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widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 7:35 pm
by Peter Dokman
I just purchased a few Smartview Duo monitors for in my OB-Truck. On the website I saw the following description:
Both SmartView models handle all SD, HD and 3 Gb/s SDI video formats....
But to my big surprise it cannot handle 16:9 formats in SD ! It squeezes the picture leaving black stripes on the left and right side. I did not see this in the user manual, nor the website. I can tell you it looks very unprofessional having a wall full of monitors with the wrong aspect ratio. My clients , fully understandable, are complaining about the 'strange' looking picture. ( The talent: "Do I really look so skinny ?" ..."no sir it's the monitor"). If I knew this before I would choose another brand of monitors.

Same story with my ATEM2 on the multiviewer: all sources are squeezed in SD.
Nothing about this in the manual nor website.
Am I doing something wrong, or did I overlook something in the manual or website ?? Or is it just a mistake that BlackMagic made and it will be resolved in a firmware update ? I hope somebody can give me a hint how to solve the problem. I work in 625 SD not HD.
Please let me know, thank you.
Peter.

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 7:46 pm
by Joshua Helling
In the latest software update there is a checkbox in the SmartView control panel that will allow you to set widescreen view. It was only recently released, so you might have bought your Smartview Duo might not have had the setting at the time.

You can download that from our main website by clicking on the support tab and selecting your product.

We've also gotten similar requests for the ATEM lineup, but have not had a chance to add that feature yet, but I believe it is something we'd really like to do.

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 9:11 pm
by Peter Dokman
Thank you Joshua, (also on behalve of our Talent..)
I'll check the latest firmware.
I hope you can implement this in the ATEM as well, as many people are (still) using SD.

Best regards,

Peter

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 10:49 pm
by Palm Av
the problem we have peter is that 90% of all the gear is made to suit the US first and and rest of the world second, the US doesn't use 16:9 for SD transmission its 4:3, they seeem to forget that everwhere ale in the world eg europe and asia use 16:9 SD. Black magic arent the only ones doing this though, datavideo also have this problem on some of their new mixers(se2800).
This problem 16:9 SD problem is found in everything that blackmagic actually do e.g, atem's, hyper decks, h.264 pro recorder, media express and up untill recently the smart view duo's( not sure about the 17" smart view?).
Please fix this problem in ALL OF YOUR EQUIPMENT.

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 23, 2012 10:54 pm
by Joshua Helling
For what it's worth, SmartView HD launched with this feature, we just needed time to do it on the SmartView Duo. Media Express has this feature (and has for a long while, since 2.0 I think).

Suffice to say we are keenly aware of the desire for these features in our other products as well.

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Fri Aug 24, 2012 5:29 am
by joelsabs
Living in Australia and having also recently purchased the ATEM 2M/E production switcher I was also disappointed by the lack of support for SD 16:9. I am always conscious of such issues and at no point was there information available, nor was I told that it couldn't display inputs on the multiview screens in 16:9... Had I known in advance I would have considered other options to using the multiview option even if I had still decided to purchase that switcher. The specs for the ATEM 2 M/E clearly list compliance with SMTPE 259M which, as I understand it, does provide for SD 16:9 support. While I understand that BMD primarily develops for the US market, its distribution is worldwide and it should consider this when releasing products in other countries and at least be clear on specifications if there isn't going to be support for these other formats. Having spent money on a product that really isn't doing what it's supposed to, I hope BMD are more than "keenly aware of a desire for these features" but are working hard to reassure their clients that they will promptly fix the problems.

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Sun Aug 26, 2012 9:26 am
by Daniel
I didn't realise there was already a thread on this topic so started as similar one in Live Production yesterday.

I have to admit when I first took delivery of our ATEM M/E 1 and discovered our SD sources were all squashed into 4:3 - I spent a couple of days --- myself that I had made a bad move buying this product for the television channel I work for.

Especially since BMD are incapable of giving even a rough idea of when 16:9 maybe added, and from the companies response in this thread, it sounds like work hasn't even begun on incorporating it.

It's incredibly frustrating to see new features such as the audio mixer developed and introduced, when really these are not broadcast expected features, yet 16:9 Anamorphic / Widescreen support certainly is.

I agree that it really should be made clear in product descriptions that 16:9 in SD is not supported, but then I'm sure they would have missed out on quite a few sales, ours included.

:evil:

Re: widescreen not supported in SD ?

PostPosted: Mon Aug 27, 2012 8:46 pm
by Piet Hoving
Earlier today, I posted the following message on the post production forum. It seems to be the same problem:

I use the Blackmagic Intensity Pro not only for capturing, but also for output to a standard wide-screen TV (PAL; 25 fps) to check the quality of the video while editing.

For editing I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS6.

When setting the sequence properties in Premiere to Blackmagic HD1080 (1920x1080: Motion-JPEG Interlaced 50i; pixelratio 1.0), I get a good picture on the TV.

However, when I set the sequence properties to SD at 720x576 (PAL; Motion-JPEG; 16x9; pixelratio 1.4587) the video on the TV is odd: about 1/3 shifted to the left.

Has anyone seen this phenomena before? Is there a solution to solve this?

My system configuration is as follows:
Motherboard Asus P8 Z68-V Pro
Intel processor Core i7-2600 LGA1155
Asus GeForce GTX570 graphic card
16MB RAM
Blackmagicdesign Intensity Pro with driver 9.5.3
Windows 7 64bit with SP1
Adobe Production Premium CS6[/i]
Kind regards,
Pete Hoving