Thanks for the heads up John:
I can give you the "basics" but for more detailed information, Jan Van Rooy or Peter Centen from our factory should ring in on this. I've cc'd them.
The FT25 Sensors (used in the Viper and the LDK6000 series of cameras) have a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels and 4320 in the vertical domain. If you divide 4320 into 6, you get 720, which gives us a native 720 vertical resolution, perfect for HD sports at 720p60, given the bandwidths available in today's world. If you divide 4320 into 4 you get 1080, which gives us the 1080i native format resolution for the LDK6000 in "normal" HD broadcast productions and the 1080p23.98, 24 or 25 for the Viper in RGB 444. If you divide 4320 into 3 you get 1440, which when we take the center extraction gives us a native 1080 lines of vertical resolution for use in 2.37:1 widescreen capture mode. We are the only digital camera on the market today that provides you full resolution in the widescreen mode. All others just "chop" lines of resolution from the top and bottom, which will show up in projects designed for theatrical release.
Unfortunately due to physical limitations in components and technology it isn't possible for us to output independently 4320 "lines" of resolution, or even make full use of the 1440 lines for oversampling that way. There is also the little matter of what do you record all this "stuff" on in realtime. With recorders now available such (but not limited to) as the S.two, CineRAM and Sony's SRW series (slightly compressed to tape) we're finding that the RGB 444 output of today's Viper is now managable through the acquisition and post process, but now is not the time to try expanding that amount of data by a factor of 4, it will put us back into an "unusable" mode for the marketplace.
While we are always working on increasing the technology and driving things forward, if we as a company don't have income from our products, then we can't afford to drive additional advancements to our client partners, and if we're always in a state of "development" that doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint.
That's the short version. I'm sure that either Jan or Peter can add to this in a more technical fashion if you wish. I also have some diagrams, but they aren't easily postable. Here's a link to the brochure, which has a simplified diagram about halfway into it.
http://www.thomsongrassvalley.com/docs/Bro...er/viper_br.pdf
Mark Chiolis
Marketing Manager
Thomson Broadcast & Media Solutions
