Blackmagic HD-SDI to component Blinking issue

[Bob Zelin]

REPLY – I may be making mistakes, because I don’t know all of your gear, but some of your terms are incorrect –

3 HD-EV1’s are passed through a Panasonic AV-HS400A Live Switcher (HD-SDI) to give them genlock,

REPLY – the AV-HS400 switcher has FRAME SYNC inputs. They DO NOT REQUIRE Genlock (FS input is an option enable/disable in the AV-HS400 menus – I am going to assume that it is on). You DO NOT HAVE TO GENLOCK any source signal (camera or VTR) to the AV-HS400 if the FS (frame sync) inputs are enabled on the switcher.

which are then passed through 3 Black magic HD-SDI to component boxes and into a Sierra Routing Switcher.

REPLY – this is not clear. Do you mean the switcher output is “passed thru” 3 BMD SDI to ANALOG converters ? Is your Sierra router a HD-SDI or CAV router ? You are not describing your signal path clearly. If your cameras are going into the AV-HS400 SDI inputs, then how do you “pass” them into the BMD SDI to ANALOG converters – please explain EXACTLY the signal path.

There is 1 Canon XHG1s that is looped into the genlock of the Panasonic Live Switcher, which also had it’s HD-SDI signal converted into Component via a Black magic box.

REPLY – again, this is not clear. The AV-HS400 switcher has HD-SDI inputs – you can go directly into these inputs from the cameras. When you take a Canon camera, is this camera a CAV camera, that you convert to HD-SDI with the Blackmagic ANALOG to SDI converter, and then into the input of the AV-HS400 switcher ? You state “that is looped into the genlock of the Panasonic Live Switcher” – these are incorrect terms. Do you mean looped into the HD-SDI LINE INPUT of the live switcher ? The word “genlock” is being used incorrectly – genlock is not an input.

This setup all works fine for genlock and cutting between live feeds, our issue arrises when we add the fifth camera. This camera doesn’t have a blackmagic converter because we are attempting to go from VGA to Component with the BRC Z330’s cable adapter. The cam is patched into our genlock signal, but we still have about a second of black between cuts with this camera.

REPLY – this is where I am really confused. Cameras do not have VGA outputs. If your camera has a VGA output, it probably puts out a NON STANDARD SIGNAL that is incompatible with NTSC video products. For example, I could NEVER EVER get a VGA signal from a PC laptop to work into the AV-HS400, but I COULD get an Apple MAC Laptop DVI signal to work perfectly. NON STANDARD SIGNALS will not work, even if you have a little adaptor. Just because you have what appears to be the correct cable adaptor does not mean that you can get the signal to lockup. If you are not putting out a video signal that matches the standards of NTSC or PAL, it will not lock up without a SCAN CONVERTER that is designed to convert non standard signals to standard signals (like a FOLSOM, or RGB Spectrum).

I’m thinking there must be some kind of delay that the Black magics have during converting, is there a way to sync cams with blackmagic converters with ones that don’t need the conversion?

REPLY – there is no delay. You must be more specific in this one camera, and exactly what you are doing, to explain why it is not working. A VGA signal from a camera is completely non standard.

BobZelin

[Brady Marks]

Hello Bob,

I’m working with Riley on this project.

i think the crux of the issues is some signal alteration (delay?) introduced by the black magic box.

Here are the configurations:

this one works:

Canon XHG1S’ component video out and the Sony BRC component out are switched (via a Sierra Pro XL 816v3sxl) to a consumer HD TV

Both camera are genlocked via a external ref, created by a Panasonic live switcher (AV-HS400A)

All signals are 1080i60.

Switches perfectly.

not this one does NOT work:

we replace the Canon XHG1S’ component video out with a combination of the Canon XHG1S’ SDI video out and a BlackMagic SDI to Analogue Adapter, this configuration does not cut well, we intermittent amounts (0.25-0.5s) of black between cuts/switches.

A tech rep at Black Magic suggested that a 4 line delay maybe introduced.

– Ms Brady Marks

[Bob Zelin]

get rid of the genlock cables. Put the AV-HS400 into FS mode (frame sync inputs). now try it.

You don’t get .5 delay from a Blackmagic converter. That’s nonsense.

Bob Zelin

[Brady Marks]

Yes, the AV-HS400 is awesome, and the frame sync does just that but unfortunately it is busy syncing 3 unsyncable (no genlock) evi-hd1s

I’m pretty sure the black magic boxes are doing something nasty to my sync because if I correct the horizontal sync manual on the cannon camera and check this via a oscilloscope, the vertical sync is off.

I can get great sync between genlocked cameras if the all use black magic boxes. It is the combination of natively component and blackmagicly component signals that gaks

Thanks for your help, Ben

Is there a way to send the sync to the blackmagic conveters?

Thanks again
Ms Brady Marks

[Zack Pittman]

ok… I’m with bob… Im very confused about this setup.

are you actually switching with the 450? or are you using the loop outs of each channel into another switcher/router?

Thx

Z

[Riley Maruyama]

Just a follow up,

We ended up solving this genlock issue by converting the BRCZ330 component to HD-SDI, then back to component via miniconverters.

We weren’t using the switcher to actually switch, but were using it to pass and set a REF signal to a group of non-sync cameras we are using.

Thinking it over, we’re not quite sure why double converting the BRC’s signal works, but I’m figuring that every time we cut to the BRC, its signal would activate (rather than just constantly pushing video through). I don’t know if that is correct, but it seems that having a converter to pass through kept its signal on.

Anyhows, thanks for the suggestions!
cheers
rm

Riley Maruyama
Video Art Design

[Zack Pittman]

I could be wrong, but I don’t believe the loop out is “post” frame resync. But I could be wrong.

Thx

Z