A Purple Cast to HD signal on input?

Hi there friends and colleagues -

We rented an HD deck for a week to bring in LOADS of HDCAM material (some shot at 1080/24PsF (23.976), some shot at 1080i 59.94). So far our first day has NOT been productive, yikes!

The deck settings issues are resolved, and the color looks fine on the Panasonic HD monitor, but in FCP on the 30" cinema display monitor, in the log and capture window, there's a purple tint overall. Also after capture in the canvas window...

To see an image of our Kona Control Panel settings, and of how our log + capture window looks with and without a tape in the deck, please go to:

[www.spillfilm.com]

And here's a more precise description from my colleague, Michael:


We are getting a purple cast/tint over the entire picture when trying to capture from a Sony HDW-M2000 deck.

Our specs/settings:
Mac Pro 2x2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM
OS 10.4.8
FCP 5.1.2
Kona 3 card - see above URL for settings
The current tape was recorded at 1080psf23.976
The deck is set to output like that

Any other information I can give you?
Everything digitizes fine, except for the purple cast.

Gahhhhhh!



So, any experience with THIS one? We have tried swapping out the AJA cables, and also tried on another computer so the tests have thus far used 2 different kona cards and 2 different sets of cables...

Thanks Pals,

Marla
PS-missed NAB, but went to the Apple FCP Studio 2 demo today in NYC: Wooooo Hooooo! very excited about the Soundtrack and the Color apps, + motion looks great too.

M A R L A


Current System:

FCP 7.0.3 on an MBP 17" from early 2011, running OS 10.8.3

Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.8.3 (12D78)

So, when you simultaneously display the footage on the Cinema display monitor and the Panasonic HD monitor, the Panasonic looks fine? This would suggest that there's nothing wrong with the footage - it's the monitor thats gone wonky.

Thanks Jude, but we tested more than one display - 2 so far - and the problem was there for both.

So it's got to be:

1) something inside of FCP
2) Kona-related?
3) some sort of reference signal or other problem between the deck and the Kona 3 (but not between the deck and the HD monitor)

4)?

M A R L A


Current System:

FCP 7.0.3 on an MBP 17" from early 2011, running OS 10.8.3

Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.8.3 (12D78)

What happens if you take the kona out of the equation and just connect the cinema display normally?

I don't understand your question - normally?

The graphics card and kona card are in different pci slots...

I don't know much about this, so perhaps I am missing some obvious factoid?

Please clarify.

-NB-we have 2 monitors, the cinema display hooked up to the CPU, and the panasonic HD monitor to the deck...


Thanks

Have you checked the View options in your Canvas and View windows (Alpha, RGB etc.)? It looks to me that it's not the Kona -- that would have affected playback to the external monitor. It seems to me like FCP's having software problems or a wrong setting. And you didn't mention dumping preferences.


www.derekmok.com

<<<color looks fine on the Panasonic HD monitor>>>

Correct me, but didn't y'all just prove the Panasonic is broken? Wouldn't that lead to all your problems--in addition to the unbalanced camera, of course.

Can you post a still somewhere illustrating the cast? I'm really interested in the exact cast. "Purple" covers a lot of ground.

Koz

I had a look at your screengrabs.
It appears as if you are importing the footage using the wrong color space.
For example, if you capture YPbPr footage as RGB (or vice versa), you get these problems.

Kona cards generally have a number of different color space options in the capture presets.
I would try a different capture setting.

Johan Polhem
Motion Graphics
www.johanpolhem.com

(I'm Marla's colleague who's tangling with the purple monster...)

Thank you everyone for your suggestions!

Derel -- I have tried dumping the prefs and the purple problem persisted. I've also toyed with the Alpha/RGB options and it doesn't seem to resolve the issue.

Koz -- You can take a look at a few screengrabs of the cast at www.spillfilm.com/help.jpg

Not sure exactly what you mean that we proved the Panasonic HD monitor is broken. To clarify:
- When the deck is hooked directly to the Panasonic monitor, the image looks fine.
- When the deck is hooked directly to the MacPro/Kona3, the playback in FCP's log/capture window on our Cinema display is purpleish.

Johan -- We are importing through HDSDI- BNC to BNC . Different capture settings yield similar color issues and/or distorted video.
Perhaps there's a sub-setting in one of the capture settings that relates to color space...? I don't know too much in that area.

Unfortunately the Kona 3's only inputs are HDSDI as far as I know. The other connectors are XLR audio In/Out, and bnc YPbPr-Out.


Thank you everyone for chewing on this.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Michael Glass
Media Production Specialist
TED Conferences
www.ted.com

I went off to look at the pictures. They are, in fact, worth 1024 words.

You don't have just purple pictures. You have purple blacks and green whites. Look at the guy's pants on the right and the Holly Golightly picture on the left.

Classic Y, R-Y, B-Y reversal for R, G, B, S. It's also the classic reversal of 4:4:4: colorspace for 4:2:2. Is that in a setup panel somewhere, or did you shoot the wrong one by accident?

Koz

I think the colorspace settings are possibly in one of the AJA Control Panel settings.

At any rate, I updated FCP to 5.1.4 and updated the Kona Control Panel to v4 (released a few weeks ago) and those updates seemed to do the trick.

My guess is that there was some goofy setting which the update refreshed. I wish I knew specifically what resolved the problem, but for now I'm just glad it's sorted itself out.

Thanks for all the brain put into this.

Michael

The last HiDef job that went through here looked like that when the Flame operator tried to lay it off 4:4:4 instead of 4:2:2.

You can do that, but both machines have to be speaking the same language.

Koz

Thanks Y'all,

Phew!

M A R L A


Current System:

FCP 7.0.3 on an MBP 17" from early 2011, running OS 10.8.3

Processor 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB
Software OS X 10.8.3 (12D78)