MC-100 Stereoscopic Syn, etc Video Review

[Jesse Blanchard]

Did this quick review of Matrox's MC-100

Matrox MC-100 Review - Camera Sync, Alignment Tweaks, Image Flip, and more - YouTube

[Matt Faw]

Good stuff, Jesse! Thanks for sharing!

[Neil Richards]

Thanks Jesse - I do this with a Hi-5 3D from Aja, have you used ones of those at all? If so, any comments on the differences between the two?

Which Pannie monitor were you using in the video there, by the way?

[Leonard Levy]

I just worked with 2 Hi-5's on an Epic stereo shoot with an Atom rig this week and had really obnoxious lag between the 2 cameras on monitoring. Supposedly having 2 was supposed to solve the lag issue but it didn't.

[Neil Richards]

Do you know if the MC-100 has better performance then the Hi-5 as far as this goes i.e. smaller lag?

[Jesse Blanchard]

I was using the 25" monitor. I'm pretty sure it's this one BT-3DL2550 | Professional 3D Production Systems | Panasonic

I don't know about the lag issue. It's not between the two cameras but from the camera to the monitor, right? The signals were in sync so it can't be the former with this unit. I didn't notice a lag between cameras and monitor but I wasn't looking for one.

I'll write to Matrox and see what they say.

[Neil Richards]

There's always a lag from camera to monitor - on cameras like the 3DA1 and Z10000 it's about 0.5-1sec or so by the time it's gone through HDMI to the TV or monitor.

Thanks for the info on the monitor, I'm in the market for one over the next few months and still trying to decide which way to go.

Cheers

Neil

[Leonard Levy]

Lag between the cameras is what I experienced . Don't care if there is lag to the monitor as long as both cameras are in sync. Hard to judge parallax when there is lag between the cameras.

[Jesse Blanchard]

Just heard back from Matrox. The MC-100 introduces 1 frame of lag from the cameras to the display. So, we know that sync issue.

I know the panasonic monitor will not work properly if the cameras signals are not in sync. Is it possible to sync the signals from the cameras without have temporal sync so they would display correctly but not actually be together? Seems unlikely, but I don't know for certain.

Leonard - What set-up were you using? Was the monitor overlapping the two images correctly or was one split vertically over the top of the second? (Bottom of the frame mid-monitor with the top of frame disappearing out the top and emerging up from the bottom.) That's what I experienced with out-of-sync signals.

[Leonard Levy]

I didn't set up the rig nor was I involved in the cabling so I can't answer the details. The people who did were quite experienced so I trust they knew what they were doing.
It was 2 epics which were genlocked and in sync (footage is fine) and the signals from each camera were each going through separate AJA high five's to the SDI inputs of a Marshall 24" 3D monitor and then looped out to a Transvideo 12". One of the High 5's was flipping the mirror camera image and the other (as I understand it) was only there to run the second camera though the same electronics to create the same delay to maintain sync. The shot's overlapped fine (no top & bottom mismatch) but there was a noticeable lag whenever there was movement. Made it hard to judge parallax especially on the Anaglyph Transvideo which was largely useless.

I will ask the rig people a little more about what went wrong and why. Sounds like the MC-100 would have been a better solution at reasonable cost.

[Alister Chapman]

My experience of Epics on a 3D shoot is there there are all sorts of inconsistencies with the camera Sdi outputs. During my recent month long 3D Epic shoot we encountered miss-sync of the outputs, differing video levels and colour. The footage is all OK, but it added a lot of uncertainty when exposing and aligning the cameras. We were lucky enough to have a DiT on set checking the rushes after every few takes to make sure we didn't need to re-shoot anything before moving on to the next setup. We used a single MC100 and I was very impressed by it. I preferred it over my Blackmagic 3D HDLink.

In the end we just took it for granted that the Epic outputs were not always in sync and they the video levels may be incorrect. We exposed purely by matched gain/shutter settings and match iris. Then checked using the histograms on the Red LCDs.

[Leonard Levy]

Alister , did you have lag between the cameras on the monitor or did the MC100 keep that in sync?

Unfortunately my shoot turned out to be so low budget they didn't even hire a DIT. However the rig tech was great so I felt secure. Similar situation for us as the footage ended up fine but even though they supposedly had matched timecode, the code ended up a few frames off apparently randomly on different takes. Fortunately genlock was working so all was well in the end.

MC100 sounds like a better solution than the AJA high fives. Can you simply flip one channel ( the mirror camera say SDI B) then proceed with the both cameras going out through separate SDI (but still synced) channels to a monitor, or does it have to combine the 2 cameras on its output. Some monitors like the Marshall want 2 separate SDI channels, but won't do the flip for you.

[Alister Chapman]

There was considerable lag in the system. The Epic's Sdi out has lag already, then the MC100 adds another frame, so we were quite a few frames behind.

I think you probably can just use it to flip a single camera but I have not tested it that way. You can certainly do that with the BlackMagic 3D Link.

[Jesse Blanchard]

The MC100 has both vertical and horizontal flip for both images as well as V&H pixel bumping up and down (a nice feature to tweak rig alignment issues). It does not have zoom or rotational though which would be a nice addition. To be clear, this is routing both cameras through one box.