ESG3 Sync Issue

[dryodryo]

@dryodryo

I did get the ESG3 firmware update, but it didn’t 100% solve all problems. Chad knows about this. I have one piece of gear, Roland VC-300HD, that doesn’t like ESG3 no matter what. But it’s kind of an antique, and I do have a workaround.

Beyond that, I am still seeing intermittent jitter in ESG3 when genlocked to Syntonie VU003B. This is happening even when I am 99% sure the sync source is rock solid (color bars from a Roland V-1600HD switcher). But I am not going to panic. If there are still issues with TBC2 as the decoder, I’ll let you know.

@rempesm

Do you have any other HD format sources that you can use to test this and can you link footage of the type of jitter you’re seeing?

I’m assuming you’re taking the YPbPr out of the Roland V-1600HD into the front panel inputs of VU003B and its rear Y output is routed directly to ESG’s rear Sync Input. Are you finding its different if you skip VU003B entirely and output the Y from V-1600HD into ESG’s rear Sync input? Since you can just bump ESG’s Brightness controls up to get a visible matte color, I don’t think it’s critical that you have the color bars from V-1600HD visible on the encoder to do this test. It might help eliminate some other routing issues if you have an HD distribution amplifier that can route the V-1600HD color bars separately to VU003B’s YPbPr input and ESG’s Sync input.

From what I’m reading in the schematics of VU003B, there is very minimal processing of the original sync sources outside of how it extracts them from a valid video signal. It uses the same sync separator chip as the Gen3 modules, LMH1980. I’d suspect there’s something about the compatibility of V-1600HD’s timing vs. ESG’s tolerance before VU003B but curious to see footage.

My assumption is that the Syntonie decoder is not at fault, it should just be passing sync through with no timing modification.

Seeing horizontal jitter from other sources as well, such as these cheap Chinese TV tuners I’ve got. But I chalked that up to … cheapness. Figured the Roland switcher would be more robust.

Need some sort of image onscreen to see the jitter, a flat matte from ESG3 wouldn’t be a good test. But I am seeing the jitter when patching DSG3 patterns into ESG3.

I’ll continue to run tests, e.g. bypassing the VU003B. Maybe it’s a power issue. In this rack, the Gen3 modules are powered by a 5A DC Distro, everything else powered by Doepfer PSU3.

Also had the rig running for several hours yesterday for the first time, and saw sync completely drop out for a few seconds, a couple of times.

Just got my capture system working, don’t have any examples to share yet.