Cinegy Air 24.1 and Cinegy Title 24.1

Multi-Channel Playout with Channel Branding Option

Reading time ~14 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 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 the Cinegy Partner and Cinegy Customer portals.
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
SMPTE 2022-6/7 uncompressed IP video

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 424M (3G)
SMPTE 425-3

SMPTE 292M (1.5G)
SMPTE 424M (3G)
SMPTE ST-2081 (6G)
SMPTE ST-2082(12G)

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
"2SI (Two-Sample Interleave)" *except DVS boards

Single-link 6G
Single-link 12G
Quad-link 1.5/3G/12G
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
8209FX

SeaIO Classic V5

Trigger external devices
Switch Cinegy Playout opt-out blocks
Control Cinegy Studio PRO playlist and playback operations

SeaI/O-530E

SeaMAX for Windows v3.4.0.1

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.
Note
 Daniel2 GPU encoding/decoding performance balance is shifted compared with Cinegy Air v21.9 R1. Daniel2 decoder is approximately 10% slower, while Daniel2 GPU encoder is approximately 10% quicker. Please carry out performance testing on your system before using Cinegy Air version 24.1 if, for example, you are using media files which are encoded using Daniel2 or the Proxy feature is enabled for any Cinegy Playout engine.
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.
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. Boards of Pascal and earlier generations are not affected. If using GPU-accelerated NVIDIA features, please be careful to match your settings to the capabilities of your board. Cinegy Playout provides "Pseudo Interlace" mode to overcome these limitations, but please be aware it may only be compatible with other Cinegy software.

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

Caution
 For the Cinegy Air package v24.1 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.

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

1920x1080p@23.976fps*

1920x1080p@24fps*

1920x1080p@25fps**

1920x1080p@29.97fps**

* The format is not supported for Cinegy Archive integration.

** Partial support due to VANC decoding issue.

Supported Media File Formats

Cinegy Air will read the following file formats (containers):

  • Raw DV

  • MPEG Elementary Stream (M2V, M2A)

  • MPEG Program Stream (MPG, MPEG)

  • MPEG Transport Stream (TS, M2T)

  • MXF OP1a *

  • MXF AS-03/11

  • MXF OPAtom

  • Apple Quicktime (MOV and MP4)

  • Windows AVI

  • Windows Media (WMV and WMA)

  • WAV

  • MP3

  • OGG

* JPEG2000 support is currently considered experimental.

Supported Video Codecs

Cinegy Air supports the following video codecs:

  • DV25

  • DVCAM

  • DVCPRO

  • DVCPRO 50

  • DVCPRO HD

  • HDV

  • Sony IMX

  • Sony XDCAM SD

  • Sony XDCAM HD

  • Sony XDCAM HD422

  • Sony XDCAM EX

  • H.264 (up to 4:2:2)

  • MPEG-2 I-frame

  • HEVC (H.265)

  • MPEG-2 Long GOP

  • Panasonic AVC Intra 50

  • Panasonic AVC Intra 100

  • Avid DNxHD

  • Avid DNxHR

  • Apple ProRes

  • Windows Media (all versions)

  • Cinegy DANIEL 2

  • Any Windows-based AVI codec

  • Sony XAVC

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