Decklink video cards and the online community they run at Creative Cow. I have been caught out several times by their so called "Pro" products - see a previous post here. Anyhow, I posted the following;

Does anyone have any advice on phasing the active picture to sync timing on the output of a Pro card under V4.7 of the driver on a G5?
I've recently put in a couple of suites running FCP 4.5 and the output of both cards shows a consistent error in their picture sync timing. It's so bad that some outboard devices (typ. those that don't have a separate genlock - a legaliser in this case) aren't happy with the SDi out.



Internal bars on a DVW A500P and the o/p of the Decklink Pro card
click the image for full size screen-grab from a WVR610.

You'll see the difference between the output of a DigiBeta (I'm assuming that is correct!) and the Decklink. What the Tek610 waveform monitor is showing is the difference between start of the data interval in the back porch and the start of active video. Although this isn't well specified in REC601 it is related to the 10.4uS interval that engineers measure to get the start of active picture placed correctly (dropping edge of sync to start of active line). In each of these screen-shots the Tek is free-running (so as to remove the effect of a card whose output isn't genlocked to station black). To make it a fair comparison I also pulled the reference from the VTR's input. There is about a micro-second of discrepancy.
It's wrong - measurably so - and is problematic if you want to integrate your FCP into a broadcast setup.

Now the moderator didn't put the post up but I was tickled by the following thread:

Subject: 4:3 to 16:9 (Letterboxing) Without Image Degradation

This may not be the right forum for this question, but thought I'd pose the question just the same: Does anyone out there know of an app that transforms non-anamorphic DV material shot at 4:3 to 16:9 WITHOUT just cutting off the top and bottom of the frame and losing all those valuable, indispensable little pixels in the process? Since I believe the Pana DVX100a does this digitally, perhaps there's some software that does it after the fact.

Thanks,

What you describe is impossible. To get from 4:3 to 16:9 you must lose part of the picture. The Panasonic camera just crops the picture, unlike other anamorphic systems.

In any event After Effects will do a better job than FCP, picture-quality-wise

I was afraid it was, but thought I'd ask anyway, since what might be impossible today, might not tomorrow. Thanks for the response.

Not a matter of possible/impossible, just a matter of simple geometry. Think about it: How can you change the aspect ratio to a wider ratio without cropping or stretching the picture?

Maybe they're not ready for measurements that mention microseconds!