Table of Contents

  1. GPUs
    1. AMD / ATI
    2. Nvidia
    3. Intel
    4. Other
  2. SDI Boards
    1. Deltacast
    2. DVS
    3. AJA
      1. AJA and Firmware Updates
      2. Problems Installing Drivers
    4. Datapath
    5. Black Magic Design
  3. VGA / DVI / HDMI / DP Capture Boards
    1. Deltacast
    2. Datapath
    3. Black Magic Design
  4. Other
    1. NewTek iVGA/AirSend
    2. Off-Screen
    3. Windows Media Foundation


Supported Hardware Vendors

This page summarizes the various brands of video input and output devices supported by Ventuz. This includes

GPUs

Ventuz will run on any graphics card that fully supports Direct3D 9.0c under Windows 7 or higher.

AMD / ATI

​AMD FirePro Series (recommended)
Radeon Series (with limitations)

Ventuz supports the ​ATI FirePro™ S400 Synchronization Module to synchronize multiple GPU's in a cluster of Ventuz installations.

Nvidia

​Nvidia Quadro Series (recommended)
Geforce Series (with limitations)

Ventuz supports the ​Quadro Sync and ​Quadro G-Sync boards to synchronize multiple GPU's in a cluster of Ventuz installations

The ​NVIDIA Quadro Digital Video Pipeline is currently not supported by Ventuz. The SDI output of these board family can be used as monitor output. External key, Audio and other features of this product line are not address by Ventuz.

Intel

​Intel Intel integrated graphics

While Intels integrated graphics solutions are becoming better and better, they generally can not compare to the capabilities of the GPU's from AMD and Nvidia. Intel GPUs are not recommended for production. Often, however, they are the only choice for tablet- or laptop-based productions. In these cases, be sure to verify your performance and build Ventuz scenes carefully.

Other

​Direct3D Windows 7 compatible graphics board

If there are any other vendors left Ventuz can't state any technical information about them. Ventuz may run on such boards without any promises!

SDI Boards

Ventuz allows you to use multiple SDI boards from different vendors at the same time. The amount of simultaneous streams depends on the used boards, the video formats and speed of the main boards PCI-Express slots.

Feature summary:

Series audio k+f keyer multi multiformat bypass dual link 3G 4k Timecode AFD Specials
DELTA-HD yes yes5 no yes timebase no no no yes8 yes yes
DELTA-3G yes yes5 no yes timebase no yes2 A & B yes8 yes yes
DELTA-KEY yes yes5 yes yes timebase yes no no no yes yes key-delay, key-input, softkey
Centaurus II3 yes yes yes4 yes full yes yes no no yes yes softkey
Atomix3 yes yes no yes full yes yes A & B no yes yes softkey
Blackmagic Decklink yes yes5,12 yes1,4,12 depends6 no no yes2 B bm7 yes no
Blackmagic UltraStudio yes yes5,12 yes1,4,12 depends6 no no yes2 B bm7 yes no
VisionAV-SDI no no no no no no no A & B no no no
AJA Corvid 88 yes yes (4k)11 yes yes10 no no no A yes8 9 no no
AJA Kona 3G / Kona 4 yes yes yes yes10 no no no A yes8 9 no no
AJA Kona LHe+ yes yes yes yes10 no no no A no9 no no
AJA Kona LHi yes no no yes10 no no no A no9 no no

Limitations:

  1. Not all Decklink / UltraStudio products have a keyer. But when it is available, it is supported.
  2. Dual link is only supported when there are actually two input/output ports. Atomix / Centaurus boards always have two inputs and outputs.
  3. Some features for Atomix / Centaurus boards need special licenses.
  4. The internal keyer can only operate in multiplicative mode. External keying can be multiplicative or additive depending on the hardware used as external keyer.
  5. External keying (key + fill) is only available for boards that have two physical output connectors and can output dual-link signals. This excludes the DeckLink Duo and Quad boards. (See below for explanation). This also excludes the Ultrastudio Express, as it has one input and one output, but not 2 outputs.
  6. Decklink 4k Extreme (and later models) and UltraStudio 4K are capable of simultanous input & output, earlier models are not. With the exception of the Duo and Quad boards, no Blackmagic products supports two inputs or two outputs simultaneously.
  7. 4k currently only works with Decklink 4k Extreme and !Ultrastudio 4k. It supports 3840x2160 up to 30 Hz and 4096x2160 (4k DCI) up to 25 Hz.
  8. Deltacast 4k only available on DELTA-hd-elp-d 44, DELTA-hd-elp-d 80, DELTA-3G-elp-d 04 and DELTA-3G-elp-d 40.
  9. This board implements 4k modes by using four links, each link holds a quadrant of the image as ordinary HD or 3G signal. Swapping the links will swap the quadrants.
  10. Inputs and outputs can be used simultaneously, but must use the same video format.
  11. With 8 output jacks, the Corvid88 can output two quadlink 4k streams for key + fill.
  12. On Blackmagic products, Key+Fill output and internal keying is limited to HD signals. Higher resolutions or refresh-rates are not supported.

