BM UHD/4k converters - some gotchas

https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/miniconverters/techspecs/W-CONM-17

I've used a few of these guys recently - Blackmagic's quad HD/SDi input to HDMI 2.0 output for taking the UHD / 4k (either tile or 2SI standard) and making something that will display on a 4k domestic TV.

They seem to work quite well, but here are a few things that I had to get around;

1. Firmware - I had two identical ones and I initially tested both with Quad-SDi out of Avids at UHD (3840x2160 at 25 & 30P) - all good. But when I started a 4k project (4096x2160 at 24P) only one worked - the other showed nothing on it's HDMI output. Eventually discovered only one of them had current (v.7 as of May 2016) firmware!
2. Power cycle if colour space wrong - both have periodically decided they are going to mistranslate Y, Cb, Cr -> R, G, B - power cycling fixing it; hopefully the next firmware update will stop this?
3. Four signals are always interpreted as UHD; if the Avid is running an HD project the four SDi feeds out of the back are all identical and the converter has no way of knowing it's not quad-link. The Tektronix 8200-series and the Canon VP3010 monitor both have to be told (and I set presets for just this) but the BM converter needs to see three or fewer signals to realise it's only a 1920x1080 raster. In the case of this job setting up two macros on the video router (one to route all four, one to send a non-used input to i/p's B, C, & D of the BM).
4. Glad I'm rocking a MacBook Pro! I would not have been able to update the firmware otherwise as I've yet to move on from Windows 7 - and the workshop PC is still 32-bit Windows 7!

Blackmagic iOS app works with Barnfind!

Super-impressed with how open Barnfind are over other manufacturers. I wrote before about how they work with Blackmagic control panels, but today for a demo I pointed the BM app at the BF chassis and it's all good.

Barnfind integration with third party control panels

Barnfind are one of the products I'm responsible for at Root6 and I love them for their forward looking attitude and the fact they embrace open standards; if you see an SFP hole or a BNC connector you know that it will work with any other manufacturers (unlike Evertz who re-define the standard and put an X at the start of the product name!).

So - the BarnOne BTF1-07 is the chassis I have in my demo kit and at IBC this year Wiggo and the guys were showing a much wider set of third party control panels they have integrated to work with their cross-point router. So, to make our demo more compelling I bought a BlackMagic VideoHub Smart control panel and set about making it talk to the BarnOne.

Since I have to rock-up at customers' facilities to show this gear I figured it's daft to rely on their networks and so I've included a TP-Link travel router to dish out IP addresses to the panel and the BarnFind; it also allows you to use a wireless laptop to then run the demo. These little gadgets have single WAN and LAN facing ports but rather splendidly the BlackMagic panel has a little ethernet hub inside so you can loop the network connection to the Barnfind. 

This screen-grab is from BarnStudio - the config/control software for Barnfind products. It has a discovery protocol so it can find any chassis on the same LAN segment. However - I discovered a couple of gotchas;

• When upgrading the chassis you can either attach a USB stick to the front and the embedded Linux machine will grab the image OR you can use BarnStudio. Initially I couldn't get either to work! 

• Barnstudio just instructs the Linux machine to do an apt-get (or similar) and so it has to be able to see out to the internet; connect the WAN-side of the little router to the workshop network!
• If you do the USB route then the installer checks the signature on the package; again, it needs to get out to the web to verify the cryptographic signature.

• The Blackmagic panel does not have any host-discovery protocol built in and so it seemed only sensible to set the router to always dish out the same MAC/IP address combinations by using the DCHP reserved assignment page in the router. Then assign those number in the BlackMagic config software.

After that it really is very simple - you set the virtual buttons to be whatever sources and destinations you want. You can even reserve some to be macros (which are then just a list of route assignments) - in fact that is how you would do duplex signals; Ethernet etc. You have to assign both the in and out of each SFP (Tx and Rx). You don't have to have sequential sources or destinations and I can't honestly see how they could have made it any better!

So - with BNCs 17 & 18 on the front of the Barnfind defined as 3G HD/SDi video in and out and these button assignments on the BM panel I've got proper router control. These forty-button panels will be very useful for controlling all the synchronous broadcast signals (HD/SDi, HDMI, MADI etc.) and asynchronous data signals (Ethernet, fibre-channel etc) running through a Barnfind router (and then out and over CWDM fibre?).

