GEARHOUSE KEEPS EYE ON THE BALL WITH EYEHEIGHT

Twenty-four Eyeheight SA-1 SDI safe area generators kept the eyes of Gearhouse Broadcast production staff on the ball during television coverage of the FIFA World Cup in Germany this summer.

“We were called on at very short notice to provide support services for a major television channel covering the event,” comments Eamonn Dowdall, Gearhouse Broadcast Managing Director. “Eyeheight was able to deliver a very compact SA-1 modular system within a week of our order being placed which is very fast turnround. The SA-1 is also impressively compact. With three modules in each chassis, only 8U of rack space was required for all 24 processing channels. The SA-1 generators lived fully up to their reputation for reliability and ease of use.”

Eyeheight’s SA-1 safe-area generator enables camera crews and post-production staff to ensure that programmes originated in 16:9 widescreen remain fully compatible with 4:3 receivers. It displays safe action and safe caption areas as cursor lines, user-selectable shading or black areas. Selected safe area markers are placed onto the video feed which can then be viewed on a monitor display. The SA-1 generates all commonly used guidelines, including centre markers (short and full screen); moveable horizontal and vertical cursors; optional co-ordinates indication; variable aspect ratio box; and edge blanking lines (analogue and digital). Preset aspect ratios can be switch-selected for all common television and film formats.

Dynamic Cursor Visibility (DCV) is used to keep all guide lines visible for black to white backgrounds. Variable top and bottom film blanking is provided with choice of opacity (line, black or semi-transparent). Other features include a text height measurement system and on-screen out-of-gamut indication to show the colour and luminance legality of the picture.