Broadcast engineers working in either definition will find something to interest them on the Crystal Vision stand (B47) at Broadcast LIVE and VideoForum - the highly-anticipated new UK show which takes place at Earls Court 2 in London between 30th January and 1st February.
Some of the products on show will be those which were first announced at last year‘s IBC and which are now shipping. For virtual studio users and sports graphics providers there‘s Safire SD 2 - the Standard Definition chroma keyer designed to provide an easy upgrade path to HD. Aimed at broadcast engineers who are not operating in HD at the moment but will do so in the near future, Safire SD 2 uses the same hardware platform as the High Definition Safire HD 2 but its operation is restricted to SD - until the customer chooses to upgrade to full HD operation by swapping the module‘s daughter board for a new one. Those working in multi-standard environments should come along and see Q-Down-A - the most recent version of Crystal Vision‘s flexible down converter and distribution amplifier which is now shipping. As well as providing either two or eight loop-throughs of the HD or SD input along with three Standard Definition outputs (individually configurable as SDI, composite, Y/C, YUV or RGB), Q-Down-A has additional features which make it ideal as a main signal path down converter - including a unique image quality in its price range, the ability to pass embedded audio, a variable video delay and even signal reporting. Standard Definition users haven‘t been forgotten either. Shipping for the first time at the end of 2007 was ALLDAC - a product designed to take all the best features from Crystal Vision‘s existing D to A converters and combine them into one new product. Offering an excellent 12 bit encoding performance, ALLDAC can convert SDI into combinations of analogue and digital, with the extremely flexible outputs configured as a mixture of composite, Y/C, YUV, RGB and SDI distribution.
A number of Crystal Vision‘s existing products have also acquired new features, following consultation with customers. The LKEY211 and LKEY HD linear keyers now offer relay bypass protection thanks to the development of two new frame rear modules - the RM40 and RM42. Should the linear keyer fail or be removed, only the graphics will be lost with the main video passed through safely. Crystal Vision‘s fully-flexible 10 bit aspect ratio converter ARC-10MC also gets relay bypass protection (with the new RM43 rear module), as well as video index control which allows it to switch automatically between one conversion and bypass based on the aspect ratio conversion information carried in the video index data, increasing its potential uses by making it suitable for some automation applications.
Broadcast LIVE and VideoForum is also the place to go to get a first glimpse of two of Crystal Vision‘s early product releases for 2008. Crystal Vision brings its affordable space-saving technology to High Definition colour correction and legalisation for the first time with the customer-requested CoCo HD. As well as an excellent range of basic whole picture colour adjustments including individual gamma controls which are rarely seen at this price level, the legalisation reaches a new level of sophistication with advanced correction for gamut errors, in which the colour is legalised by desaturating it without changing its hue. For Dolby E users there‘s SYNNER-E HD - a video synchroniser for HD or SD video that allows a mixture of Dolby E and standard AES within the same embedded audio group, and which can also embed and de-embed external audio through the fitting of piggybacks. It is the first Crystal Vision product to re-align the Dolby E data to ensure the guardband is in exactly the correct place, therefore meeting the strict requirements now recommended by Dolby to allow many more stages of processing.
Based at Whittlesford near Cambridge in the UK, Crystal Vision provides digital keyers and a full range of digital and analogue interface equipment including converters, decoders, encoders, aspect ratio converters and audio embedders to the professional broadcasting industry worldwide.