The only criticism is that the software matrix takes a second or so to update after panel changes are made; but I can't honestly see when that would be an issue - this software matrix is  tool for the engineer, not the operator.

As an aside they have recently published a very complete integration guide with lots of examples and advice.

http://media.barnfind.no/marketing/BarnGuide%202.0.pdf

Digital path & SDi does not colour-accurate pictures make...

Recent years have seen many prosumer camcorders with HDMI outputs so that you can get access to the uncompressed RGB sensor output rather than having to make do with the H.264 (typically) encoded Y, Cb, Cr data (from the flash or disk-based recorder). This makes lots of sense and has given rise to HDMI -> SDi converters like the ones Mr. Blackmagic sells;

These take any HDMI 1.4 resolution (all the way to 4k UHD - 3840 x 2160 at a maximum of 30P in 4:2:2 colour space) and convert to single-link (1.5G, 3G or BM's home-brewed 6Gbit/sec) SDi. Excellent, you'd think; and they are so long as you only use them for video-type sources - camcorders etc. Don't assume they are of any use in turning the output of your computer into SDi!

So, here's the test rig; my Macbook Pro 15" running Mavericks with a Thunderbolt -> DVI breakout connecting to the HDMI input of the BM converter.

 

The SDi output is fed to my trusty Tektronix WFM7100-series and I'm running a known-good recording of 10-bit, 1080 50i 100% EBU colour bars on the 2nd display.

Now let's take a look at the state of the bars; not pretty - the luminance response is all over the place with a very funky gamma that has really gone awry in the bright parts of the picture. The blue colour-difference channel is not so bad, but the Cr (red colour difference) is really crushed in the cyan end of it's response; look at the vector display (top-left).

That's not to say that the pictures don't look good on the monitor; but they aren't colour accurate in the way they need to be if you're using this as a method of profiling an SDi display - and I have seen people use this method with Light Illusion to derive the colour space of a display and then generate a LUT to make the display look how they want.

So, my first thought was, head over to the display profile and see if it's just using the wrong RGB numbers; OS-X and Windows both support standard profiles like Adobe RGB or sRGB which are more suited to print and web graphics prep but not necessarily our beloved broadcast Rec.709 colour space. Imagine my horror when I realised that the colour display profile that OS-X had used was the one that shipped with the Blackmagic! How did they not even get that right?!

To be fair even the 709 profile that comes with the OS is wrong; the take-away is don't use these kinds of gadgets if you need accurate colourimentry. For XBoxes or just getting a high-quality desktop feed as SDi they are fine, but not if accurate broadcast pictures are needed.

HD playback - how we did it a quarter of a century ago

In 1988 I went to a demo of HDVS in Studio 2 at Television Centre; the left-hand image shows the 1" uncompressed RGB recorders that ran around eight times the speed of regular C-Format videotape. On the right is current-model Blackmagic Hyperdeck Shuttle - a small HD/SD record/playback box that uses SSDs and can handle uncompressed, ProRes and Avid DNxHD. It's in pieces 'cause I'd just finished fixing it and was testing it. BUT, given that they are two-hundred quid you might wonder if they're worth fixing?! The Sony was definitely worth fixing as each machine came in at >£100K.

Makes me wonder what I'll be doing by the end of my career?!

Blackmagic VideoHub software and QLogic fibre cards under MS Windows

Here's something from the dim recesses of my brain that I'd just remembered. Blackmagic VideoHub routers take all their network traffic over port 9990; which is also used in some QLogic/SAN configurations for metadata traffic. They don't play nice with each other. 

To fix this set the BM Software (whilst USB-connected to the hub) to use another port. Then you'll have to set all the client copies to use whatever number you chose. The default won't do!

A week is a long time in Blackmagic firmware!

I recently installed a 288x288 Universal VideoHub from Blackmagic - bear in mind this thing has 576 coaxial video connection and 288 RS422 ports it takes more than a day for a wireman to do a nice job of plugging it up.

here's one we did earlier!

Also bear in mind this is a modular system with space for 72 interface cards - each one has four HD/SDi ins and outs (up to 3G 1080 50/60P fact fans!) as well as a proprietary connector with four RS422 standard machine remotes.

So - once unboxed I filled up the chassis with cards, control modules and power supply cards and bolted it into the cabinet. However - the power supply units were delayed and so I got Tony the wireman to finish dressing it in before I powered it up; what a mistake!

