Unreal with tracked camera and billboard (with allow virtuals), SDI video feed with live key.
When we tilt the camera down, a black bar appears sort of the size of how much of the billboard got cut off.
Is this a known issue? How can we fix it?
Not that the SDI feed has slight black bars coming in since it uses a different aspect ratio than HD. Maybe it picks up on the black bars? How do we crop the video footage in 2D for a tracked camera?
So, how do we remove the black bars in the compounds when using tracked cameras?
In the non-tracked camera, there is a 2D crop option. But in the tracked camera billboard we do not see such option.
This is kind of what we need but for tracked cameras...
Also how do we deal with lens calibrations that were done with the SDI feed?
The camera didn't shoot 16:9.
Hi Jim,
It seems to me you are shooting in resolution like 4096 x 1720 which the SDI connection downscales to 1920 x 1080. It would be really helpful if you could describe your whole setup in detail and why the black bars can not be removed from the hardware.
You could use the compound [Common_Studio]:Compounds\Tools\Cropper_Rotator_3-Video.xcomp to crop video inside the camera compounds right after the Input module. This Cropper_Rotator_3-Video.xcomp is the same module as the one in your screenshot.
However the lens distortion coming from the camera is applied far after the Input module, so the lens calibration won't work exactly right. But if you do the lens calibration with the black bars in the first place, it probably won't give the right values anyway. That is why we need an exact description of your setup.
Warmest regards,
We shoot higher resolution 6K/8K and not 16:9 usually. With varying aspect ratios/resolutions.
the live feed is HD SDI or 4K SDI. But that’s just for preview. We don’t shoot 16:9 to not loose part of the image of the sensor since we cannot ever get that material back if we don’t record it.
the net result is that the preview feed will have some black bars, but also that when we load the clips we have to deal with different aspect ratios. For high frame shoots, we also have different sensor crop factors to deal with.
Hi Jim,
If the video comes with a black bar then there is no way for Aximmetry to automatically detect it and remove it.
You can check if there are black bars by putting the video on a white background with the flowing Flow Editor setup:
Set the Placer module's Fit Mode - Keep.
And Set the Solid Color module's Out Size to a value that is bigger than the video's resolution:
If the video still has black bars then you can remove them in Aximmetry by changing the Camera compound. If you want, I can guide you through it. However, I would recommend first trying to find a setting in the physical camera which removes the black bars. If it is something that is not possible in your camera, then can you share the camera's model with us, maybe we can find a way.
Warmest regards,