Cinegy Air 22.12 and Cinegy Title 22.12
Reading time ~13 minutes
Multi-Channel Playout with Channel Branding Option
Note
|
Cinegy Type is now end-of-life. |
Operating Systems Support
Cinegy Playout software is certified to run on the 64-bit editions of the following operating systems: Windows Server 2012 R2*, Windows Server 2016*, Windows Server 2019*, Windows Server 2022*, Windows 10*, Windows 11*.
Operating system recommendation: Windows Server 2019 is recommended for servers, Windows 10 Pro is recommended for workstations and desktops.
Caution
|
We recommend updating Windows OS to include the latest Microsoft updates and hotfixes. |
* Chosen SDI card compatibility with operating system should be confirmed by user.
Input and Output Boards Recommendations
Note
|
Before performing any drivers changes or updates, it is recommended to stop processes and services (e.g. Cinegy Playout) which use SDI cards. Please mind that most of the cards require a reboot or even power cycle to finalize driver processing/firmware update. Make sure the applications or services autostart is disabled. Processes and services which automatically start after reboot and access card/driver may prevent this update from normal processing and finishing. |
The following SDI boards are supported for baseband I/O in Cinegy Air:
DVS
Model | Recommended Driver Version | Recommended Firmware Version | UHD Support | Key&Fill support |
---|---|---|---|---|
Atomix LT |
4.3.5.18 |
5.4.1.5_5.2.7 |
+ |
+ |
Blackmagic Design
Model | Minimal Supported Driver Version | UHD Support | Key&Fill Support |
---|---|---|---|
DeckLink SDI |
11.6 |
- |
- |
DeckLink HD Extreme 3D |
11.6 |
- |
- |
DeckLink Duo |
11.6 |
- |
- |
DeckLink Quad |
11.6 |
- |
- |
DeckLink Duo 2 |
11.6 |
- |
+ |
DeckLink Quad 2 |
11.6 |
- |
+ |
DeckLink SDI 4K** |
11.6 |
+ |
- |
DeckLink SDI 4K PRO |
11.6 |
+ |
+ |
DeckLink SDI 8K PRO* |
11.6 |
+ |
+ |
DeckLink Studio 4K** |
11.6 |
+ |
- |
DeckLink 4K Extreme** |
11.6 |
+ |
- |
DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G |
11.6 |
+ |
+ |
DeckLink Mini Recorder |
11.6 |
- |
- |
DeckLink Mini Monitor |
11.6 |
- |
- |
Intensity Pro 4K |
11.6 |
+ |
- |
Intensity Shuttle |
11.6 |
- |
- |
* Supported in Single Link (1.5G - 12G), Dual Link (2x1.5G - 2x6G), Quad Link/2SI (4x 3/12G) modes with TV formats up to UHD 4320p59.94. Please note: DCI formats and 64-channel audio are not yet supported in Cinegy products.
** The board does not support VANC playback or capture in UHD mode due to the board limitation.
Note
|
The minimal supported Blackmagic DeckLink driver version is specified. The newer driver version could be used. |
Caution
|
Blackmagic Design DeckLink cards should be used with caution for critical installations 24/7 due to their high dependency on host hardware. The workflow should be carefully tested before making a decision about using these cards in production. |
AJA
Caution
|
Please be aware that old AJA firmware could be incompatible with new drivers that are required by Cinegy software. In case you cannot access the correct number of inputs on the board after installing the new Cinegy software, a firmware upgrade will be required. The relevant AJA Driver and Tools package can be downloaded from either the Cinegy Partner portal or the Cinegy Customer portal. |
Caution
|
Use of AJA OEM driver packages provided on Cinegy portals is strongly recommended instead of retail drivers of the same version. |
Model | Recommended Driver Version | UHD Support | Key&Fill support |
---|---|---|---|
Kona LHi |
15.5.3 |
- |
- |
Kona LHe+ |
15.5.3 |
- |
- |
Kona 3G |
15.5.3 |
+ |
+ |
Kona 4 |
15.5.3 |
+ |
+ |
Kona IP |
15.5.3 |
- |
- |
Corvid |
15.5.3 |
- |
- |
Corvid 3G |
15.5.3 |
- |
+ |
Corvid 22 |
15.5.3 |
- |
+ |
Corvid 24 |
15.5.3 |
+ |
+ |
Corvid 44 |
15.5.3 |
+ |
+ |
Corvid 88 |
15.5.3 |
+ |
+ |
Deltacast
