Genlock on Blackmagic HD Plus – what’s it for?

[Peter Wiggins]

[Darron] “Okay, I know what Genlock is for, but…um…what is it FOR? More directly, under what circumstances would I want the Genlock feature? How does this translate into real-world usage?
“

It times your system into a larger setup, so you can feed a router input into your card and record. Or indeed feed your output into a matrix/router.

This was first up when googled
https://www.mivs.com/technical/appnotes/an005.html

Peter

https://www.peterwiggins.com

In Paris editing The French Open for ESPN

[Neil Sadwelkar]

You can use the genlock on the HD Plus card to feed in n external sync signal which is also fed to the Digi/Beta deck that you’re capturing from or outputting to. Mind that if you work in a large multi-suite facility with house sync that comes through a router or DA, the genlock in HDPlus or HDPro just plain doesn’t work. It gives a “picture roll” every once so often and you need to disconnect the genlock to make the HDPlus or HDPro work. This has been broken since BM ver. 4.7 onwards and I don’t know if its been fixed in ver. 5.0

Neil

[Darron]

Thanks guys, it’s getting clearer.

Buuuuut, if the genlock is effectively broken when you have a router / DA supplying sync, then it seems a little bit useless…is that the case?

Thanks!

Darron

[Neil Sadwelkar]

Yes it would seem so and this has ben my experience so far. That being said there is a driver update that is supposed to fix this. I will try this and report if there is any improvement.

Neil