I noticed that the output is shifted about 5 or 6 pixels to the right. I didn’t notice this until I was using a second video as a key and the result was not quite right. I am using 1080p30.
Is this normal? Not a big deal, but I need to be aware when creating a key video or png. It would be nice to know if there is something I’m doing wrong.
My inputs to the TBC2s ( I have 2 ) are coming from BMD SDI to Analog. The SDI out from there is correct. Unfortunately I don’t have a component monitor to check if the analog output is shifted from there, or the offset is introduced in either the TBC2 or ESG3. My test patch is simply TBC2 ==> ESG3
Yes, it’s normal. Every module in the system is going to introduce some delay. The longer your signal chain is, the more delay will be introduced. Meanwhile, video sync is not being delayed nearly as much. Even if you have everything set up 100% correctly, the sync being generated by ESG3 is not going to line up with the picture after it has gone through a bunch of modules.
And it’s worse than that, because the horizontal shift means that the picture information at the right edge will happen AFTER the start of the horizontal blanking interval. This means that the picture is being CROPPED and you are always losing information.
@creatorlars has mentioned the possibility of firmware upgrade to TBC2 to compensate for this, hopefully it will happen someday.
In the meantime, I am sending external video through a hardware scaler before it hits the modular system. I’m shifting and anamorphically scaling the picture to prevent any cropping within the system. Then I am shifting and scaling the picture back up to full frame in post-production. This could be done with a hardware scaler also, but I’m getting better quality results by doing it in my editing program (Premiere).