I eventually got around to firing it up expecting to start programming it the same day but imagine my horror when I discovered 20 of the 72 modules were not showing up in the GUI. Swapping cards around showed that I did indeed seems to have twenty duff interface cards; pretty poor quality control I thought. BM UK's tech support department gave me the impression they didn't believe me and after lots more swapping of cards they agreed to take them back. 

I called them the following day only for them to tell me they couldn't find any faults with the cards we'd returned! I asked them to go over their testing methodology and the engineer started with "...I upgraded the firmware on the cards and inserted them into our test chassis"; exactly how I'd started - well, long story short, in the three days between me starting and them getting the cards to test BM had issued a new version of firmware. They'd gone from 5.0.4 to 5.0.5 without giving any indication to UK support as to what the changes were. It turns out that 5.0.4 disables some revisions of the card! How many of that version of the cards did I have? Twenty.

It seems like 5.0.4 was only out for less than two weeks...?!

Integrating a Blackmagic Universal VideoHub pt. 2

As mentioned in a previous post I'm integrating one of the big 288x288 VideoHub routers - 572 3G High Def video connections (mix of coax and single-mode optical) and 288 RS422 remote ports. The thing is not very deep (maybe 100mm) and only 18u high and therein lies the problem; how do you cable it neatly and in a state where re-configuring/maintaining it is possible? Each of the 96 interface cards has either eight BNCs or four duplex-LC optical connectors and there is a proprietary 4-way RS422 port in the centre of each card. 

In the left-hand image you can see we've taken the optical feeds up the right-hand side of the bay so they can come over the top of the patch panels where all of the facilities single-mode tielines (all run in loose-tube cable!) terminate - top of the right-hand picture. Many of the rooms are nearly 100m away from the CAR and so for reliable 3G performance SMPTE 297M is a must. Those pre-made single-mode patch cords are protected in Copex.

All the coax feeds got down the bay to CTPs in bays either side for all the incoming/outgoing jackfields. Nylon sock allows us to tame the coax and keep it neat.

The RS422 was the real challenge. As mentioned before they have a 1m pre-made cable that breaks out each card to 4 x 9-pin(D) connectors which we chopped off! These we ran into little 0.5u cat6 patch panels mounted on the intermediate rackstrip. In the LH picture they are the bundles running up the middle and in the right hand pic you can see the incoming feeds from the suites/VTRs/Avids etc.

This thing has been running reliably for a month now and I am staggered that BlackMagic can build and ship a 288x288 3G/RS422 matrix with fibre for sub £100k. You could make a real pigs ear of cabling one of these very easily which would limit it's utility. I think we've got it about as neat/maintainable as is possible.

How to do RS422 properly on the big Blackmagic Universal Videohub?

A job we're working on at the moment needs a big 288x288 HD/SDi and RS422 router. Budget means that the Black Magic is the only one that can be considered and it's hard to argue with sub £100k - Probel, Quartz-Everts etc would all cost four times that amount and so we're trying to figure out how to cable this one nicely.

The issue is going to be with the RS422; video will dress nicely on the cable tray down each side of the cabinet but the remotes are presented on a proprietry connector in the centre of each card. The only way of connecting to this is via a pre-made breakout cable that in only a metre long. So, after a lot of thinking and measuring we've come up with a solution.

 So far I've not been able to locate this connector - anyone have any thoughts?!

 Chopped breakout cable to see what the colour code of the cores is.

Nice 1/2u high cat7 jackfield which we'll use (need a dozen of them) to run down the intermediate rackstrip at the rear of the matrix to allow proper RS422 breakout.

The colour code we've settled on for this router when it's being cabled on cat6.

Synchronous ain't always best!

Engineers have been trained since time immemorial that with multiple sources of video the best thing is that they are always locked together and timed to a common reference - ideally station black & burst (or TriSyncs nowadays). The reasons for this are numerous, but a couple;

1. Studios cameras into a vision mixer have to be locked to achieve clean cuts between the cameras - it would look rubbish if you had a frame roll every time you cut between sources. The same is true of sources into a continuity suite etc.
2. In the case of Avid for the longest time you had to make sure the VTR was locked to the same reference as the Media Composer (all the way from v.7 ABVB systems in the mid-90s to the last revision of Adrenaline in 2007!) otherwise the audio and video capture portions of the machine would free-run WRT each other and within minutes you'd be loosing frames of sync.

