Official RadianceXD support thread - Page 3

If you are going to write a Crestron Module, down load "Tech Tip 11 - RS232 control for the Radiance". It documents all the new RS232 codes that are available in the latest software.
http://www.lumagen.com/testindex.php?module=manuals

Randy Freeman
support@lumagen.com

As we add new Radiance RS-232 commands we update "Tech Tip 11 - RS232 control for the Radiance". We are now up to Rev 1.11.

Randy Freeman
support@lumagen.com

I would like to say a special thanks to Dave G. for showing up and spending the day educating me on my newly acquired Lumagen XE and also calibrating my Marantz 11S2, we did have some challenges with the sensor however he was able to do some workarounds and the image is greatly improved. The XE has tons of features and functionality and the 11point grey scale works great and I can see why the folks at Lumagen take pride in it. There are plans to get some higher end equipment in here and try to really take this to the limit, not that Dave's sensor is bad at all. Im fairly technical about some aspects of hometheater however video calibration is not one of them so I will let him answer any questions that may come up. I just wanted to let everyone know that he passionate and genuinely cares about calibration, Thanks Dave.

Wayne -

Good to hear.
What did he use to calibrate? What are you going to try in the future?
What was the before/after image like?

Congrats!


Mike

Hey man didn't I say no technical questions? , seriously the Marantz had a good image previously and if you remember was calibrated by a mutual friend and forum member. With that said what the Marantz was lacking was a color management system, we were able to get colors even better with the Lumagen and bring out more detail than before. The aspect ratio change on the fly for me was icing on he cake, with my throw distance and screen size I get some pincushioning. Previously I would just do some overscan however overscanning alone would eat up more of the image than I would like but thats what I would have to previously do to deal with some of the pinchushion. With the Radiance I can individually crop the top or bottom and even left and right sides of the image instead of overscanning which zooms all sides of the screen at the same time. I can then save whatever crop as a button press in the Radiance for that input. As we all know even with various aspect ratio screens such as 2:40, 2:35,2:37 etc you can still not completely fill the screen top and bottom based on the aspect ratio of the film and most people just deal with the extra slight black bars top and bottom which sometimes made me wish there was a better way, with Lumagen it makes it easier to fill more of the screen but only on the sides that I want. There are so many features to this thing that it's going to take time to get used to it. From what I saw from watching Dave the Lumagen gives full control of color management. I can also switch back to 16:9 on the fly with a simple button press on the remote while still leaving the Isco in place, great for those menus that are partially cut off on the bottom of the screen or those two or more line subtitiles.The radiance will also accomadate a full waltz of moving the lens out of the way and negotiaing masking systems if I choose to set it up this way and there is talk about Lumagen working on auto aspect ratio detection so this could happen on the fly, obviously even if this feature were to be added the disk would need to be correctly flagged. As far as what kind of sensor he was using I guess he will have to answer that one (damn you MIke) but I do know he was using Calman software so maybe it was one of the sensors that worked with it. He was having problems getting some readings from the sensor when it was facing the screen, he wasn't satisfied with some of the low or inconsistent readings. We dont know if it was because of the highpower material but ultimately he turned the sensor around to face the projector , I know that wont take the screen into account but that's the best we could do at that point and this is why I am trying to work out getting a higher end sensor on loan to try and get the readings directly off the screen. Some of these color sensors are real expensive going into the thousands of $$$ making it very difficult for people to afford, the sensor that Dave had is not a bad sensor, he said he didn't run into the same issues with regard to getting readings when he calibrated his
RS1 so the challenge must have something to do with my theater for example do we calibrate the projector with the Isco in the light path or out? Is there somewhere in his software where we tell it what screen and gain we have? these are questions Dave apparently didnt' have to address in his theater since he has the SMX acoustically transparent screen fabric and doesn't have an anamorphic lens. We will have another go at it again sometime and do it by the book, at the moment I am enjoying the image and look forward to getting to know the Radiance better, I will let Dave chime in if he chooses to do so and talk more specifically about some of the challenges he encounterd. . This is my second Lumagen, my first was the HDQ a few years ago when I had my Ruby and although my Anthem D2 has a Gennum based video processor in it, the Lumagen is a more powerful and complete color and aspect ratio managment system not to mention the scaling is much better than the D2.

UUUUMMMMM yea.... what he said..

Nice write up.

Always good to hear about Badgers and gear.


Mike

You make a good point about high gain screens.

For probes like the C5, there are no good solutions in this scenario. You could try using full field patterns and moving the probe back some ways and using a smaller angle of offset. That way you should be able to get an aim point that was within the screen's optimal viewing cone but where the probe was not trying to read its own shadow. The trick here is getting good aim. The further back you go, the harder this becomes--hence the need for a full field test pattern.

If you point the meter towards the lens, you must use a diffuser. But this is not a great solution because to ensure accuracy I would always want to correct those readings with an offset based on an off-screen reading. But if you can get a good off-screen reading, then you don't need to try a direct-to-lens approach.

Indeed.

Okay, this may be a dumb question, and if it's answered elsewhere please point me to it.

