Barco Series 2, ICP-D, and quad SDI card

[Leo Enticknap]

Opened a support ticket with Barco about this, but no response as of now, and I'm due back at the site for further troubleshooting today, so wondered if anyone else had run into this issue and had any thoughts.

Barco DP4K-32B with an ICP-D (the projector previously had an Alchemy in it, but was sold from a movie theater to a post house that needs 4K quad 3G-SDI, and Barco no longer sells TI ICPs, hence the ICP-D being in it) and a quad SDI card. I copied the .input files for the SDI card from a backup clone from another DP4K-P that had one. When 10-bit quad 4K input (which is what their edit system is sending) is selected, I see SYNC and SEL lights on all four inputs, but a black picture.

The ICP-D is on the current firmware version (1.2.1.13). According to the ICP-D manual, it does support this board:

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But when I looked in the link decrypter status window in Communicator, the weirdassery started:

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So it says "Marriage - OK" but also "Physical marriage tamper" ?! This doesn't make sense, and says to me that there is a firmware bug/problem affecting the interaction between the SDI card, the ICP-D, and the CCB. Also, I have a green tail light. On every previous occasion that I've encountered an Enigma with a dead battery in a Barco, the tail light has been red and errors registered in the global status window. And in any case, the content being played is unencrypted. At another post house I service, they have the quad SDI card with a dead Enigma and a red tail liight: it plays unencrypted video with no problems.

It also wouldn't let me download the ICP-D logs into a diagnostic package. It stalled at this point, and did the same thing after reseating the ICP-D and the SDI card, and rebooting:

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I have a strong suspicion that despite the claim in the manual, the ICP-D does not actually support the quad card (maybe they only tested it with the dual one?), and that, if I can get hold of a TI ICP from somewhere, that will fix this projector. I just wondered if anyone else had encountered the same thing and knew if this is the case (or if there is another fix I'm not thinking of). Has anyone managed to get a quad SDI card in a Series 2 projector with an ICP-D working successfully?

[Steve Guttag]

It might be worth the experiment to roll the ICP-D back to the version listed. I'd also try logging into the Enigma directly (ICP/Enigma program) and see what the Enigma has to say without the projector interpreting it.

If you didn't I'd run a full update on the projector with the current components in...anytime I change boards in a projector, I typically re-run an update to force everything to configure in the projector it is in.

I do not have any sites with the quad-SDI card.

Did, you, as an experiment, try a normal dual SDI card (which would confirm that the Engima isn't the source of the issue.

[Leo Enticknap]

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have a dual card to experiment with, but I did manage to rustle up an old school TI ICP, which fixed the problem. The projector is now working fine.

Started by looking at the ICP and Enigma app, per your suggestion. It reported a clean bill of health (apart from not being able to see the valid signal coming in on all four lines), contradicting the projector's report in Communicator:

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I then reflashed the projector's software/firmware bundle (2.10.121) - no change. Downgraded the ICP-D to 1.2.0.10 (the version specifically cited in the manual as being compatible with the quad card) - still no luck. Swapped in the TI ICP, reflashed it, and all was good.

So it seems that the ICP-D is not, in fact, compatible with the quad card.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Quad-3G/SDI is a somewhat odd configuration for 4K, not that many hardware that supports it. I was wondering why they couldn't go the HDMI route. The ICP-D supports HDMI 2.0a, which supports 18 Gbps. That's more than 4x3G-SDI, which caps out at 11,88 Gbps or "12G" as they call it.

We've got an ICP-D in our DP4K-23B. We've been using HDMI for 4K non-DCI sources, including direct payouts out of Avid Media Composer, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut Pro and quite recently, even OBS, both in Rec.703 and DCI-P3 color space. We've been using a Blackmagic Terranex ($2k ballpark figure) switcher/scaler to switch from several 12G/SDI inputs to HDMI.

[Leo Enticknap]

I've found that within the Hollywood post house community, HDMI is very much a four-letter word, and especially for systems that are to be used for color work. The reasons for this HDMI-phobia are essentially that EDID and/or HDCP issues can easily suck you into a world of pain, the connectors themselves are flimsy and prone to failure (especially if not carefully strain relieved at both ends), and SDI to HDMI converter boxes have a reputation for f***ing up color space, gamma, and other visual properties in weird and unpredictable ways.

I have one post house customer who uses a Terranex in the same way that you do: but it's a specialist audio post house, and so they're not as concerned if the colors are not exactly spot on than if the theater were being worked in by colorists.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I do understand the "HDMI-o-phobia", I'm also not the biggest fan of using HDMI in professional settings, due to all the potential pitfalls, but sometimes, it comes forward as the most reasonable choice.

The Terranex handles the EDID situation pretty well until now and if not, we can still put an Aten or HD-Fury in there somewhere, it also handles the DCI-P3 color space @ 10 bit. You don't have any HDCP issues, since everything comes directly from the "cutting board" anyway. We also have to deal with colorists, that's why we keep this aging xenon machine around. They're particular about their colors.

Keep in mind it's digital, and as long as something doesn't start to Blackmagically convert it from color space A to Z, there is no reason why colors in wouldn't be the same as colors out.

The problem with professional standards like SDI is, that they seem to be lagging behind their consumer counterparts, that's why you sometimes see hacks like 4 x 3G/SDI to achieve 4K resolution instead of 12G/SDI for example.