Saticon Cat 

That would probably be for the SMF tube, which Sony used for the HVC-2800, the standard MF Trinicon tube used in models prior to the 2800 has a lot of lag in the picture, and doesn't have much of a great low light sensitivity

@@Syn_Host I recently won an HVC-2800 in an auction, so I'll see how it compares to my 2200.

It's actually quite impressive the quality you can get with a clean feed straight from camera. RGB is even better than the composite video. In future I'd like to get my hands on a proper xRGB Mini converter (as opposed to the cheap chinese SCART RGB adapter) as the xRGB has a multitude of controls and options, whereas the chinese one is a bit of a mystery box and has issues with interlacing artefacts and weird auto brightness on composite for some reason. Interestingly, the composite capture into a blackmagic decklink is superior in quality to the chinese adapter upscaled. I assume it has far better A-D chips involved. That and you're forced into capturing at 1080 50p, which isn't ideal for storage space. Some of the single tube cameras tend to be a little bit iffy too, I'm not entirely sure why.

BMD Intensity Shuttle has RGB inputs ;)

PiDsMedia Ah if only it was that easy! The shuttle and other BMD stuff only accept YPbPr RGB, in which there are two colour channels and a luma channel. Green is derived from the difference information of the blue, red and luma channels. With a camera like this, the colour signal (RGB Composite Sync) is very different and instead is three separate channels of R,G,B colour and a separate sync (so four channels in total) and this sync is derived from either it's own Sync channel or from Composite or genlock. Same system is used in things like commodore 64 Sega etc. They're not compatible colour systems and the blackmagic line is more designed for connecting up to newer Betacam style equipment. (Though I do believe some older Sony cameras have YPbP colour circuitry inside that can be sent to a CCU). Some confusion comes from the SCART connector supporting the original RGBCSYNC (as it would sending directly to each colour tube in a tv) and also YPBPR in later years when TVs started coming out that could differentiate between whatever signal the user sent down the RGB channels (such as a dvd player).

Funny, my Intensity Shuttle USB3 has RGB marked inputs, not YUV, aka YPbPr. Amusingly, you're explaining this stuff to a person who has "Advance Cert TV Repair" in the qualifications, and is exGlobalTV Enginnering dept :D Saw the ad for the lens - might be messaging via FB if it's not sold soon - I reckon it'd go well on a G85.

Ah that's interesting! Perhaps you're right, as the USB3 model has component inputs in addition to the yellow/red/white composite and audio (unlike all the other blackmagic stuff that asks you to input Y on the green connector and requires that you switch in the configuration between Component and Composite in the software preferences. All the images I've seen of the intensity shuttle show inputs for Y in, Pb in and Pr so I'm not sure why yours states that it's RGB, but perhaps it's a new revision. Also I see the manual states that it's a 'component' analog input only, and mentions (Y,R-Y, B-Y) (Y,Cb,Cr)or(Y,Pb,Pr). There is a difference between the implementation that I'm referring to (RGB+Sync) and more newer ones, just as there's a vast difference between YUV and say RGBHV. I've owned the Intensity Extreme Thunderbolt, the plain old Intensity Pci-e and the Decklink HD/2K Pci-e and unfortunately none of them worked with this hitachi camera's RGB. But then why would they? As I mentioned above, all of these have only had three inputs on the breakout cable, and if you were to connect all three RGB outputs from camera to card, then there would be nowhere to connect the Luminance sync to. I can't see why the Intensity USB3 would be any different considering that Blackmagic seem to love using the same AD chips across the board (I had to buy their damned video assist 5" just so I could record 1080p50), but quite frankly considering the time I've wasted on this project - I'd love to be wrong. I will mention that one of the key ideas behind this whole idea was that the camera would be portable and wouldn't need to be tied down to a CCU or be constantly connected to a laptop or such. That one could pick up the camera and have it all self powered and have the recording/processing gear all onboard but I'm yet to find a better way of doing this so far. Feel free to get in touch about the lens if you wish, you're welcome to test it.

Interesting! Now that would really be something. I've just seen those SLR magic 1.33x PL lenses, only trouble would be getting hold of those and a Pro35!

Ben Helweg Yeah, I was surprised how cheap they are at 350 CAD for a set: ontariocamera.com/product/slr-magic-1-33x-anamorphot-cine-lens-set-with-35-50-70mm-lenses-pl-mount/ For some reason other sites were listing them at 18,000 USD. What a strange thing.

It was just VCR font with some blurring I believe

@@BenHelweg nice. But in a digital program like premiere? or with a hi8 cassette analog editor?

Very very good question. I initially encountered this too and even bought a kramer RGB clamper in the hope to mitigate it. But then by complete chance I came across a hitachi va-z31 rgb adapter on eBay and it sorted all of that out internally. It has four BNC connectors (r,g,b,sync). Oddly the signal isn't a perfect match with the composite so I have to get my hands on a waveform and some card slot extenders and do fiddling and alignment.

I also watched your video. You have far greater knowledge than I do, altough I will say that after nearly destroying another tube camera I have (a sony DXC-M3) I spent a lot of time reading service manuals etc so picked up some knowledge along the way, which helped me. I never found a service manual for the Z31 although it shares similar operation to the other camera and as such a lot of the setup and alignment are the same. The sony service manual has thorough steps for doing alignment and the right process to do things etc. In my quest to solve the RGB conundrum before I purchased the VA-31, I also tried clamping the rgb signal from the encoder side with capacitors and wasn't able to get it to work either.. (I have a picture of that!). I discovered that someone online had a paper copy of the standard op manual, so I paid him to scan it in for me, hoping it would have some technical info it, but it doesn't have much. But it's still worth having. You can download it here: www.manualslib.com/manual/1117033/Hitachi-Fp-Z31.html The sony M3 service manual is out there online but I could dig up my copy if you can't seem to source it. I could always take apart my VA-31 RGB adapter and take some photos of the internals for you if it helps. You may be able to reverse engineer it and create your own in a jiffy box or something. I had to pull it open to attach a v-mount battery plate to the back and I recall there not being much going on inside. It may be almost impossible for you to find a second hand one online and I feel like people probably bought them as an option to use for monitoring on a high resolution RGB monitor or crt projector at the time. I have some other videos on here shot with the RGB adapter and many which I haven't uploaded yet. One of my music videos 'Gutful' was shot with this setup and a DSLR (I should have shot the whole thing on it). My setup involved piping out of the VA-31 into a custom SCART cable with BNC tails on it, and then into a OSSC (open source scan converter) which outputted picture perfect 576i over HDMI into my blackmagic video assist. I tried cheaper SCART converters but they were all trash and unreliable and I wanted this thing for shooting critical stuff and music videos etc. In particular I wasn't happy when I used it on that gutful music video, and it's used on this cat video as it has lots of weird interlacing artefacts and points when it's mystery de-interlacing/scaling process unhinges and messes things up. The OSSC was sooo much better even at only 576i because it is rock solid and crisp and clear. I sidelined the camera project for a while for a number of reasons (mostly getting a reliable SCART cable happening) but I still have it all and still love the camera. It resolves extremely well with decent lenses and no doubt that Canon EJ prime? does a great job on your one. I guess I'd better get back into it and record some more.