Live inputs--tearing at top of mix

I'm having issues with live inputs (cameras) tearing at the top of the mix. Essentially it looks like the top 10 or so pixels are out of sync with the rest of the mix.

I don't think it's a problem with the video card: I see the same problems on two different machines. Both are using the GTX285 chipset although they are different video card builds.

Anyone else had this problem? I've looked at all of my settings and can't seem to isolate what would cause it. I've dried enabling/disabling the "deinterlace" option in the INPUTS window but it doesn't seem to help.

Machines have plenty of power & RAM. Capture is via Phoenix cards (identical between both machines).
Catalyst 4.4/build 357
Mac OS 10.6.2
8-core 2.26 gHz, 8gb RAM

Hi Leif,
Where are you seeing the tearing? I cant see it on the screenshots. Is it in the live preview s in the mix or on the output?

What phoenix drivers are you using? are they the most up to date?

Paul

check what kiwi is saying

we once did a 6 live input SD-SDI with 3 phoenix cards on a 2009 macpro but with 10.6.8 and a flashed GTX285
the tearing only occured when the server couldn't handle all the HD-SDI signals, meaning 5x SD and 1x HD-SDI instead of the 6x SD-SDI

all video inputs where isolated aswell
do you have everything grounded on the same cirquit?

does it also occur when there's only 1 input active?

did you install the GTX drivers by setting it up with a GT120 first time?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kiwi

Hi Leif,
Where are you seeing the tearing? I cant see it on the screenshots. Is it in the live preview s in the mix or on the output?

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I took some more screen captures during tonight's show. The screen captures were taken from mix-1 on my GUI display (DVI-1), but the same tearing occurs on my stage output (DVI-2). You can clearly see where the top 10 or so lines are out of sync with the rest of the image.
Because of the labeling on my input preview window there's no way to see if they are showing up "torn" in that window (since the tear is right at the top of the image) but my Nocturne engineer is top shelf and he'd definitely notice if it was coming from him. The signal corruption is definitely downstream of the switcher (either on the Phoenix card or in Catalyst).

Because of some unrelated issues that I had to deal with today I was unable to check drivers or trouble shoot as suggested, but will do so on the next show day. Meanwhile please take a look at the newer sample images and let me know if this looks familiar.

Thank you.

Hi Leif


I assume that this is a consistent problem that happens every day and all day, from the way you describe it across both your main and backup machine. I also guess this is a long running tour as your OS is 10.6.2 with a older version of Catalyst? May be worth running m364 to test and even setting up a 10.6.8 partition on your back up machine to test(keeping the original 10.6.2 partition too) if any of my suggestions below don't work.

What is the input resolution and frame rate that you are ingesting at, and what is the output resolution and frequency. also how many inputs are you running? It may be worth turning off all but one of the inputs in the input panel in the HUD.

From what you have described I would widen your scope of fault finding to pre catalyst. And if you have access to one I would use a image pro with a test pattern with diagonal motion on and plug directly into the phoenix card and see if the tearing is manifesting and then A/B test each point in the signal path, all the way to pre Switcher if necessary. This is no reflection on your racks engineer, but frame grabber cards are quite sensitive to timings that won't always show on a monitor. Places that are common sources of timing issues are aux output cards in the switcher crate, DAs and once in a blue moon matrix outs.

Plan B would be to tweak the programming of the show and loose the top 10px ;) or crop the top of the frame in the inputs in the HUD. Either which way make sure you keep a original version of the show to go back to just incase.

Phil
Philip G Haynes Live Visual Design

Please post or email a 'catalyst support PDF profile' - this will tell us a lot more about your system - the cards in use etc...

It certainly looks like an SDI sync issue - may be before catalyst.?
You need to test as suggested above with a moving test image to diagnose.
Try each input one-by-one and then all as per your show setup.
What happens when you un-plug and re-plug the signal innput?
Are you using any SDI isolation between Card and PPU?

If the rest of the image is consistently ok - then maybe use Phil's suggestion of cropping 10pix off the top...

S