Intensity Pro 4K Composite output

Hi all,

I've been working with the Intensity Pro 4K card in a linux environment (Centos 7) and am running into a problem with the composite video output. I can get video output just fine out of the HDMI port and component connections, but with the composite connection I'm only getting grayscale.

I have tried a variety of tools, including the TestPattern app in the SDK 10.4.1 Samples folder, and still see the same result. I am running the 10.4.2 driver and firmware updater says the card's up to date.

Anyone else run into this?

Thanks!

[Matt Jefferson]

HI Shane

We don't support Centos 7 with our drives. I recommend that you try it with media express on Windows if you can secure a system to test. Report it to support via our web support (bottom middle has send us email link) page if it does not work on supported OS with 10.4.2.
thanks, Matt

Hi Shane,

I'm not familiar with the Intensity cards as I use the Decklink series but it looks like the same connectors are used for all the analogue outputs. Has composite output mode been selected in testPattern, and have you selected an SD mode in case the down conversion is not working? Component, RGB and S-Video modes will give you a greyscale on the green/Y cable, also some monitors are not multi-standard and will often show grey if PAL is input to a NTSC monitor and vice versa. If you have access to a waveform monitor or oscilloscope you will be able to see if the colour burst is present on the signal.

Basic questions - I'm sure you will have checked.

Instead of trying to find a windows system, it would be much quicker to try a 64-bit Ubuntu live CD as an alternative OS. From experience, 14.04LTS and 15.04 work with the Decklink cards plus you could try the output from Media Express.

Best regards,

Dave.

Thanks Dave- I'll try the Ubuntu distro as well. I did make sure the composite output was selected when checking with testpattern. The monitors I'm using are PAL/NTSC compatible as well, but I also did select the NTSC mode. I can check with our video production guys and see if one of their broadcast monitors has a waveform display that will work- I know they've got various scopes, etc. but I don't use these often.

Unfortunately in my application switching to Windows would not really be a viable solution, but if Ubuntu is a supported OS or at least works well, I could live with that.

Thanks again!

I've found something interesting on this issue:

- I installed Ubuntu 15.04 on the machine (server version, no gui) along with decklink driver 10.4.2 and sdk 10.4.1. Compiled TestPattern and have the same result- no color on composite output

- Went back to a previous image that I've had on a development machine that uses Centos 6.4 (again, minimal- no gui), since I see that's listed as a supported OS in the driver documentation. Updated the decklink driver to 10.4.2 and SDK 10.4.1. Compiled the TestPattern program and had the same result.

- Now, here's the interesting part, I also happened to have a VLC (2.1.0) build on this machine, compiled with the SDK version 9.2 enabling the decklink output module. This VLC build will output an NTSC signal, with color, on the composite output no problem- I really wasn't expecting that.

So, I'll pick back up with this on Monday to investigate further, but I'm really surprised that VLC build with such an old version SDK would work at all with the Intensity Pro 4K card.

Hi Shane,

How are you setting composite output in TestPattern? I have just tried it on my Ubuntu 15.04 machine with a HD Extreme3D card and found no way to select between component/composite/YC modes without using the desktop video GUI.

DesktopVideoGUI

DesktopVideo.png (56.77 KiB) Viewed 4636 times

Selecting composite in the GUI, I can output composite PAL or NTSC from the Extreme3D on Ubuntu 15.04 running 10.4.2 drivers. Are you able to run a GUI distro for testing?

It was interesting you mentioning 9.x drivers - I had problems with SD internal keying functionality being lost in the 10.x drivers with DecklinkSDI cards. I had to roll back that machine to 9.8 for internal keying, I wonder if a composite video bug for certain cards crept in too?

Regards,

Dave.

Using the TestPattern app from SDK 10.4.1, the command arguments are -d <device id> -m <mode> -p <pixel format> -c <audio channels> -s <sample depth> -3 <3D playback>

So you're right, you don't explicitly set the output connection. But, working with other open source tools like gstreamer and bmdplay, for example, I'm seeing the same issue with black and white composite output. There is of course a switch for output connections with those tools.

I'm not really a C++ programmer, but I had a look through bmdplay as well as the new decklink output module in ffmpeg, compared to some of the samples in the SDK and everything appears to be implemented very similarly. But, I could certainly be missing something there.

Is there maybe a difference in later SDKs in how setting the composite output connection needs to be handled?

I was thinking it would be easy to compile say bmdplay against a 9.x SDK and see what my results are there, but I'm not sure it would really narrow down the problem. If I get some time in the next couple days I can try a desktop gui version of ubuntu and see if I run into the same issues after setting the output with the gui tools.

Hi Shane,

I'm not familiar with bmdplay but there is no control of video output format in the version of decklinkvideosink I use (v 1.5.2). Looking back to this thread (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=36862) regarding setting input source , you could modify the preferences xml to control the desired settings without a GUI.

BlackmagicPrefs.png (127.99 KiB) Viewed 4604 times

The xml is found at /etc/blackmagic/BlackmagicPreferences.xml.

It must be possible (and correct) to set the output format in code but I'm not familiar with the method as I don't need the analogue outputs.

I hope this helps.

Dave.

Hi Dave- you were right, the TestPattern app in the SDK uses the settings from BlackmagicPreferences.xml to change the output connection. That didn't seem to be the case with the older versions of the SDK and I had no idea that was implemented.

By default, the AnalogVideoOutput attribute is set to Component, as you have in your example image. By changing that to Composite, I now have output with color on my composite connection while using TestPattern. I'll check with other apps as I get time and report back with those as well.

Thanks for the help!