[Bernhard G.]

Hello,

I’ve also tested Purifier’s scaling extensively.
The Purifier scalings are nearly indistinguishable – also on pixel level! -from FCP scalings.
These scalings are on the ‘blurry’ side of the scaling spectrum.
You can simply confirm this result by comparing to MPEG Streamclip (settings described above).
For the sharpest results at all you might test Streamclip without ‘better scaling’
(which produces extreme aliasing).

Best regards,
Bernhard

[Bernhard G.]

Hi,

it is really too bad the excellent videohardware scalers can’t be accessed filebased yet.
For a year now I tested nearly every software (freeware to ultra highend) and the most common
videohardwares for downscaling HD->SD.
Not a single software reaches the quality of the hardware scalers!

Using software scaling you have two possibilities what you will get:
1.) a video so blurry that every cheap SD cam would have delivered sharper images, or
2.) a ‘too’ sharp video with bad aliasing, so flickering at every movement.

According to my tests there are two softwares producing acceptable results.
Both are freeware:
– MPEG Streamclip (scaling better enabled) produces detailed images with no aliasing.
(you need to enable cropping at scaling; left 9Pxl right 8Pxl to remove the black bars)
– JES Deinterlacer produces very sharp images but with horizontal flickering.

Which one works better for you depends on your footage.
But be aware: none of them is capable in professional 10bit scaling.
If you need 10bit, use your nesting method within FCP; Motion estimation set to ‘best’.
FCP scales significantly better than M100.

If you need to go to web, simply get a Matrox MAX hardware. It uses Matrox’ hardware scaler
file based (!) within compressor when encoding to H.264.
Unfortunately MAX it is not capable in scaling to interlaced nor to uncompressed quicktime;
you only get this on live signals – Matrox, can you hear us???

Hope it helped.
Best regards,
Bernhard

PS: It is really time Matrox, AJA and all the others open up their excellent scalers for file based processing!
We’re living in the 21st century. Video cassettes are 20th century 🙂

[Bernhard G.]

Hi,

there are 2 different questions involved:
1.: scaling
2.: encoding

ad 1.:
Scaling is rocket science!
But MPEG Streamclip delivers the best software scaling I have discovered so far.
And I have tested ALL solutions over the last year from freeware to ultra high-end.
(‘best’ according to the definition ‘maximum sharpness at minimum aliasing’)

ad 2.:
I assume you are working on OSX (M100), so you need to use Episode or at least Flip4Mac to encode *.wmv

When you got best results in MPEG Streamclip I assume you had used Flip4Mac? Since it is a quicktime component it is irrelevant what quicktime capable application you use to encode. The question is how your chosen application handles pre-processing (de-interlacing, scaling, etc.)

Now to answer your question:
The player application will do all the required scaling for you in realtime (=quick&dirty) to deliver a correct image through VGA

So simply scale and encode 3 versions with MPEG Streamclip ( 1080p; 720p; SD ) and test what resolution looks best and plays well on the laptops through your player application.

Bernhard

[Bernhard G.]

Hi Kristian,

I’ve started a thread here at the FCP-forum on the same topic but with another issue:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/8/1101756

We did (visually) solve the problem by setting “Scale to view illegal YUV colors”.
According to the result this option seems to set the output to SMPTE compliant RGB,
similar to the option in AJA’s utility.

Please could you confirm if this is correct?

Can I rely on this output with this option set in conjunction with the Dreamcolor?
Or is the warning in the tap also valid on this configuration and the calibration not reliable?

Thanks and kind regards,
Bernhard

P.S.: I VERY appreciate the new option to override EDID! Now I can view the correct 50Hz here in Europe! Thanks for this update!

[Bernhard G.]

Today I tested the configurations once again and i got it work:

The BMD HDLink 3D DP has a little confusing option “Scale to view illegal YUV colors”

(It could be found under “Preferences…”, not in the main tab.)

If it is checked, the problem is solved!

The luminance level adjustment of MXO2 didn’t have any effect!
Neither at feeding HDLink over HDSDI, nor via direct connection to the Dreamcolor via HDMI.

Possibility #1:
MXO2 outputs non-conform colors over HDSDI (VERY, very unlikely)

Possibility #2:
The said option in the HDLink Utility is nothing else than a confusing named
SMPTE option as known from the AJA utility. (ok … HDLink was build for another purpose…)
I will need to talk to BMD to confirm this.

Thank you once again for your help!

Kind regards,
Bernhard

[Bernhard G.]

The “Main Channel” is comparable to AJA’s “Frame Buffer”.

[Bernhard G.]

The Main Channel is comparable to AJA’s Frame Buffer.

[Bernhard G.]

The choice YUV/RGB:

[Bernhard G.]

Yes, the luminance levels can be checked to allow super black and/or super white in the MXO2 pref pane:

I have tested this without noticeable result; but with the BMD in between.

The question is: will the luminance setting affect the YUV which is THEN converted to RGB,
or does it affect the RGB output directly. I have to test it.

Bernhard

[Bernhard G.]

Hi Jeremy,

thank you very much! I think this might indeed be the problem!

But the same problem occurs when connected directly to the MXO2 which would mean
it is also not capable in representing SMPTE when HDMI is set to RGB.
I’ll make one more test and ask in the Matrox support forum to be shure.

Thanks and kind regards,
Bernhard