Using the VS-1 with different Video sources

I designed the VS-1 in 1985/6 and we are still making it 27 years later, for a product with a 27 year life we have not sold a great number, probably about 10 a year, and not that many now.

I have been asked a number of times to upgrade the VS-1 to work with HD video. My problem has always been which format? The market size will not finance a big development project. Here are some interim alternative solutions.

SD Component,

If setup for syncs on green, insert the streamer on the Green line

VGA

I have tried the Startech VGA to composite converter, this works well and is a cheap solution but the resolution is not as high as I would like. Kramer and TV One make more expensive boxes but I have not compared their resolution. 

S-Video

Insert into the Luminance line

Software Solutions

There are a number of cheap software solutions available but I find them jerky, possibly I need a super computer!

One way forward without investing a large amount of time would be to design a system for VGA, but with computers now using DVI, HDMI and SDI is this a viable approach?

Let me know your ideas

Using HD Syncs with the MC-1, BS-1 and BS-2

Daniel my French agent set me this test, translate this information from French!

Like a all CB products the MC-1, BS-1 and BS-2 automatically detects the reference video standard, but on some products it is necessary to use the video standard and make make manual settings

The following standards are recognized by CB prioducs

.

SD:- Bi-Level:

PAL: 25fps

SLOW PAL: 24fps or 23.98fps

NTSC: 29.97fps

NTSC BW: 30fps

HD - Tri-level:

24 / 25 / 30 / 48 / 50 / 60Hz:

23.98 / 29.97 / 59.94Hz

The Standard Dependent settings on the MC-1, BS-1 and BS-2

UNIT parameters

Film Std:: 24; 25, 30.

Gen Std:: 24 ; 25, Drop  30.

ReF: : 48; 50, 60.

Normal settings for a 23.98 or 24 fps Video Reference

Film Std = 24 ; Gen Std = 24,  ReF = 48.

Normal settings for a 25 fps Video Reference

Film Std = 25 ; Gen Std = 25,  ReF = 50.

Normal settings for a 29.97 fps or 30fps Video Reference

Film Std = 24 ou 30 ; Gen Std = Drop or 30(Non Drop),  ReF = 60.

Always check the UNIT parameters after changing the video reference standard! The 6 configuration memories may be used to to save a different setting for each video standard

Raid Arrays 2

We fitted the best raid array controller we could find to our system yesterday and as expected there was a small improvement on running 4 discs in Raid 0, as the CPU usage also dropped then in actual use the improvement would probably be greater. Another advantage was that it allowed us to fitt an extra drive as the motherboard was limited to 5 drives only.
The connection from the raid card is mini-sas, a raid card with and external mini-sas can be used as a fast  low cost  external raid by using a suitable cable and 4 drives in a midi tower pc case.

A san is probably the preferred solution but it is more expensive and still requires management. Portable Raid Arrays make a low cost scalable entry into this technology and you can always use the drives in a san at a later date.

Raid Arrays

Although not directly connected with any of our existing business Daniel (CB and C2-Cine  IT Support Engineer) and I have been investigating Raid Arrays as a low cost alternative to a SAN for use with video scanning and/or multitrack audio. We tested the external eSATA Raid Arrays on two very different computers.

External Raid Box:

StarTech 3.5in eSATA 4-Bay Raid Enclosure, supplied with its own eSATA interface card.

Throw away the supplied eSATA interface as it has a maximum transfer speed of 60MBytes/Sec. Provided your computer supports SATA then a  eSata cable costs about £6.

Raid Drives:

Four 2TB drives, as our primary interest was in recording and playing back raw video files we selected low power 5400 rpm drives which work better for this application. Sur 

Test Computer 1
AMD Six core 3GHz 1075T, Asus Crosshair III Formula Motherboard, running 64 Bit Windows 7, this machine has 4GB of 1600 Memory and a ATI 4850 video card. The computer supports internal software RAID and has an ESata port

External Raid using 2 x 3.5" 2TB drives in Raid 0 speed approx 180MByte/Sec, There was no advantage in using 3 or 4 drives.

Single 2.5" enclosure with eSATA and USB

USB-2 about 32MByte/Sec

ESata Limited by 2.5" drive speed to about 80MBytes/Sec

Test Computer 2
Toshiba Tecra M10: Two core 2.6GHz Centrino running 32 Bit Windows XP, this machine has 3GB or Memory and is fitted with an ESata Port
Note: XP Maximum partition size is 2TB

External Raid using 2 x 3.5" 2TB drives in Raid 0 speed approx 180MByte/Sec, There was no advantage in using 3 or 4 drives.

Single 2.5" enclosure with eSATA and USB
USB-2 about 32MByte/Sec
ESata Limited by 2.5" drive speed to about 80MBytes/Sec

A few brief conclusions on current setup
1) The processor made little difference to the disc access speed
2) External eSATA Raid drives show no improvement with more than 2 drives
3) If Running XP only then remember the 2TB partition limit
4) Use eSATA not USB-2, I will be checking USB-3 later
5) For hi speed disc access we are looking at internal raid with the drives mounted in caddies
6) If you must use an external raid then use Mini-SAS
7) Our next test will be to compare the built in software motherboard raid with a hardware raid card

FCP/Avid Output to multiple machines

I visited Chris Hellier at Conan on the Warner Brothers lot this week. They needed a software update to work with the Sony PVW2000 machine. Chris uses an RM-6 to make multiple copies from FCP. The FCP makes an auto edit on the RM-6 as a single machine.  The RM-6 controls 5 machines and the same edit is made on each machine, saving a lot of time!

There are a number of settings to make on the RM-6 in order to optimise the performance, There is a data sheet on the RM-6 product page that itemises the changes and provide information on setting up the system.

Future orders that specify the RM-6M will ship with software where these are the default settings.

RM-6 Product Page

SR/RM-6 Interface update - PDW1K6 Blue ray recorder

For faster lock times change
Setup/Root/Iface/Chase/Menu 58 Minimum Slew Speed
Set to 0=

A Curious Case of Record Offsets

Alex Kaiser from ZDF contacted me with an sync problem recently - using a SR-4 and laying back (Recording) audio from ProTools 8.1 to HD VTR's as follows:


Sony A500 Digibeta -In Sync.
Panasonic  AJ-HD1800 - 7 frames late
Sony  HDW2000 - In Sync  .
Sony SRW5500 - 4 frames late


Alex eventually found the reason for the problem - ProTools was setup to use LTC for positional reference
Setup > Session > Positional Reference
This was set to "LTC", when changed to "Serial Timecode" the recording delay disappeared!


Analysis:-

On HD machines there are encode/decode delays. When insert edit is enabled the machines switch to confidence mode (Read after Write). The "LTCout Phase" is set by default to be in sync with playback. On Sony VTR's the menu for this is located as follows

SRW5500:  Menu 618

HDW2000: Menu 617

At ZDF the timecode input of ProTools was connected directly to the video machine.
.
We recommend using the master timecode output of the SR-4/RM-6, this follows the selected master machine. The timecode is regenerated from the master Serial Timecode and is locked to video syncs.


When the same problem occurs with serial timecode it may be corrected on SR-4/RM-6 Software using the Edit Offset Menu
Setup | Root | IFACE | General | Menu 77 Edit Offset
The Edit Offset is added only when tracks on the VTR are armed and only needs to be set once.