete. It seems that he gets there a lot of bad rap. It seems that all the people there are DPs or wanna be DPs who hate video, DVX, and even HD."

HUH? Which thread is this. As far as I know the thread in this post was to dvinfo.net.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

It could be true that these film dp's hate the dvx, video, hd.

But I think this guy named Pete has been around for years posting bogus stuff. If you go to page 71 of the dvinfo.net thread. He shows up there under a different last name and even Juan calls him on it because some one thought this Pete guy was Juan making bogus claims.

Now I'd like to see Juan's camera mod to be real because if it works it'll drive down the prices and get us better cameras if he can make a dent in the market.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

As I understand he's not only using the DVX100 as just a shell with a CCD and lens but went as far as mapping some if not ALL of the cameras original menu functions to the mod box he has created. Incredible! Just like a JPEG set at a very minimal compression setting looks almost exactly the same as its HUGE TIF counter part - in the end I think we might find that the hard drive space v.s. quality difference between 4:4:4 and perhaps some new slightly compressed format will point us towards not using 4:4:4 unless doing drastic color correcting and then going out to a film print (how many people here that have done that raise your hand ;-). I know I read that Juan was at least thinking about having it also record in such a format. Can't wait to see the website and hear the price for the mod. If too high perhaps it will make more sense to take a box camera with a higher res CCD than the DVX100 and do the same thing to it. We-will-see.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

what is also great about the conversion is that you get about 2-3 F-stops more range so you will not blow highlights easily. I think that he has also 4:2:2 output. They also claim significantly higher resolution than the DV format. Theoretically this is possible if there is a shift between the CCDs. If there is a shift due to manufacturing tolerances this is also possible. We will just have to wait and see when someone runs some real tests. Anyway, it's a great achievement.

If there is a difference in resolution between different DVX cameras would too be interesting.

One wonders why Pnasonic did not think about providing uncompressed output. Actually why Sony did mot think about it ether. Maybe they need to protect their higher end market.
 
Re: Juan's 4:4:4 DVX

Sure uncompressed 4:4:4 DVX output would be cool, but to think that Panasonic is “protecting” their high end cameras by limiting the DVX is just a little bit of a stretch.

I would argue that the DVX is a prosumer camera, not because of its’ resolution and feature set, but because of the ways that people commonly use the camera.

If Panasonic made the DVX with only an uncompressed output, then no one would have bought one because no one would have had the abilities to post it. Instead they pursued the market standard and sold tons of cameras as a result.

MiniDV is an efficient method of recording, processing and storing a large amount of video in a relatively high quality format. Sure the DVX could be capable of giving us much higher quality images, but 90+% of their target market wouldn’t ever use those abilities anyway. By going with miniDV, they’ve rocketed to the top of the prosumer market where before they barely had a presence.

DV became the default standard of the market long before the DVX went into production. Panasonic is just catering to that market, and they shouldn’t be faulted for offering such a fantastic piece of equipment just because the accepted standard is lower then the camera’s native abilities.

Lets be honest, the vast majority of our stuff is ending up on consumer televisions, it’s being edited on single internal IDE drives, it’s rarely projected on big screen and it rarely makes it to broadcast.

When the DVX was being developed, computers were much slower, storage was much more expensive, and editing uncompressed at a consumer level was unheard of. Sure, technology is catching up quick, but it’s still not at the point where uncompressed is affordable for the low-level professional user.

By nature, we always want more, but would the majority of DVX users take advantage of uncompressed it if it were offered?
 
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