So - I had a coffee and chat with a pal this morning who works for a big facility that has won an archive digitising project and they are using the BlackMagic DeckLink 4K card to allow them to ingest 4 x DigiBeta tapes at once. The capture software is ToolsOnAir and they found that after the first clip was captured the second clip would be a frame out of sync, and progressively worse after that - unless you re-booted between captures! It turns out that if the four VTRs are allowed to free-run then you don't get the problem. Perhaps processing the vertical syncs places a burden on the card/software and if it happens simultaneously on all four inputs trouble ensues?!

It reminded me of a situation with a big broadcaster who was distributing their regional variations over Astra on a single multiplex. The stat-mux was very unhappy with material that was (for the most part) identical; only the ad-breaks differed. Most video cuts occurred at the same time across all six SDi feeds. The solution was to apply a two frame delay between all the sources (so o/p 6 was now 12 frames late WRT o/p 1).

Blackmagic, have the courage of your convictions!

I've often bad-mouthed Blackmagic as they often build to price rather than spec. In the past when I've complained about their interpretation of the SDi spec they've always said that so long as they can light-up a monitor they're 'democratizing digital video' or some such(!) Anyhow - Joel showed me that they are now featuring screen-grabs from a Tek rasteriser on their website; they weren't so keen on it five years ago!

Blackmagic Videohub & RS422

I've talked about BlackMagic's router range - the VideoHub before but never installed one of the larger 72x144 models.
They are very thin! Where you'd expect the cables to terminate at the back of the bay these have to be long enough to terminate at the front of the cabinet.

Here are a few notes relating to it - it's amazing that you can buy a 3G-capable HD-SDi router (with RS422) for around ten grand. To do the same with Probel et al would be north of £50k. However - there are a few things you lose with your budget router.

• Remotes control - although in the past I've mentioned how the VideoHub can't do the TX/RX crossover that all 'proper' matrices do (i.e. they know how to handle controlled/controlling devices) they have introduced this in v.4.3 of the control software (that runs on a USB-attached Mac or PC - can can even re-share control over a network so you can run the same control applet on your Avid/FCP workstation). In v.4.2 you had to declare what a device was - either a 'deck' (a controlled device) or a 'workstation' (a controller). This falls down when you think about doing two-machine front panel editing between two VTs - the recorder becomes the controller and so you have to go into the labels menu and temporarily declare that VT a 'workstation'. The reverse is true if you want to run your Avid in VTR-emulate mode (when the timeline can be controller like a piece of video tape). We thought 4.3 was the answer to all our RS422-payers but it doesn't work that well - and when it gets it wrong you have to keep making and breaking the route in the hope that it gets it right. So - we're sticking with v.4.2 (BlackMagic s/ware archive in the title link).
  
• Touchscreen - our customer wanted a touchscreen to control the software which works quite well - I'd recommend at least a 19" 1280x1024 res screen as a 17" is fiddly.
  

Of course - in a non-TX environment these things may not matter. It really is a very good deal!

BlackMagic's Broadcast Convertors & VideoHub

Having bad-mouthed the BlackMagic UltraScope a couple of weeks ago (it really is a waste of time!) I approached a recent job with some trepidation. For reasons of economy the customer wanted to use BM for glue products as well as the 16x32 VideoHub matrix. The VideoHub I knew from previous jobs and in the past I'd viewed them as too unreliable for TX or dubbing work (the three we put into a facility in 2007 crashed daily). However, we'd heard from the UK importer that they've moved manufacturing, improved QC and re-written the control software to make a much more reliable product.
So - we put this one in and I intentionally hooked one of the outputs to a ForA multi-tile display which has an alarm when one of the inputs drops. In a week I didn't hear the ForA complain once but we'll have to see if the reliability really is there.
The software has improved much since I last put one in - you control the matrix over a USB connection, but the controlling PC/Mac can re-share over TCP/IP and you can use the client software on many machines. In effect you can have a matrix control panel on every Avid or FCP - even at home over the web (if you open a hole in the firewall).
I think the only critique is the old TX/RX cross-over in the RS422 path. Proper matrices (Probel, Quartz etc) know when a device is a controller (typ. an Avid) and when something is controlled (typ. a VTR). The BlackMagic refers to these as 'workstation' and 'deck' respectively but this is silly if you're using a two-VTR edit pair (the recorder is now a 'workstation'!) or using an Avid in VTR-emulate mode (so the Avid is a 'deck'). This is one area where the VideoHub looses out to a matrix in that is doesn't have that proper control system. However - at a quarter of the cost of a comparable 'proper' setup it's a small moan.

