Some Teranex questions

I see that the manual for the Teranex 2D is now available for download - hopefully this is a sign it's shipping soon. We're actually interested in the 3D, so I hope it's really going to be available next month (since Blackmagic release dates are notorious moving targets, making it nearly impossible to plan purchases...)

In any case, after having gone through the manual, I have some questions that aren't addressed there. We currently own an older Teranex VC300 unit with a couple of installed modules, and we're interested in the 3D model to be able to do some things we can't do with our current setup.

1) Application of mattes to video in real time. We are a Blu-ray and DVD authoring house, and we often get masters from clients that have incorrect or sloppy matting. That is, the film was supposed to be matted for 1.85:1, but it's 16:9 full frame. Or, a 2.35:1 anamorphic HD master has some jumpiness from the telecine, and we need to apply new mattes to mask this, or most frequently, there's just garbage around the edges of the frame we need to remove. I'm not talking about aspect ratio conversion here. I'm talking about overlaying black on top of the image, but with the ability for it to be variable. Having a list of standard matte sizes would be fantastic, but at minimum, the ability to make custom mattes and save them to presets within the system would suffice. Can we do this in the new Teranex boxes?

2) Does the current crop of Teranex boxes support CDLs like our VC300 does?

3) Will any of the old ImageRestore tools be integrated into the Teranex at any point? Specifically, I'm talking about dust and scratch concealment. While not perfect, we have found them to be useful in cleaning up extremely dusty film a bit, for clients who don't have the budget to hire us to do a manual restoration.

4) It's unclear from the manual, but can the box convert an SD source with a letterboxed picture to 16:9 Anamorphic SD or full frame HD?

5) The manual states that "An adjustable (ADJ) aspect ratio conversion will be added in a future software
release." -- any word on when this might be?

Thanks,

-perry

Teranex for matting is way overkill
Every simplest NLE and other (Vdub, avisynth etc) tools can do it and way faster than realtime

Um, that's very helpful. thanks.

We're looking at it for more than matting. It's just something we'd like it to do in addition to other stuff, some of which I also asked about in my original post.

[Terry Frechette]

1) Application of mattes to video in real time. We are a Blu-ray and DVD authoring house, and we often get masters from clients that have incorrect or sloppy matting. That is, the film was supposed to be matted for 1.85:1, but it's 16:9 full frame. Or, a 2.35:1 anamorphic HD master has some jumpiness from the telecine, and we need to apply new mattes to mask this, or most frequently, there's just garbage around the edges of the frame we need to remove. I'm not talking about aspect ratio conversion here. I'm talking about overlaying black on top of the image, but with the ability for it to be variable. Having a list of standard matte sizes would be fantastic, but at minimum, the ability to make custom mattes and save them to presets within the system would suffice. Can we do this in the new Teranex boxes?

We don't have pre-defined mattes. However, with the adjustable aspect ratio feature you will be able to "trim" pretty much any amount you need horizontally and vertically. This trim (or more correctly matte) can be set to any color desired. We do have 6 presets within the system and the trim settings within the unit are stored along with all other settings in the box, so that should work as you need. We also have what we call a "zoom/crop" function as part of the aspect ratio controls that will allow you to zoom the image by a few lines and crop them out so that you could remove the "garbage" around the edges of the frame. That does however zoom just a bit, but either method is available.

2) Does the current crop of Teranex boxes support CDLs like our VC300 does?

We do not support CDL, but Blackmagic does have an SDK and APIs for the Teranex family of products will be available in the future.

3) Will any of the old ImageRestore tools be integrated into the Teranex at any point? Specifically, I'm talking about dust and scratch concealment. While not perfect, we have found them to be useful in cleaning up extremely dusty film a bit, for clients who don't have the budget to hire us to do a manual restoration.

ImageRestore functionality will not be introduced into the Teranex 2D or 3D models. There are image restoration tools available within the Davinci Revival suite of products offered by Blackmagic Design.

4) It's unclear from the manual, but can the box convert an SD source with a letterboxed picture to 16:9 Anamorphic SD or full frame HD?

Yes, through the predefined aspect ratio conversions that are available today in the Teranex 2D you can do both conversions on an SD source. The variable aspect ratio feature is not needed for either of those conversion.

5) The manual states that "An adjustable (ADJ) aspect ratio conversion will be added in a future software
release." -- any word on when this might be?

We don't have a release date for that feature at the moment, but when it is available it will be a free upgrade over USB to your existing unit.

Hi Terry,

Thanks for the helpful response.

Consider these feature requests:

1) Predefined ARC settings (mattes) for common film aspect ratios - 1.66:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1, etc. Rather than using up the limited presets that are available on the box to make custom presets for these, it would be great if we could just choose from a list that doesn't reduce our available presets.

2) CDL support on the box, like the old teranex. We just finished a film that consisted of about 40 minutes of film, followed by 50 minutes of newer video footage. The video footage required noise reduction on some shots, the film required some repositioning and matting. We were able to do all this on our teranex using the ImageEnhance tool and CDLs. We did the frame repositioning for the film for the first 40 minutes, then a CDL entry triggered the noise reduction on the shots that needed it for the video. It took a little setting up, but ultimately is much faster than having to capture all of these separately using different settings, then conforming it all back together in the edit system. CDLs are huge timesavers in cases like this.

3) I'd love to see the restoration functionality come back - I realize you have Revival, but that's not the same as a realtime system that can deal with light dust removal or simple fixes. With Revival, you lose the ability to do this stuff while you're capturing into the system in real time. Since we work primarily with feature films, having to take a film into a separate system to do some minor work adds significant time to our workflow, when often we can get acceptable results in the teranex. We won't be getting rid of the VC300 any time soon, I suppose!

thanks!

-perry

An additional question:

When the Teranex does a downconvert from 1080p to NTSC, does it convert to 720x480 and then pad the output with black to make it 720x486, or does it scale the image to 720x486 with picture top to bottom?

(see my other post about the Up/Down/Cross to see what I'm talking about, because that device seems to make a 480 picture with 6 lines of black at the bottom, which we can't use).

thanks!

-perry