Deltacast

​Deltacast Delta-HD series
Delta-3G series
Delta-Key series

The Deltacast HD and 3G SDI boards have been designed for real-time video IO in television broadcast. They provide precisely the feature set required for reliable SDI IO and VANC processing. Neither more, nor less. The Deltacast product range are recommended for use with Ventuz. Please contact Ventuz sales or your Ventuz Broadcast Integrator for details.

Ventuz 4.06.00 uses Deltacast SDK 5.17, supporting the following deltacast products:

Currently not supported are:

Matching Deltacast Drivers with Ventuz Versions

For Deltacast boards, the driver version must match the SDK version perfectly. Use the drivers that are installed in the Ventuz directory, usually at "C:/Program Files" in English windows installations.


The fitting Deltacast Drivers are bundled with Ventuz. For reference, here is a table that matches Ventuz version, Deltacast SDK version and the driver version as displayed in the device manager. A different driver version will be displayed for the Gen1, Gen2 and DVI boards, fortunately they are easy to discern:

Ventuz Deltacast SDK HD/Gen1 3G/Gen2 DVI Note
4.00.00 5.13 5.4.79.0 1.0.44.0 5.3.24.0
4.01.00 5.14 5.4.91.0 1.0.71.0 5.3.28.0
4.04.00 5.15 5.4.112.0 1.0.125.0 5.3.36.0
4.05.00 5.16 5.4.121.0 1.0.138.0 5.3.41.0
4.05.02 5.16patch 5.4.124.0 1.0.138.0 5.3.41.0 Ventuz 4.05.02 is also compatible with the unpatched 5.16 driver.
4.06.00 5.17 5.4.125.0 1.0.151.0 5.3.42.0
4.08.00 5.19 5.4.133.0 1.0.230.0 5.3.47.0 There is no official 5.18 SDK
5.0.0 5.19 5.4.133.0 1.0.230.0 5.3.47.0

4k modes

The following boards support 4k modes:

Deltacast uses four HD or 3G links to transport a quarter of the image each. These links are ordinary SDI signals without any additional hidden tagging, swapping two of the links will swap the quarters of the image.

It is not recommended to use two boards and implement keying using one board as input and the other as output.

DELTA-Key

If there is trouble with a Deltacast keyer if genlock is set to Internal, program the genlock manually to the input port of the background signal or external reference! (Ref)


Memory Preallocation

Sometimes, initializing Deltacast boards will fail with the following error meessage:

Starting video stream failed. Sometimes this can be fixed by setting 
Deltacast specific registry keys for 'memory preallocation'

This is a problem with Deltacast drivers on Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8.

This problem arises when the computer is running for some time and can be solved by restarting the Computer. A permanent solution is to set a few Windows registry keys. This can be done by copying the following text into a file named "xxx.reg", and then double-clicking on the file. This will set the registry keys:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\DELTA-hd]
"PreallocPool0Size"=dword:03000000
"PreallocPool1Size"=dword:03000000
"PreallocPool2Size"=dword:03000000
"PreallocPool3Size"=dword:03000000
"PreallocPool4Size"=dword:00000000
"PreallocPool5Size"=dword:00000000
"PreallocPool6Size"=dword:00000000
"PreallocPool7Size"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\DELTA-dvi]
"PreallocPool0Size"=dword:03000000
"PreallocPool1Size"=dword:03000000

​download this registry file from www.ventuz.com

The problem arises when the Deltacast driver can not allocate enough continuous memory for the video buffers. Using this registry file will reserve 288 MBytes of memory at boot time, making it unavailable for other purposes. You might want to tweak this a bit to save memory:

Each pool is associated to an input or output of the HD/DVI board. The hexadecimal number "03000000" equals to 48 MByte, which should be more than enough for a reasonable amount of HD buffers.

The number of pools to pre-allocate is the number of SDI inputs plus number of SDI outputs. Blackburst reference inputs (genlock) do not count. Example: a 2 in 2 out board needs pools 0 to 3 pre-allocated, a 2-in card needs pools 0 and 1 pre-allocated.

