Long time prodder of very basic CasparCG set-ups, first time poster - I believe some of the users here have met me… #waves
Has anyone tried using CCG as a test signal generator?
I find myself in need of video clips of a few minutes in length in all the framerates, all the resolutions and a lot of colour spaces. And… royalty free. I figured CasparCG would be great for this - create a show, then use a Screen Producer to stream it into a file - or, if that does not work, record it from the SDI output into a file recorder. Change frame-rate/colourspace/etc. and press play again
some swirly, pleasant, graphics - moving at different speeds, with some text overlay
and why not: moving zoneplates? Some real “codec killer” material?
I would be glad for any comments, advice, etc.
Seeing as I only ever get to play with Caspar intensely for a few days and then not for months, I am still essentially a newbie…
Depends on your place off use.
For R&D / test&measurement a testsignal should be clean and precise as possible. I think a codec based playout system with already some conversions under the hood iis not the right platform for that.
As you say a codec killer that already has been killed is not a test signal.
on the other hand using CCG to do line check’s and general testing to see If a system is functional or correctly patched could be handy
I modified the Decklink SDK signal generator example to produce the ARIB bars. The problem is not having a proper generator to verify/calibrate the signal.
@Maurice78 is right of course - The setup is unlikely to become a real test signal generator, which is why I have now put the word in quotation marks.
My idea was not to save the (deserved) hundreds or thousands of $$$ for a real TSG. I do not need to test SDI transfer characteristics or codec quality.
What we are investigating are workflows through systems. For that we need unrestricted material that can be assessed by eye.
So what I am hoping for is a way to generate a sequence of a few minutes of video at 720, 1080, 2160 and 4320 and in 4:2:0, 4:2:2 AND 4:4:4 - natively.
I need those videos to look reasonably good - so for me to grab a camera and shoot my own material is not going to work - I tried that. There’s a reason why DPs, Colorists etc. exist - they can make raw video look really good. I can’t.
On the other hand, the videos do not need to have anything “real” in them, so swirly patterns and 3D text for example will do just fine. That’s why I thought of CasparCG.
I mentioned the “codec killer” as the kind of material that I am thinking of, because the ones that i remember are really useful for human perception to get the general gist of what is going on, e.g. the bottling plant with rotating and counter-rotating conveyor belts.
@rcourtney Using the SDK is a clever way for static signals, I had not thought of that (and likely would not have the skills). I have a waveform monitor and some file testing gear so if you’d like to share a sample I can give you feedback on the bars that you can make.
You can use Caspar for it, but your testimages are always as good as your image source and your digital output card.
I wrote a little HD and UHD testscreen program, single exe file, images and audio embedded.
It outputs to the second screen output on your computer. (HDMI/DVI) No need for caspar.
LINK FIXED Download here or here as zip
Hi…i have a simple modulator that I built for my DDS signal generator project. It includes a phase shift oscillator that’s adjustable from about 300 Hz to a little over 1kHz. The modulator itself is the J310 FET operating as a voltage controlled resistor.
