Blackmagic Forum

I am currently completely out of road finding a solution for this problem.
I assume I am missing something blindingly obvious, and please point me in the right direction if this topic has been covered and I've missed it.
The problem is I can get picture on a Teradek Vidiu, but not audio.
Today I was live-streaming a conference using an URSA Mini Pro direct to a Teradek Vidiu Go through SDI. The Teradek went to Core and was pushed to the client's Grabyo.
The picture was fine, but there was no embedded audio, despite good levels on camera. No audio was showing up in Core, and the client reported no audio their end.
I pushed a second stream to a test my Facebook page and was getting picture, but not audio, which ruled out a problem on the client's end.
The audio was line level from a mixing desk, but I still had no audio when I switched to internals, or an onboard shotgun.
For plan B had a BM WebPresenter in my case, which I then plugged the SDI into, and the audio was fine. I managed to get the stream out through the Vidiu by routing the BMWP PGM Out into the encoder which worked. Core and Grabyo now had audio and picture.
What I don't understand is why there wasn't any audio? The fact it worked through the BMWP rules out mechanical damage to outputs and cables. And in a separate incident I had the same issue using a LiveU system months before, ruling out a Teradek bug.
Reading the manual it states the UMP outputs 48khz 24bit audio over SDI. Knowing very little about the nitty-gritty of audio, I can only suspect this is where the problem lies, but don't actually know the full implications of the above.
Any suggestions and/or solutions would be greatly appreciated!.

Have you tried with a SDI monitor on the Ursa to check you have embedded audio output?

Could it be that for some reason the teradek is switching to the analog audio input instead of the SDI Embedded input?

I am having the same problem with the Teradek Bolt 500 XT and URSA Mini Pro - if the SDI is connected via cable to a Shogun Inferno or a Sumo 19 audio is there, but when the signal gets through the Bolt, then there is no audio.

Wrote about it here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=87612

Just a thought... Is the Shogun stripping the audio off its output?, try connecting directly to the camera.
Cheers

Denny Smith wrote:Just a thought... Is the Shogun stripping the audio off its output?, try connecting directly to the camera.
Cheers

Denny, the Shogun is not used when the Teradek is connected.

I did some further investigations:

1. Updating the firmware on the Teradek units to the latest did not solve anything.
2. When I am sending the signal from my URSA Mini 4.6k (FW 4.8) audio works as expected.
3. Hooking up the Atomos Shogun Inferno directly to UMP gives working audio.
4. The UMP is on FW 6.0 BETA, so I'll try now an update to FW6.0 FINAL and if that doesn't work a downgrade to FW 5.1.1

EDIT:
Upgrading to FW 6.0 FINAL did not solve the issue.

Ok, problem found.
With firmware 5.1.1 the UMP audio works on the Teradek Bolt. So there has been something changed in firmware 6.0 and above which breaks audio for the Teradek.

I have filed a bug report to BMD support.

Good, glad you got it sorted Robert.
Cheers

I've had a reply from BM support and they suggested the same thing - downgrading the firmware from 6 to 5.1.1 which I'm about to do.
We have an old 4K which hasn't had 6 installed and there is audio, so it seems to a be a bug. What I'm interested to know is if it's across all UMP with 6.0, or certain batches only.
Fingers crossed for a bug fix soon!

Whats the status of the update. Still not working with 6.4

brooksmoore wrote:Whats the status of the update. Still not working with 6.4

Teradek hasn't addressed this issue either in any of their updates.
Pretty lame on both sides, I have to say. Seems BMD and Teradek are playing a silent blame game.

Closer inspection reveals that there are some issues in the S299-1 HD audio groups on the Ursa models.
My Phabrix QX 12G is trowing errors on those audio packets. This is probabbly why the Teradek, LiveU, etc has so much trouble with getting the audio in.

We tryed this with a VA5" in between were we could see the audio on the VA5" but still no audio on the LiveU.

Then we took a Atomos Inferno in between. As the Inferno does a great job correcting errors and embed the correct payload data. Then we had audio instantly!!

Teradek encoders and Wireless links are affected.
LiveU streaming encoders are affected.

Thanks Daniel for the close inspection. Does it make a difference for you if you are using firmware 6.x or firmware 5.x?

This was captured with an Ursa Broadcast running 5.1.x
The test with the Atomos with LiveU in above story was with an Ursa 4.6K running latest FW (about a month ago).

I just tried it:
UMP @ firmware 6.0 -> 12G SDI out -> 12G in Shogun Inferno 12G out -> SDI in Teradek Bolt Tx 500XT -> Teradek Bolt Rc 500XT SDI out -> Atomos Sumo 19

No audio is registered on the Sumo 19

Even if I'm using the Shogun to cross convert the signal from SDI to HDMI I won't get audio.

And it is the same with the HDMI output from the PCC4k (firmware 6.1) - no audio through the Teradek Bolt.

Robert Niessner wrote:I just tried it:
UMP @ firmware 6.0 -> 12G SDI out -> 12G in Shogun Inferno 12G out -> SDI in Teradek Bolt Tx 500XT -> Teradek Bolt Rc 500XT SDI out -> Atomos Sumo 19

Did you have audio on channels 1&2 of the Shogun? Because we did.. Also check that you have enabled the audio of those channels..

Daniel, I had audio on 1&2 on the Shogun Inferno, but on the Sumo 19 I had the monitoring set to A (which I thought stands for ALL channels - but apparently it stands for ANALOG IN).
After changing the monitoring to 1&2 I was able to see and listen to the incoming audio.
Silly me.

So as you suggested using the Shogun Inferno as a workaround does work indeed. Thanks for the tipp!

And I double-checked: Taking the Shogun Inferno out of the signal chain makes the audio disappear again.

And I did another test with my Atomos Shinobi SDI in the signal chain. It seems that this device does not signal improving on the SDI out - so I got no audio with that either.

Robert Niessner wrote:And I did another test with my Atomos Shinobi SDI in the signal chain. It seems that this device does not signal improving on the SDI out - so I got no audio with that either.

Might have everything to with that the Inferno has the function to also to 12G to HD for SDI output. So there might be more behind that output port then with the Shinobi which rather looks like a Loop output. (Which might even switch to playout when play is hit.. )

At least good you are able to confirm my observations

Just finding this thread now, however I had to find out the hard way on site this past weekend. I have never, ever had an audio codec or flaw issue prevent sound from getting through an encoder/decoder that was designed to accept audio via SDI. Our work-around was decimator simply outputting the same resolution (1080i, 59.94) it was taking in however, the decimator corrected the audio issue. Had to cut the converters cable to adapt to Anton power. That coupled with the Teradek bond was a tad cumbersome.

This is ridiculous Blackmagic. Please fix and update these cameras rather than make 8k switchers no one needs.