Model | Recommended Driver Package | UHD Support |
---|---|---|
DELTA-hd-elp-d 44 |
6.20 |
up to p29.97 |
DELTA-hd-elp-d 62 |
6.20 |
up to p29.97 |
DELTA-hd-elp-d 80 |
6.20 |
up to p29.97 |
DELTA-3G-elp-d 8c |
6.20 |
up to p60 |
DELTA-3G-elp-d 4c |
6.20 |
up to p60 |
DELTA-3G40-hd40-elp-d |
6.20 |
up to p60 |
DELTA-3G-elp-d 40 |
6.20 |
up to p60 |
DELTA-ip-ST2022-6 10 |
6.20 |
- |
DELTA-ip-ST2022-6 01 |
6.20 |
- |
Note
|
For Deltacast boards with passive cooling please provide at least 5 mph airflow in the chassis, especially when using multiple boards. |
Note
|
VANC features are not supported for RGBA mode. |
SDI Signal Source Parameters Recommendations
The following settings are supported:
Parameters | DVS/Deltacast/AJA | Blackmagic Design |
---|---|---|
SDI Signal |
SMPTE 292M (1.5G) |
SMPTE 292M (1.5G) |
SDI Level |
A |
A |
Color coding |
10 bit YCbCr |
10 bit YCbCr |
HD formats |
Single-link 1.5/3G |
Single-link 1.5/3G |
UHD formats |
Quad-link 1.5/3G/12G |
Single-link 6G |
Note
|
RGBA (Fill&Key) dual-link is supported as a special mode only for Cinegy Air products. |
Supported GPI I/O Boards
The following boards can be used to trigger external devices, control Cinegy Studio PRO playlist operations or Cinegy Air externally via general purpose interface (GPI):
Vendor | Make | Certified Driver | Supported Features |
---|---|---|---|
SeaLevel |
8012ES |
Trigger external devices |
|
SeaI/O-530E |
Trigger external devices |
Supported SDI Routers
Cinegy Event Manager will let Cinegy Air to control the following third-party SDI routers:
-
Nevion (Network) VikinX
-
Grass Valley (Miranda) NVISION Compact and Enterprise
-
Imagine Communications (Harris) Panacea and Platinum
-
UTAH Scientific
-
Blackmagic Design VideoHub
-
Kramer Electronics
-
Evertz
-
Guramex
Supported EAS Devices
Cinegy EAS Gateway will let Cinegy Air automatically play EAS audio and video data received from the following devices:
-
TFT 911
-
SAGE ENDEC 3644
Hardware Recommendations
The actual performance of a machine depends on the number of running channels and their resolution, enabled inputs and outputs, as well as various settings like RTP encoding/decoding or proxy, therefore no precise hardware recommendation can be given.
Nevertheless, as we keep optimizing our software tools for better performance, the following typical configurations have been tested for our own and our customer’s reference.
Note
|
Cinegy products work only on machines with CPU supporting minimum instruction set SSE4.1 |
Note
|
These system recommendations use older hardware which has been previously tested. The CPU’s listed should be used as a guide to select modern equivalent options and not as direct requirements. |
Configuration Sample – SD Playout Machine
The following configuration has proven to be reliably sufficient for any single-channel SD playout: Supermicro X10 series motherboard, single Xeon E5 2620v3 or Core i7 4770K CPU, 4x 4GB of DDR4 RAM, at least two separate SATA-2 SSD drives for OS and media cache (proxy) folder.
With Cinegy Title channel branding option enabled, a dedicated NVIDIA Quadro K620 video board or better is required.
Note
|
After installing a dedicated graphics card, please disable the onboard graphics card (e.g. Matrox) using the Windows Device Manager > Display Adapters and selecting the "Disable device" option for that card. |
Configuration Sample – HD Playout Machine
The following configuration has proven to be reliably sufficient for an average single-channel HD playout having one SDI, one RTP streaming output and proxy enabled: Supermicro X10 series motherboard, dual Xeon E5 2630v3 CPU, 8x 4GB of DDR4 RAM and dedicated disk(s) for Cinegy Air Network Proxy Caching Volume.
With Cinegy Title channel branding option or GPU offloaded encoding enabled, a dedicated NVIDIA Quadro M2000 video board or better is required.
