[Jeff Hartman]

Bummer. Well, I guess it was worth a try… at least I learned something new.

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

[Chad Pearson] “BTW, I always thought NTSC was 29.97 for some reason”

It is. 60 (59.94) is the field rate; I was having a decongestant moment. Nevertheless, when we got these cards I tried doing the 720p/60 > PAL / PAL > 720p/50 routine just out of curiosity, and our test set claimed that the result was indeed 720p/50. Seemed like an interesting novelty at the time… had no idea it would have practical application, since Syracuse New York isn’t exactly a hot spot for needing international standards conversion!

— Jeff

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

We have four of the OpenGear version of this card, and I played around with this sort of thing; I’m pretty sure it won’t do it in one step. What it can do is downconvert from 720p/60 or 1080i/60 to PAL (625/50); then a second converter can upconvert that to 720p/50. You would want to set the downconversion to anamorphic, and the upconversion to zoom, in order to restore the full 16:9 content.

The limitation is that the user interface infers the frame rate from the output format you select; if you select NTSC or PAL, it forces the frame rate to 60 or 50 respectively, but selecting 720p or 1080i makes the output frame rate match the input.

One other caveat: there’s a known bug with the UDC and closed captions, wherein captions won’t pass in certain combinations of input and output formats. I doubt this applies to your application, but it seemed worth mentioning.

Regards,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

Here’s an idea: since you have a working unit, how about finding out what firmware revision it’s running… then download that version from BM’s archived drivers page, and flash one of the new units to that version? That might just do the trick, unless it’s both a hardware and firmware issue…

Unless I’m missing something, the worst case is that it won’t solve the problem, and then you can just re-load the current firmware and you’re back where you started.

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

[Camden Bucey] “It turned out my Behringer SRC2496 was defective. I received a replacement unit and it working exactly as I expected.”

Good for you!

(Defective Behringer product… working as expected… I won’t go there. Evil grin…)

— Jeff

[Jeff Hartman]

Is there an estimated time for resolving the problem in which changing the chromakey target phase also shifts the program video phase?

Other outstanding questions include allowing GPIs from the GPI / Tally interface to map to various buttons on the virtual panel, and adding keyboard shortcuts for other panel functions (e.g., DSK auto and DSK ON AIR).

Thanks,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

[Camden Bucey] “I have all my gear connected, but I’m still not getting an audio signal in Blackmagic Media Express. I have the balanced XLR outputs of my mixer going into the Behringer SRC2496. I’m getting levels on the Behringer. I have the AD/DA conversion turned on and set to AES/EBU output. I’m running the device’s digital XLR output to a Canare BCJ-XJ-TRB impedance transformer. From there I run BNC into the AES/EBU input on the ATEM TV Production studio. What am I missing?”

Is the Behringer set for 48kHz sample rate? That’s what the ATEM is going to expect.

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

[Carlos Morales] “1. How should I feed the video and audio from the ATEM 1 to the ATEM Television Studio? Do I send the video over via HDMI and the audio from the ATEM1’s analog outputs (which would need to be converted to AES/EBU)? Or would sending HD SDI from the ATEM 1 to the ATEM Television Studio work?

The easiest way to accomplish this is to feed the analog audio from your mixer to an analog to AES converter, and run its AES output into your ATEM TVS’s AES input. That will embed it into the program outputs, and make it available to the H.264 encoder. There are many devices that can do this; I have used the Rane ML1, which can double as a mic preamp if you need it. Since the Rane’s output is XLR balanced, you will also need a matching transformer like a Canare BCJ-XJ-TRB or Neutrik NADITBNC-F to feed the ATEM’s BNC input.

[Carlos] 2.How would I get an audio mix from all of my sources before sending to the ATEM1 via the analog XLR cable. The audio from the lavalier mic seems straight forward to mix via a sound board that accepts XLR. How would I mix the audio originating from sources that output their audio via the HDMI connection. For example, once I plug the HDMI cable into our PC, the audio is no longer sent via the computer’s analog audio output, instead it is embedded into the HDMI.

This is a bit more of a challenge… but one way to do it is to feed the HDMI from the computer to a Blackmagic “HDMI to SDI” miniconverter. Take one of the converter’s SDI feeds and send it to your ATEM switcher; take the other to a Blackmagic “SDI to Audio” or “SDI to Analog” miniconverter (either will take SDI in and give you analog audio out). This analog audio can feed your mixer.

[Carlos] Is there a soundboard that would accept analog, HDMI, and output the necessary AES/EBU? Do I need to introduce some HDMI splitters that would enable me to send one version of the signal to the ATEM1 and a second version to a converter that would accept the HDMI or SDI to create an AES/EBU version which I would then feed to the Television Studio?”

I’m not aware of a professional mixer that accepts HDMI feeds for inputs; it would be necessary to somehow de-embed the audio first, which I described above.

Regards,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

[Camden Bucey] “Thanks for the reply. After further research, I’ve since purchased a Behringer SRC2496 24-Bit/96 kHz A/D-D/A & Sample Rate Converter. From what I read, this should allow me to get my analog audio into the ATEM TV Production Studio. I also ordered the Behringer Shark FBQ100 as a delay line to fix any audio/video sync issues. Should this do the trick?”

Sorry… I reflexively cringe when I see “Behringer” — much of it is essentially musical instrument store grade stuff, and there are other issues with the company that don’t really bear on your question. But we’ll set that aside.

I still think that the Blackmagic Audio-to-SDI MiniConverter is a better solution: it integrates the analog to digital converter and embedder into a single small package; you don’t need to worry about sample clocks, because the ADC is automatically locked to the video. This eliminates a whole host of problems right there. You also don’t need to worry so much about gain structure, and the system complexity is vastly lower.

Delay shouldn’t be a terribly serious issue, especially if you can genlock your cameras and the ATEM to the same reference; if you do, the video delay will be on the order of tenths of milliseconds; worst case without shared reference is about 33 milliseconds, which is essentially imperceptible. If you still need delay, there are better units — Rane, for example, makes several — that aren’t coupled with the sorts of aggressive filtering that are intrinsic to a feedback processor like what you bought.

One minor point: the equipment you mention handles the AES audio as a balanced signal with an XLR connector, but the ATEM’s AES input expects an unbalanced feed on BNC. You should have a matching transformer to make the necessary physical and electrical changes — something like a Canare BJC-XJ-TRB or Neutrik NADITBNC-F would be appropriate.

Still, I am a fan of simplicity… the fewer active devices you have, the more likely the system is to work reliably, and take less time and effort to troubleshoot.

Regards,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast

[Jeff Hartman]

[Camden Bucey] “I’m trying to convert analog audio to AES/EBU over SDI output. I have an ATEM TV Production studio and would like to get the audio from my mixer into the switcher. Is this possible with the Blackmagic HDMI to SDI miniconverter? I cannot seem to get it to work with a variety of settings.”

That’s not going to work for a number of reasons. For one thing, the ATEM doesn’t pass audio from the SDI inputs through to the output; its internal embedder replaces whatever would have come from the selected input. Second, you can’t connect the SDI-to-HDMI converter to the ATEM’s AES input, because AES audio is a totally different sort of data from SDI video.

The most straightforward solution is to use a Blackmagic Audio-to-SDI miniconverter to take in the analog audio from your mixer and the program video from the ATEM; the miniconverter’s output will contain the embedded audio. The converter doesn’t care about the video format, and requires little to no setup to make it happen seamlessly.

Regards,

Jeff Hartman
Engineering Project Manager
Newport Television, Northeast