13.7 Advanced Output Formats (v2.0)

Owned by Thomas Staiger
Last updated: Oct 09, 2018
3 min read

Please do the following to change a channel related output option:

  1.  Quit all interfaces and all engines to be able to change the Advanced format options of a channel.
  2. Select the channel you would like to change a setting.
  3. Click on the sprocket next to the Output Format column in the Channel View, to open the Advanced format options window.


1 Advanced format options:

  • Live SDI input configuration: Select "Disabled, no live input" to disable the ability to switch to a live input signal using the video output device (and to allow to play out closed captions). Select any "With DSK" or "Without DSK" setting to activate the ability to switch to a live signal depending on your hardware and the functions you need. Please see chapter 5. Live Signal Handling for more informations. Once a switch to live setting has been selected, it is possible to define the default output to be Black or the Live Source. A "Witch DSK" based setting has also to be selected in case fill & key should be send to a production mixer. Please check the chapters 5.2 DSK Based Switch to Live Configuration (v2.0) as well as 5.3 NON DSK Based Switch to Live Configuration (v2.0) for more information about the ability to switch to live.
  • Anti-aliased rendering: Anti-aliasing tries to counteract the jagged appearance of polygon edges. Enabling this function can have a considerable impact on the rendering performance of old or low-end GPUs. If you wish to use anti-aliasing, evaluate thoroughly if your system configuration is able to provide the required rendering capabilities.

  • SMPTE Color Correction: This settings allows you to handle the difference between the full color space (0–255) and the SMPTE color space (16–235).

    • None: If your movies and your graphic files are using the SMPTE color space.
    • Cropped: If the movies are using the SMPTE color space and the graphic files do not.
    • Scaled: If your movies and your graphics files are both not using the SMPTE color space.

With v2 and higher, the following settings should be used by default:

  • NONE: In case your channel format is SD.
  • Scaled: In case your channel format is HD.


  • Graphic engines: Selects the rendering engine. For additional information refer to → Graphic Elements (Real-time Graphics, Images, Movies on FX Layers)

    • QTZ, Composition Builder only: Select this if you only want to play out QTZ and/or composition:builder graphics (as well as simple image files).
    • TOA Graphics, QTZ, Composition Builder: Select this to enable TOA Graphics Engine files (file ending "jscomposition") and movies with audio to be played on an FX layer. Note that this renderer disables the scaling functionality of the QTZ rendering engine which has a direct impact on the quality whenever the image is changed in its pixel dimensions (scaling and aspect ratio change). Therefore make sure to activate this feature only in case you do not need the scaling function but you do need the ability to play movies with audio in one of the FX layers.
  • Low Latency Playout: Enable this option for the lowest latency between pressing the Play button and the actual playout of a movie. Deactivate this option when using MXF files or movies which are taking some time to decompress like XDCam or H.264. This option is only valid for just:live and when pressing the jump to next button in just:play.

  • Interlaced Aware Scaling: When activated, any movie which has to be scaled (SD-HD, aspect ratio conversion) will have additional interlaced-aware filtering applied to it in order to preserve the interlace fields and to improve the quality of the scaled movie.

Please keep in mind that the scaling is done in software using the GPU of the mac and therefore will not reach the quality of a dedicated hardware scaler. We recommend to set up the channel so that it matches the pixel size and aspect ration of the movies used most of the time and to use the scaler of the video hardware if another output format is needed.

2 Aspect ratio options:

Here you can define how differences of the aspect ratio should be handled. This preset can be overwritten for each movie in the inspector of just:live/just:play. In addition it is possible to change the aspect ratio of movies which match the engine's aspect ratio but have been saved in the wrong aspect ratio. For a visual description please refer to the chapter → Aspect Ratio Control.

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