Note
|
The Cinegy Title GPU acceleration and GPU encoding/decoding (NVEnc/NVDec) are supported by NVIDIA in different ways. Depending on your requirements, please contact the Cinegy Support Team to get recommendations for choosing proper graphics card. |
Note
|
To optimize performance of your NVIDIA graphics board, it is recommended to use the "Prefer maximum performance" value for the "Power management mode" parameter in the NVIDIA Control Panel. |
Note
|
After installing a dedicated graphics card, please disable the onboard graphics card (e.g. Matrox) using the Windows Device Manager > Display Adapters and selecting the "Disable device" option for that card. |
Configuration Sample – Ultra HD (4K) Playout Machine
The following configuration will play one Ultra HD channel to SDI with one animated logo: Supermicro X10 series motherboard, dual Xeon E5 2697v3 CPU, 16x 8GB of DDR4 RAM, SATA-2 SSD for OS and PCIe 3.0 SSD for media.
With Cinegy Title channel branding option or GPU offloaded encoding enabled, a dedicated NVIDIA Quadro M4000 or better video board is required.
Note
|
The Cinegy Title GPU acceleration and GPU encoding/decoding (NVEnc/NVDec) are supported by NVIDIA in different ways. Depending on your requirements, please contact the Cinegy Support Team to get recommendations for choosing proper graphics card. |
Note
|
To optimize performance of your NVIDIA graphics board, it is recommended to use the "Prefer maximum performance" value for the "Power management mode" parameter in the NVIDIA Control Panel. |
Note
|
After installing a dedicated graphics card, please disable the onboard graphics card (e.g. Matrox) using the Windows Device Manager > Display Adapters and selecting the "Disable device" option for that card. |
Reference Matrix – Multi-Channel Playout Scenarios
If multiple independent playout instances shall be configured on a single machine, please consider the matrix below:
Application |
Single Xeon E5 2620v3 CPU 16GB DDR4 RAM NVIDIA Quadro K620 VGA |
Dual Xeon E5 2630v3 CPU 32GB DDR4 RAM NVIDIA Quadro M2000 VGA |
Dual Xeon E5 2697v3 CPU 128GB DDR4 RAM NVIDIA Quadro M4000 VGA |
---|---|---|---|
Recommended Number of Simultaneous Playout Instances |
|||
SD |
1 |
4 |
16 |
SD with Cinegy Title |
1 |
2 |
8 |
HD |
– |
2 |
4 |
HD with Cinegy Title |
– |
1 |
2 |
Ultra HD |
– |
– |
1 |
Note
|
For highly intensive graphics please consider the NVIDIA Quadro M4000 board or better. The new NVIDIA "P" Pascal series has huge performance enhancement compared with previous "M" Maxwell series, are therefore recommended. |
Note
|
NVIDIA RTX and other Turing-generation GPU boards no longer support interlace H.264 encoding. This applies to all versions of any Cinegy software supporting GPU encoding and is a hardware limitation of the NVIDIA boards. Pascal and earlier boards are not affected. If using GPU accelerated NVIDIA features, please be careful to match your settings to the capabilities of your board. Instead, you may use Daniel2 GPU encoder. |
Note
|
To optimize performance of your NVIDIA graphics board, it is recommended to use the "Prefer maximum performance" value for the "Power management mode" parameter in the NVIDIA Control Panel. |
Note
|
Daniel2 GPU encoding and decoding are supported by NVIDIA video boards that have CUDA Compute Capability 3.5 and higher. If the NVIDIA video board has the CUDA Compute Capability of an earlier version, then use Daniel2 CPU encoding and decoding. |
Caution
|
The minimal supported NVIDIA driver version is 456.81. |
Note
|
Please perform the process of NVIDIA drivers update only upon stopping Cinegy applications. For detailed instructions on installing NVIDIA driver, please refer to the NVIDIA Drivers installation article. |
Cinegy Title Performance
Cinegy Title is a real-time channel branding software solution, which means it needs instant access to media used in scenes and requires maximum machine performance for real-time accelerated rendering. To avoid slow frame composition, please make sure that:
-
NVIDIA Quadro board is installed into a full-length PCIe x16 Gen.2 or Gen.3 slot
-
The Power Plan in Windows OS is set to High Performance
-
NVIDIA driver is up to date and its 3D Mode is set to Video Editing
-
The "Prefer maximum performance" value is used for the "Power management mode" parameter in the NVIDIA Control Panel
-
Any media reference within Cinegy Title scenes is valid and this media is placed on a dedicated solid state drive or fast network location
In case of trouble, please ask the Cinegy Support Team to provide you the certified benchmarking tool.
Playout Proxy Settings
Proxy volume must provide sufficient performance for concurrent read and write operations, while the majority of RAID controllers today will provide good values when only reading or writing – but not both. Therefore, we recommend to use RAID 0 or RAID 0+1 with hard disks, and to avoid RAID 5 or RAID 6.