I had been considering a 2.35 screen as wide as my room could accommodate, with masking to allow me to mask down to 1.78. However, after doing some further research, I'm now thinking that I want to be able to do 1.78 at the maximum width my room will allow (for things like IMAX or Planet Earth).

To accommodate this, I think I want to use a 1.78 screen with a variable top horizontal mask, and with vertical masks that can mask it down to 1.33.

What I want to do is to be able to show Blu-ray content at the full width of the screen, and if it's 2.35 content, I want to reposition that letterboxed image to the bottom edge of the screen, then drop the horizontal mask to mask off the unused top portion. The screen size I'm looking at would give me a 40 degree viewing angle, which I'm told is just about perfect for Blu-ray content.

For most DVDs, I would want to go to a 30-degree horizontal viewing angle to account for the lower intrinsic resolution of the content. Fortunately, dropping those vertical masks produces a 30-degree viewing angle, so if the scaler can inset the image to fit within the vertical masks, and then shift it down to the bottom of the screen, I can drop the horizontal mask to top edge of the image and be properly masked. This would work for everything except 4:3 DVD content, and I don't have much of that apart from Looney Tunes.

I would like to do all of this without having to zoom or lens shift the projector, so what I'm looking for is a scaler that can output 1080p to the projector, but scale and reposition the image as required to fit within the masks.

Can the RadianceXD do what I'm after? It seems, looking at the serial protocol, that the "output shrink" command is probably what I'd want, but I wanted to be sure.

For example, in the 1080p 2.35 case described above, I would want the top, left corner of the image to be at (top: 263, left: 0) and a bottom right of (bottom: 1080, right: 1920). For a 2.35 DVD, similarly, I'd want (top: 466, left: 238) and (bottom: 1080, right: 1682).

I guess the Radiance actually takes 0-255 values for these, so for a top point of 466, would I pass it 110? (466/1080*255)?

Thanks much.

Very helpful indeed! I don't see the vertical shift command in the serial protocol, though. Are the commands you're referring to via the protocol, or...?

I do think that some DVDs will do fine at the full width of the screen, but I have had the opportunity to try some of these viewing angles in a very good theater with a front row that provides 40 degrees viewing angle, and a back row that provides 30 degrees. I found that DVDs like The Incredibles do fine at 40, but something like Harry Potter doesn't work so well. (This was with a Gennum-based scaler, a SIM2 C3X and an Isco III...). More to the point, TV shows like Lost or Battlestar Galactica tend to have a lot of handheld camera that gets pretty overwhelming at 40 degrees.

I can't do the two rows, so if I want different viewing angles, I need to use masking and scaling.

It's not in the RS232 command list yet. I have requested RS232 access to:

1) Select deinterlacing mode.
2) Select current output config.
3) Select vertical shift.

From Jim's response, I suspect these will happen. Not sure when though, but probably short-to-medium term.

Oh, yes. I have 'em and they're great. It was just an example of a DVD that has enough fine detail and shadowy scenes that it doesn't look so hot at larger sizes. I find it perfectly enjoyable at 30 degrees viewing angle from DVD, but not larger. The Blu-ray is nice at 36 on my current 720p projector, and I'm going to check it out soon at 40 degrees on a 1080p to validate my screen size plans.

Thanks for the tip on aspect ratios and resolutions. It does seem like that would cover most cases, but I can think of an example that might not. I found that the Battlestar Galactica series finale had so much handheld camera that it made me uncomfortable at a 40-degree viewing angle. So, even though it'd be 1080p 1.78, I would probably want to squeeze it down to the smaller 1.78 inset that I would normally use for DVD.

Anyway, thanks! Sounds like the Radiance can do what I want pretty easily.

Here is the software log release note for the new "Film Bias" deinterlacing mode.

Production 052509- Replaced "Film Bias" deinterlacing mode (which was ineffective) with a new "Film Only" mode. This new deinterlacing mode fixes deinterlacing issues seen in film sequences from Gladiator to Lord of the RIngs to Battlestar Galactica (TV shows are often shot as film). In some film sequences the "Auto" mode incorrectly drops to video mode which can cause a flickering effect with thin horizontal lines and can make 24/48/72 Hz output stutter. The new "film only" mode always stays in film mode and is only engaged with interlaced sources. Also, when using the new film mode the settings under the enhance menu are disabled. For 24p/48/24sf/72hz output modes the new film mode is probably the best option since it's implied with these output modes that you're watching a film source. Improvement can be seen for 50 and 60Hz output modes with film sources but if you're using a source that outputs both video and film you may want to use a different memory to quickly enable it.

Sorry if I missed this, but will this USB->RS232 cable work for FW updates for a Lumagen RadianceXE?

Link

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

I'm not at home to check, but it looks like the Radiance RS232 input is male and this cable RS232 is male, so that wouldn't work.
However, I can't really tell from the Lumagen picture of the Radiance back (link) and I didn't see that detail in the manual.

I don't see any USB -> RS232 female cables at Monorprice.
Other suggestions if that is what I need?

Thanks.

Mike