[Mike Squires]

Sorry, that last sentence should have said “h.264”, not h.265, just a typo.

[Mike Squires]

We use the ATEM TVS, which has the H.264 encoder built into it. I’m pretty sure it uses the same SoC as the H.264 ProRecorder, but someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

In our experience, the quality isn’t so good, even capturing at native resolution with maximum bitrate (20Mbps). The problem is that it de-interlaces even native interlaced video, and it doesn’t do a very good job at it. There is a lot of stair-stepping in round objects, such as a basketball, people’s shoulders, etc…

It also adds quite a bit of noise to the video, less noticeable when capturing HD, but very noticeable when capturing SD. It almost looks like mosquito noise being added.

We’ve only tested it capturing 1080i and NTSC, so 720p may look better, since it’s natively progressive.

I’ve asked BMD if these issues would/could be fixed via a firmware update, and their response basically was “that’s to be expected at those bitrates”.

I personally find that odd, since I get much better results encoding in MPEG2 at 8Mbps (SD) and 15Mbps (HD) using Premiere Pro CS5.5. Encoding the same video in MPEG2, keeping it interlaced, round objects don’t exhibit stair-stepping and no noticeable noise is added. I get the same results encoding in h.265 via CS5.5, so imo, something is wrong with the SoC (or firmware) that BMD is using.

Just my $.02.

[Mike Squires]

That’s a simple hdmi handshake issue, very normal with a lot of hdmi devices. The same thing happens with our ATEM TVS.

Just unplug the HDMI cable from either the PC or the switcher, wait 5 seconds, and plug it back in. Sometimes, you have to do it twice. It happens to us on a daily basis, not too big of a deal.