The Broadcast Converters are a 1u 'everything-in, everything-out' box that you can 'wrap-around' a BetaSP machine (typically) and have it look like a DigiBeta - analogue to digital (for both video and audio) and back again simultaneously for not much money (less than a grand). It's a ten bit device and has the added advantage of HDMI for displaying on modern HD panels. My only criticism would be that although you can select which embedded/de-embedded audio group you work with it only has stereo analogue i/o (but on XLRs mind you!). All levels and input standards (composite/s-video/component) are controlled over USB which probably allowed them to keep the cost down. It is quite usable and you could see it being used as a control panel (on the FCP's or Avid's desktop?) rather than just for the engineer to dip into with his laptop. They really are hard to beat on features/economy and I'm impressed with the quality of the analogue signal handling.

So, it's not all bad news from BlackMagic (but the UltraScope is still pretty useless!)

Stop Press! I've just discovered that the Broadcast Converters don't pass the vertical interval! So - no VITC, caption data, widescreen switching etc etc - just the kid of things a Broadcaster would need! So - not the perfect solution I hoped for.

I want to like Blackmagic

If you’re tired of hard to use and ugly waveform monitoring, then you’ll love Blackmagic UltraScope. We have included all the features you need when editing or color correcting, and then, combined it with an elegant user interface that looks great when added to your studio!

The reason some things are hard to use is that they are complicated - like video test and measurement. The reason Fisher Price don't make television test gear is because it's not for children! Anyhow - I sat down to have a tinker with this new gadget (in fact it's a PCI-e card you put in a spare computer) - it then hijacks the Windows desktop and runs full-screen. I don't imagine anyone would be willing to sacrifice one of their Avid or FCP monitors (aside from the fact that you'd be taking at least a couple of lanes of PCI-e bandwidth and hence making a non-supported config).

It is surprisingly uninspiring - you get only what you see - you can't move anything around or zoom in either direction. You have no measurement graticules and non of the features that are necessary in a modern rasteriser. It really is just the facade of a waveform monitor but when you look harder it is kind of useless. Seriously - save your money because this is pretty pointless. It might make a nice display for reception.

After Effects, Kona and video colour-space

Final Cut Pro is a proper video app that knows about video hardware. If you have a Kona card (or worse a Black Magic card!) then you ingest YUV data off tape and lay-back in the same way. The colour space is the same throughout the process and there is no colour space conversion.
See a previous entry here for details on TV colour space matrices.
Anyway - we're finishing a project at five and we discover they want to use a feature of the Kona card called Desktop Passthrough (or somesuch) which allows the SDi output to appear as a second GUI monitor. It is a feature specifically for those apps that don't know about video hardware but where having a preview on a video monitor would be useful. As far as After Effects is concerned the Kona card is a second Mac desktop monitor and you can send it's output full-screen to that display. My initial worry was that being an RGB-only program how would the Kona deal with the RGB feed? I imagined it did a quick and dirty transcode, probably not paying any attention to the 601 or 709 matrix (depending on standard or hi-def). We were pleasantly suprised when (after having calibrated the SDi monitor for correct colour in FCP) we found the probe telling us that the whites out of After Effects were bang-on!

Reasons to hate Black Magic, part 3

I have a long and proud tradition of criticising Black Magic Design - much beloved of the FCP crowd their products are built to a price rather than the signal spec. Read some of my previous rantings here and here. This last week I had the pleasure(!) of their new Intensity Pro card - HDMI & analogue component (at 1920x1080) capture. The reason they've launched this card is the slew of HDV camcorders that have an HDMI output. Now - we all know about HDMI's support for HDCP encryption. For most things the HDCP flag is set but no encryption is present. That's the way games consoles work (and foolishly we thought that this card would be good to capture the HD output of a PS3) - BUT, if the card sees even a hint of the HDCP flag it won't capture! Also - the card output is not the usual RGB feed you've expect, but whatever colour space the Quicktime clip is recorded in!

Never mind the quality, feel the width.

When will they start to conform to the specs rather than fobbing you off with "I'm sorry - that's not a supported configuration" - argh!

