Crystal Vision has released its most feature-packed color corrector and legalizer to date. The M-COCO-2 is Crystal Vision’s first dual channel color corrector, helping broadcasters save money by being 24% cheaper per channel than the company’s alternative product. The M-COCO-2’s ability to work with IP, with SDI or with both IP and SDI at the same time makes it the industry’s first color corrector to offer IP connectivity (supporting both SMPTE ST 2022 and ST 2110 video), while its extensive features also make it a good solution for hybrid systems as well as fully SDI installations. These features include unique new adjustments including two Y stretches ideal for correcting the contrast on in-shot monitors, as well as support for an increased number of video standards (31 in total) and a built-in test pattern generator for an easier workflow. Like all of Crystal Vision’s IP/SDI video processing products, the M-COCO-2 is a software app that runs on the MARBLE-V1 media processor hardware, a card housed in the Vision frame which features a powerful CPU/GPU processor and both SDI and 10GbE IP network interface connections.
Ideal for dealing with camera or lighting problems or to standardize pictures shot at different times, popular applications for the M-COCO-2 include adjusting the colors on in-shot monitors, being placed before an encoder to set the range of colors to be transmitted and the correction of computer-generated or post production outputs. Its numerous color correction tools include RGB gain, RGB lift, YUV gain, YUV lift, Video gain, Chroma gain, Chroma hue and both overall and individual RGB Gamma adjustment. Two new tools introduced by Crystal Vision for the first time are Black Stretch and Highlight Stretch, which are particularly useful for correcting the contrast on brightly lit on-set monitors where the studio lighting has been set to suit the people in shot. These Y Stretches allow the signal to be stretched or compressed for a limited range of the signal, without affecting any other luminance levels outside of this range. The Black Stretch allows levels close to black to be more visible and brings the low level detail back into the final picture, while the Highlights Stretch allows useful changes to the bright areas.
To ensure the broadcast color gamut remains legal, the M-COCO-2 app also includes an excellent legalizer, with both RGB and Y/C clipping available and a choice of four RGB clip modes (hard, medium, soft and desaturation).
The M-COCO-2 provides many useful features for those working in IP or hybrid installations, while offering the easiest SDI to IP upgrade path. It can be configured for ST 2022-7 redundant streaming or the protect equivalent for ST 2110, with the IP flows able to separated and protected across up to four bi-directional 10GbE SFP+ network interfaces. Its gateway functionality can be used to integrate SDI into an IP environment or IP into an SDI environment. Its IP to IP translation functionality can be used for network address translation, protocol conversion (between any of the input formats and any of the output formats), unicast to multicast address conversion and the creation of media firewalls. Finally, it includes output traffic shaping and is tolerant of any input packet distribution.
Explained Crystal Vision’s Managing Director, Philip Scofield: “Crystal Vision’s M-COCO-2 app gives up-to-date CPU/GPU processing for color correction that is better and cheaper than the SDI equivalent and includes flexible bridging between SDI and IP systems.”
The M-COCO-2 includes many features designed to make the operator’s life easier. These include horizontal and vertical wipes which allow the incoming signal to be viewed on one side of the wipe and the processed signal on the other. The ability to highlight in pink any pixels containing illegal signal values is helpful when locating problems. The inclusion of a framestore synchronizer timed to an external Black and Burst or tri-level syncs analogue reference or PTP (with fail-over options) along with up to ten frames of video delay helps with system integration. Comprehensive SDI, IP and PTP monitoring information is available to assist with troubleshooting and can be used to generate SNMP traps.
One of the M-COCO-2’s most useful features is its built-in test pattern generator, with 14 test patterns to help correct on-set monitors. A color corrector will distort the pictures on the on-set monitors so that they look right in the overall camera shot of the studio – and therefore being able to distort a test pattern allows the operator to see what adjustments to the color corrector are required to make the image look correct after going through the studio camera. Having a pre-distorted test pattern generator in the color corrector simplifies the workflow. Normally all the monitors would have to have their inputs switched to an external test pattern generator to allow the color correctors to be adjusted, before being switched back to the normal input. With the M-COCO2, that test pattern generator is included.
Crystal Vision offers a flexible choice of control options for the M-COCO-2, including its VisionPanel touchscreen remote control panel for those who like hands-on operation of their color corrector. Other options include the integrated control panel on the Vision 3 frame, the SBB-4 smart button box, the VisionWeb Control web browser software, complimentary SNMP or Crystal Vision’s JSON and ASCII protocols. 16 time-saving presets can be used to store the precise adjustments for future use.
