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Decklink HD red tint on component, not on composite?
Hi.
I’m using a decklink HD Pro Single Link card with a JVC 27 inch HD LCD monitor.. I’ve been having this problem for a while. The component output from my Decklink Card is tinted Reddish on my monitor. It really looks the worst when I’m looking at low light skin tones, the people all look terribly sunburnt. I initially thought it was some kind of flesh tone/colour tint processing/adjustment being made by my monitor. But I plugged the monitor into the component output of one of our other systems, which uses a Decklink SP card.. And it looks just fine when comparing the same shots. So I know the colour is not tinted red on the input, and the shots on my hard drive and iin my sequence are all fine.
Then I did another test. I used the component output of my Decklink HD card to lay some shots to tape, and took the tape to another professional editing suite where they use some really high end monitors and they have hardware scopes. It was all red there too.
I tried one more test, I used only the Y-G wire and checked the component output of my Decklink HD Pro on my JVC monitor… And it looks normal, no red tint. So it must be ONLY the component output of my HD card that is tinted red, right?
As I said before, the shots are okay in the computer, they are okay on composite monitoring off the HD card. SO they should be okay on the SDI out, which is how I will be outputting these sequences to HDCAM tapes in a few weeks. I’m just wondering if there’s any way to get the red out of my component monitoring.. I tried buying new wires and connectors, but to no avail..
Does anybody have any ideas?
Thank you,
Kai
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10 Replies
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Hello Kai,
I have a standard definition Deck Link Pro card and have the same problem when viewing files through the component input of my JVC BM-H1310SU (CRT) monitor. The difference is my files are tinted green, not red. The green tint is manifested as a band with a height approximately equal to one-third the height of the screen. The band is not stationary but moves vertically upward taking approximately 15 seconds to travel from the bottom of the screen to the top.
Using the composite input on the monitor (and making the appropriate changes in the preference settings on the card) eliminates the green tint. The files are ok. The green tint is evident through the component input of the JVC monitor even on files that I captured before installing the Deck Link card (and none of the files exhibit the green tint on my computer monitor when viewing the files in either the source or program windows within Premiere Pro 2.0 or After Effects 7.0 Professional).
I first noticed the tint on black and white files I captured after installing the card in June of last year. However, the tint was not visible on color files I captured after installing the card. In December of last year I replaced my ATI 9800 Pro video card with an nVIDA Quadro FX 700 card. The green tint is now clearly visible in both my black and white files and my color files.
I emailed Blackmagic support regarding the tint on the black and white files in June of last year and exchanged several emails with Andrew McLeod. However, the problem was neither isolated nor resolved. I emailed Andrew McLeod regarding the tint on the color files in December of last year but he did not reply
At this time I do not know a solution short of purchasing an outboard SDI to component converter or a monitor with an SDI input. The only value of my reply may be to let you know that you not the only user experiencing this problem.
michael d
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Hi
Is there a “setup” option in decklink to turn setup on and off? In NTSC setup is used on the Y channel raising the green level 7.5 units, but not r-y or b-y. That could through the component level out either direction depending on which side of the atlantic you work.
Shane
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Hello Shane,
My understanding is that while setup is related to the proper display of black in NTSC video it should not cause the green tint I am experiencing. However, in accordance with your suggestion, I switched the setup on my standard definition Pro card from 7.5 IRE (on for North America) to 0 IRE (off for everywhere else). The switch did not solve the problem
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You’re right. It would cancel out in B-y r-y. Sorry. I ran into this long ago with a camera that during service got switched from yuv to rgb, then rgb was recorded into a betacam. We had to stip setup off of G to get the colour balance right through a rgb to yuv converter to do a dub. Great fun.
I know there are also MII (panasonic) specs for yuv that are different from Betacam if there is any chance your monitor could be set for those.
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The other thing worth checking is terminations. Does your monitor auto terminate or do you have to turn them on, or do you have to put 75 ohm external terminators on bnc connectors? Do other component signals look OK through the monitor?
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Interesting discussion.
Fortunately, I have the HDCAM deck we are using to output our masters on site now, and I can confirm that the red tint exists ONLY on the component output of the decklink HD Pro (Single Link) card. The SDI output is fine. I’m using the standard setup on the HDCAM deck, a Sony HDW-500 and the output of the Sony looks great on the same JVC monitor I talked about before. I think BMD should release a driver update with the ability to control the chroma gain on each channel of the component output. I know that on our other system, whoich uses Decklink SP card.. You can change the input gain as well as the input chroma on the other 2 wires coming in to the card.
I will ask my reseller to put in a feature request.. It’s a shame that such a nice card comes with such a limited number of options in the control panel.
The HD to SD downconvert is also of TERRIBLE quality on the HD Pro Single Link card. I am aware that it’s software based but it’s virtually a useless feature because it does such a bad job of downconverting. I am fortunate that the Sony JH-3 HDCAM deck I used to digitize in SD for offline had it’s own SD output – which looked a thousand times better than the Decklink Pro HD’s software downconvert.
Don’t get me wrong, I love my Declink card, but some of the features leave a lot to be desired!
Thanks!
Kai
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I performed three additional tasks to isolate my problem. In accordance with your suggestion, I checked the termination on my monitor and I used a different source for viewing through the component input of the monitor. The termination was ok and the additional component source played fine without a green tint. The third task was to enable the Deck Link display adapter. I disable the Deck Link adapter in my default set up because my cursor disappears in the upper left quadrant of my computer monitor when it is enabled. However, enabling the Deck Link adapter did not solve the problem
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Hi,
If it’s a problem, we’ll want to fix it. Can you contact us via our official support channel? Use the webform located here:
https://blackmagic-design.com/support/contact/
or
pcsupport[at]blackmagic-design.com
support[at]blackmagic-design.comIf you can capture a short segment from the output of your card to demonstrate this problem, that will help a lot. Thanks.
regards
Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design -
Thank you for your response. Yesterday I sent an email (referencing your response) to pcsupport summarizing the problem I am experiencing. For your information, I am now using driver version 5.5 but this problem has manifested itself in every version since I started with 4.8.1.
michael d
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Andrew McLeod initially thought the green tint on my black and white files was a capture problem and he suggested I apply a black and white filter to remove the green tint. I did but it did not make any difference. The green tint is more noticeable on black and white files so I would suggest you use a black and whit file when you try to duplicate the green tint on playback through the component out of the Pro card. If you don
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