This week's reason for hating Decklink cards! - I have just got back from a client who was complaining about colour variation between component and SDi outputs of a Decklink Pro card. No trouble I thought - align the monitor so I'm happy that the reason is upstream and attack the ProcAmp settings. When you get there you can only tweak the U & V components together and they don't track!
So, I put up a PLUGE signal (so no colour, only luminance), cranked up the gain on the (digital) vectorscope and looked at the colour-in-the-noise (as if you were doing a quick colour balance on a studio camera looking at a chip chart). Tweak the chroma gain on the G5 and the colour caste shifts!. I hate those cards - they are so domestic! Now - the DeckLink defenders will say "but you can unlock the colour components and tweak them separately" - try it - one effects the other terribly - as with their analogue and digital stages they have used some half-arsed implementation that goes to prove that even in 2005 $895 doesn't buy you a broadcast-capable interface card.
So, you can really only use the analogue component output if you don't care about the colour balance (and presumably if you don't want to lay back to analogue tape) - and don't even think about using it at the same time as the SDi.

Catch up with previous reasons why I hate them here and here.

Decklink video cards and the online community they run at Creative Cow. I have been caught out several times by their so called "Pro" products - see a previous post here. Anyhow, I posted the following;

Does anyone have any advice on phasing the active picture to sync timing on the output of a Pro card under V4.7 of the driver on a G5?
I've recently put in a couple of suites running FCP 4.5 and the output of both cards shows a consistent error in their picture sync timing. It's so bad that some outboard devices (typ. those that don't have a separate genlock - a legaliser in this case) aren't happy with the SDi out.



Internal bars on a DVW A500P and the o/p of the Decklink Pro card
click the image for full size screen-grab from a WVR610.

You'll see the difference between the output of a DigiBeta (I'm assuming that is correct!) and the Decklink. What the Tek610 waveform monitor is showing is the difference between start of the data interval in the back porch and the start of active video. Although this isn't well specified in REC601 it is related to the 10.4uS interval that engineers measure to get the start of active picture placed correctly (dropping edge of sync to start of active line). In each of these screen-shots the Tek is free-running (so as to remove the effect of a card whose output isn't genlocked to station black). To make it a fair comparison I also pulled the reference from the VTR's input. There is about a micro-second of discrepancy.
It's wrong - measurably so - and is problematic if you want to integrate your FCP into a broadcast setup.

Now the moderator didn't put the post up but I was tickled by the following thread:

Subject: 4:3 to 16:9 (Letterboxing) Without Image Degradation

This may not be the right forum for this question, but thought I'd pose the question just the same: Does anyone out there know of an app that transforms non-anamorphic DV material shot at 4:3 to 16:9 WITHOUT just cutting off the top and bottom of the frame and losing all those valuable, indispensable little pixels in the process? Since I believe the Pana DVX100a does this digitally, perhaps there's some software that does it after the fact.

Thanks,

What you describe is impossible. To get from 4:3 to 16:9 you must lose part of the picture. The Panasonic camera just crops the picture, unlike other anamorphic systems.

In any event After Effects will do a better job than FCP, picture-quality-wise

I was afraid it was, but thought I'd ask anyway, since what might be impossible today, might not tomorrow. Thanks for the response.

Not a matter of possible/impossible, just a matter of simple geometry. Think about it: How can you change the aspect ratio to a wider ratio without cropping or stretching the picture?

Maybe they're not ready for measurements that mention microseconds!

Wow, couple of weeks since I blogged - it has been a very busy time at work (in fact 2005 has been full-on so far!). Anyhow - I've just finished an installation that had a couple of Final Cut Pro workstations as well as a TerraBlock SAN - The TerraBlock I love and blogged about previously - a real pointer to the future of affordable SAN solutions in the face of Avid etc. Final Cut Pro I am indifferent to - I know some folks love it but I have to say that next to Avid it isn't yet a mature product and seems a strange mix of very antiquity (reminds me of a mid-80's VTR editor) and the new. BUT - the thing that really annoyed me is the DeckLink Extreme video cards we integrate into the G5s - on paper they look great - SDi with embedded as well as analogue component and analogue audio, but when you try and use the thing in a multi-format environment you soon realise they should have used a couple more FPGAs.

• If you capture SDi video it will only capture embedded audio - not great if you are converting a UMatic (or VHS) to digits - you need an additional embedder.


• It randomly swaps the colour component inputs - sometimes it's Y, Cr, Cb , sometimes Y, Cb, Cr!


• During capture the only audio o/p that is live is the SPDif - you are obliged to use yet another converter!

So you wind up with a very reasonably priced $895 card but you invariably have to spend twice that on converters.