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Eclipse down-conversion (again)
Hi folks. I have a bit of an emergency…
While I was away, the booth where the equipment is located in our school was refurbished and everything was disconnected. I spent the whole day yesterday going through the manual and trying different choices on the BM control panel to try to remember what I did before that worked, to no avail.
If someone could help me out ASAP, I would really appreciate it as we have several projects starting tomorrow that need both HD and SD. My basic questions are:
1 – Can the Eclipse down-convert HD from SDI input to all the analogue outputs (component/composite) or only to SDI? If so, how do I need to set the control panel utility (downconvert on input, output or both)? ( I thought I had it setpu before with HD-SDI in but neither component nor composite have an output signal when ingesting HD SDI when I tried this no matter how the control panel utility was setup).
2 – Can the Eclipse down-convert HD from component input to all the analogue outputs, or maybe only to component out? How does the control panel choices (input/output) have to be set?
3 – Does realtime downconversion work with Media Express?
Again, many thanks for any input!
Cleiber
(PS.: I have reposted this as a new message since I couldn’t see it listed on the board when I logged in again.)
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5 Replies
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**PLEASE**
could someone from BM chime in here – or let me know that you won’t/can’t answer my questions?
When using HD to SD on the inputs, I can see SD on MediaExpress. However, the output is still HD, not SD.
When I input HD using MediaExpress (SDI or component), I get HD on the outputs. If I change the output downconvert menu to “HD to SD” letterbox or anamorphic, I still get HD on the MB Eclipse’s output.
Surely this isn’t correct behavior? Could there be a fault with the unit? I am using the latest version of the driver and software.
I know this is a basic question – but would appreciate it very much if someone from BM could confirm what is the expected behavior. I have spent over 30 hours trying to figure this out and our project starts today. I did do this before, but now I think there might be a fault with the system.
Thanks!
clibgold”at”h0tmail.com
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Hi Cleiber,
It’s probably easiest for me to describe how the down conversion in the Multibridge Eclipse works. But how you describe is how I would expect it to be behave.
When you are inputting with the Multibridge Eclipse, the input signal will loop-through to it’s outputs. The Eclipse doesn’t have any internal hardware processing to down convert this. You can apply a software down conversion to the input signal, so that the downconverted signal will appear in your capture application. But the loop-through signal will remain in whatever format you are inputting.
On playback you can also apply a down conversion, so that if you are playing back HD, you can output SD. This too is a software down conversion and will output in SD on all outputs. It’s not possible to output HD on one output and SD on another.
Chris Pearse
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA -
Chris,
Thank you, thank you, thank you!! That helps a lot.
I can now forget about that option and look elsewhere. That means that whatever I did to convert between HD to SD did NOT involve the hardware of the Eclipse. Since we do not have any other HD capture equipment, I must have used some software to “grab” the converted SD stream and output it via the Canopus ADVC700 or another firewire DV interface.
But since we are on the subject – would it theoretically be impossible for the converted SD stream to be sent to Eclipse’s output? If the inputs/outputs are locked in the hardware to each other, I guess not – but I wonder if that might be something that would be doable by a change in the firmware?
Thanks again!
Cleiber
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When in capture mode, the outputs are always a loop-through of the input. So I’m afraid I don’t believe there’s any way the down converted signal could be sent to the outputs in this instance.
Chris Pearse
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA -
Thanks.
It is still a mystery as to how I managed to output SD out of the computer the Eclipse is connected to. I haven’t figured out a way to do it yet…
Cleiber
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