With solid state disks no RAID is normally required unless this volume is going to serve multiple channels and requires better performance. If you are building the RAID 0 or RAID 0+1 volume based on SSD, please make sure that these disks are certified by the RAID controller vendor and TRIM operation are for this specific SSD make is fully supported.
SD
A RAID 0 volume of two modern SATA or SAS disks per SD channel is sufficient. No RAID is required with SSD.
HD
Please have at least 4 SATA or SAS drives in a RAID 0 or RAID 0+1 per each channel running in HD. The more drives you have, the better. Six inexpensive SATA drives will provide better performance than four expensive SAS disks. No RAID is required with SSD.
Ultra HD
To benefit from the usage of proxy workflow for Ultra HD formats it is necessary to have proper NVIDIA GPU board. If no valid GPU is available, Daniel2 encoder will automatically switch to CPU mode.
Note
|
Please note that Daniel2 uses quite high bitrates for local cache proxy files (up to 2Gbps on High Quality 10 bit for UHD 2160p50 TV format), therefore a usage of good SSD or M.2 media for UHD proxy is highly recommended. |
RTP Streaming Network
If you are going to enable RTP streaming features of Cinegy Air, it is highly recommended to split the file and streaming operations between two physically separate networks. Therefore, please consider that all your servers and workstations have two Gigabit Ethernet adapters.
Please disable the "File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks" and "Client for Microsoft Networks" options for the adapters connected to RTP network, and uncheck the "Register these connection’s addresses in DNS" in this adapter’s TCP/IPv4 settings (see Advanced/DNS tab).
Playlist Editor/Control Stations
Cinegy Air and Cinegy Studio software control panels feature embedded video player which requires a video adapter which supports DirectDraw and Direct3D acceleration. Today, only a few built-in server video adapters do not support it, so any dedicated video adapter should work fine.
Cinegy Title Editor scene composition tool and Cinegy CG control application require a dedicated NVIDIA board for real-time preview purposes. Any modern GeForce should be fine, though for better experience NVIDIA Quadro K620 or better is recommended.
Supported Codecs and File Formats
Supported TV Formats
Standard Definition (SD) | High Definition (HD) | Ultra High Definition (UHD/4K) | Ultra High Definition (UHD/8K) |
---|---|---|---|
720x576i@25fps 4:3 |
1920x1080i@25fps |
3840x2160@25fps |
7680x4320@25fps |
720x576i@25fps 16:9 |
1280x720p@50fps |
3840x2160@50fps |
7680x4320@50fps |
720x480i@29.97fps 4:3 |
1920x1080i@29.97fps |
3840x2160@29.97fps |
7680x4320@29.97fps |
720x480i@29.97fps 16:9 |
1280x720p@59.94fps |
3840x2160@59.94fps |
7680x4320@59.94fps |
1920x1080p@50fps |
|||
1920x1080p@59.94fps |
Supported Media File Formats
Cinegy Air will read the following file formats (containers):
|
|
* JPEG2000 support is currently considered experimental.
Supported Video Codecs
Cinegy Air supports the following video codecs:
|
|
These file formats are recommended for playback in UHD mode: ProRes422, XAVC I-frame, Cinegy DANIEL 2.
Note
|
Please note that some of the video codecs listed here may require an additional purchase of a codec license depending on the product version or bundle used. |
Supported Audio Codecs
Note
|
Cinegy Air currently supports live input with an audio sample rate of 48 kHz. |
Cinegy Air supports the following audio codecs:
-
16, 20 and 24 bit PCM
-
MPEG-2 Audio Layer I-III
-
AAC LC/HE/HE2
-
AC3
-
Vorbis
Supported Image File Formats
The following image formats can be inserted in the Cinegy Air playlist or used for graphics or logo overlay:
-
JPEG
-
TIFF
-
PNG
-
TGA
-
BMP
-
GIF
For dynamic logo or graphic animations overlay please use Cinegy DANIEL 2 codec. TARGA sequences are not supported.
Supported Input Sources
Cinegy Air is able to receive and play the following live sources:
-
SDI baseband video (refer to the list of supported SDI boards)
-
RTP/UDP/SRT streams as per SMPTE 2022-2 (MPEG-2, H.264, H.265, Daniel2 video, various bitrate, GOP structure and audio formats)
-
SMPTE 2022-6/7 uncompressed IP video
-
NewTek NDI
-
Shared RAM Input
-
WDM Input
-
Audio Input
-
WebCam Input
Supported Subtitle File Formats
Cinegy Air is able to generate open captions (burn-in subtitles) from the following file formats:
-
STL
-
SRT