The way these "preallocation pools" are mapped to the individual input and outputs is rather complicated, so it's best to pre-allocate for all available inputs and outputs even if some of them are not used.

The file above will work for a hd-e-key 22 and a dvi-e 20 board. For a hd-elp-d 44 or 80, also set the pools 4 to 7 to 03000000.

DVS

​DVS Centaurus II (LT)
Atomix series

DVS boards have been designed for very reliable and stable video IO between the SDI and PC worlds.

Both supported boards use up to 8 PCI-Express lanes. When inserted into a 4 lane PCI-Express slot, data transfer between Ventuz and the board works only at half speed. Please check for correct installation of the card by checking the Video Device Information.

Centaurus II

Atomix Series

AJA

​AJA Kona / Corvid

The following AJA SDI Boards are officially supported:

The Corvid 88 is unique as it allows to output a 4K 60Hz stream with key and fill.

The small boards LHe+ and LHi only support one stream with audio.

Our implementation for AJA boards has currently the following limitations:

AJA and Firmware Updates

The Kona 3G (and some other modern AJA boards) can operate in two modes: in Normal mode they have 2 inputs and 2 outputs, can operate 2 streams simultaneously and features an up/down converter. In Quad mode the up/down converter is not available, but the 4 connectors can be switched freely between input and output, allowing for a 4:0 or 0:4 configuration, or everything in between, and 4 streams can be operated simultaneously.

This is possible because the central chip in all SDI boards is an FPGA. This chip contains thousands to millions of hardware logic cells that can be re-wired by uploading a bit-file to form whatever hardware is desired. When programming an FPGA, it is not only a software that is changed, but the hardware itself. Sometimes vendors do not manage to fit all features into the limited logic cells and supply different bit-files for different feature sets.

As Ventuz can not use the up/down converter but greatly benefits from individually switching inputs and outputs, it is strongly recommended to flash the Kona 3G into "Quad" configuration.

The required flash program can be downloaded at our web page. After the end of the flashing process, the software will ask you to power down your computer. You really must power down your computer, or the update will no take effect.

Problems Installing Drivers

If you have problems installing the driver package, uninstall it completely using the control panel, programs & features. Then install it again. This should make the driver installer re-scan all hardware and install the drivers correctly, as you can verify with the device manager.

Datapath

​Datapath VisionAV-SDI
VisionSC-SDI

The VisionAV-SDI can capture a single channel SDI signal. Currently we do not support audio with Datapath boards.

Black Magic Design

​Black Magic Designs Decklink series
UltraStudio series

Blackmagic Design provides several (cost-effective) solutions for SDI output (Fill+Key). The boards have been designed for connecting a tape deck to a PC for recording and playback to tape. Therefore, the product name is Decklink and the boards can either output or input SDI signals - but not both.
Some of the Decklink boards have an internal keyer hardware on-board which make them a cost-effective solution for downstream applications. Please note that Decklink boards do not provide any watchdog or power-fail options!

The latest models, the Decklink Extreme 4K and the UltraStudio 4k, are capable of independent input & output. (Ref)


VGA / DVI / HDMI / DP Capture Boards

Deltacast

​Deltacast Delta-DV series

Datapath

​Datapath VisionRGB
VisionAV
VisionSC

Datapath have developed a sizeable portfolio of capture cards providing HD video capture or HDMI capture capabilites as well as a number of high resolution video capture modes.
Ventuz supports the Vision-AV and Vision-SC series, including the VisionSC-HD4+ board.

Black Magic Design

​Black Magic Designs Decklink series
UltraStudio series

As of Ventuz 4.04.00 the input source can be selected in the AV configuration. Only one input can be used at a time.

Other

NewTek iVGA/AirSend

​NewTek Tricaster series

iVGA is a network protocol that can be used to send video streams from Ventuz to a Tricaster. The two configured outputs are reachable under the following address:

1. http://127.0.0.1:49480/AirSend.mpg
2. http://127.0.0.1:49481/AirSend.mpg

Off-Screen

Off-Screen

This is rendered to an invisible buffer on the GPU. The purpose of this is to transmit this buffer to the Ventuz Director or other applications, to display a preview of the rendering pipes.

Windows Media Foundation

​Windows Media Foundation

Webcams and other devices often ship with Windows Media Foundation drivers. This is currently only supported for inputs. Some older devices come with Video for Windows or DirectShow driver. Windows Media Foundation wraps these drivers into a WMF filter.

See also: