Up/Down/CrossHD - Video Jitter?

Good morning, everyone.

In our main auditorium, we are using (still!) Sony D50's with 16x9 blocks installed. That makes upconverting the video signals to 720p relatively easy. The system has worked great using an FS2 for our primary cameras and an older BM Up/Down/Cross for the audience Q&A camera to handle the upconverts. We just tried installing 2 new Up/Down/Cross HDs for Cameras 1 and 2.

Unfortunately, the UDC-HDs introduced a video stutter or jitter into both cameras. After testing with the FS2, we concluded it's definitely the Blackmagics that are causing the issue. There was no smooth motion when a speaker moved.

Has anyone seen this happen before? These are new, out of the box, with the Converters 7.3.2 software installed and the latest updates pushed to each converter.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts and time!

-Bill

Call me crazy, but I would avoid shooting standard def in 2018 and I would replace the cameras with modern 1080p HD cameras and not do any processing at all. There's a ton of cheap 1080p cameras out there -- even a 6-camera setup need not cost a lot of money or be complicated to use.

Marc, while I agree with your sentiment, our hands are tied by the client. As a contractor for the government, we use the tools that we are given. And right now, management has not indicated an plans on allocating funds to upgrade the video system.

So, we use what we have. But I'm still wondering if anyone has had issues with upconverting SD material using the new UpDownCross-HD? The old ones work great. The new ones...not so much.

Thanks,
-Bill

a video stutter or jitter into both cameras.

What conversion have you invoked?

My guess would be the original cameras are 29.97 interlaced -- are you attempting a de-interlace/segmented scan/progressive output?

jPo, CSI

Hi JP...

Yes, we're trying to go from 525 @ 29.97i to 720 @ 59.94p. Is the quality super? No. But it's acceptable for our internal IPTV system. And the old UDC does a perfectly adequate job. It's just the new version of the box isn't playing nicely. I've gone through the software setup and there's really nothing that we can change, other than the setting that the SD signal is 16x9 vs 4x3.

I don't see any other settings that we can play with, unless I'm missing something somewhere.

All the best,
-Bill

720 @ 59.94p

Might be a dominance or filed oreder issue, then... a lot of Blackmagic behaviour defaults to segmented rather than true progressive. Starting out with time base related field dominance is not likely to play nice with most displays anymore, either.

jPo, CSI

Same problem here, converting PAL 25i to 1080i50 or 1080p50.
Up/Down/CrossHD always deinterlace input signal.
So PAL 25i becomes 25p then converted to 1080i50 and it looks like progressive.

I asked to BlackMagic and they said it's a feature, not a bug. Very disappointing.