TS Analyzer listens to RTP stream and allows to view inbound network, RTP and TS packet details. You can check out a .TS file and scan through it - just drag/drop the .TS file onto the EXE. It makes possible to view into the service description tables, and decode a teletext stream.You can print live Teletext decoding, and you can use the tool to generate input logs for 'big data' analysis.

With its integrated telemetry options, you can stream quality metrics into the Cinegy cloud (or your own).

Cinegy TS Analyzer needs .NET 4.5 to be installed.

The feature of automatic failover presumes the master playout server and slave playout server having the same output configuration. The Master/Slave configuration prevents the server level failures caused by hardware issues (disk, power, etc.).

Several fail-safe playout modes can be used:

1. Workflow with three separate machines - one Cinegy Air client, and two Playout servers – master and slave.

An additional slave Playout server processes the same playlist as master Playout Server. Open Cinegy Air Config  (https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/21.4/air/user-manual/configuration/configuring-cinegy-air/) and browse for the "Engine 1" location you would like to use as a master playout server. Mark the checkbox next to "Engine 2" and browse for the location of the slave server. When the master server is down, the system system automatically switches over the broadcast to the slave server with no broadcast interrupting.

In case of SDI configuration, you should have automatic change-over unit that monitors outputs of master and slave channels. In case of IP output, the automatic change-over for IP streams should be used (for example, Cinegy Stream Switcher (https://open.cinegy.com/products/stream-switcher/23.2/).

Air Server/Client architecture propagates the latest changes in playlist to both servers simultaneously. The playlist is automatically uploaded to the Playout server by Air Control. Please, note that Air Control client should be up and running all the time to reload the playlist once server is back online.

 Please, note: while the system can automatically recover from most of failures, it is highly recommended having an operator working with Air Control to monitor the channel status.

2. Workflow with four separate machines - two Cinegy Air clients, one shared playlist and two Playout servers.

In this mode the "Change over device" (see point 1) functionality allows switching between the master and slave Playout servers. This configuration is the most fail-safe mode. Both Cinegy Air clients and both Playout servers are independently backed up. To configure this mode, set the same playlist path for the master Cinegy Air client and slave Cinegy Air client. Set the fields "Engine 1" and "Engine 2" to be the same for each of the Cinegy Air clients. The playout commutation master/slave is available in this mode.

3. Workflow with four separate machines - two Cinegy Air clients, two playlists and two Playout servers.

This mode is also fail-safe: both editing and playback are independently backed up. The changeover device (see point 1) will quickly respond in case of the signal point failure. Each Cinegy Air client has its own playlist, which can be immediately started if needed (e.g. to replace one broadcasting scheme with another). The process of switching takes about two seconds. To configure this mode, set different playlist paths for master Cinegy Air client and slave Cinegy Air client, but browse the same playout servers (master and slave) for each Cinegy Air client.

You may refer to https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/air/user-manual/configuration/configuration-models/ for details and graphic schemes of preferred mode.

In case the failure still occurred, due to the hardware issues or human mistakes, please, contact Cinegy support, so we will help you to find out what should be changed to use the system properly.

• NVISION Router;
• Cinegy Route Event Handler;
• Common GPI Device;
• UTAH Scientific;
• VikinX Series;
• Kramer Devices;
• Blackmagic Videohub;
• Cinegy HTTP Data Repeater Event Plugin;
• Harris Router.

In case the target device falls into one of the mentioned categories, no additional development is required. In case the device does not support the listed protocols, Cinegy Event Manager implements an extendable plug-in system for the custom device driver deployment. A full description of the device driver implementation together with the sample source code is available on the Cinegy Portal -> Support -> Developer Information. Alternatively, the development of the device driver can be done by Cinegy GmbH on a paid basis. Please, contact sales@cinegy.com for a formal quote providing a full description of the desired workflow and the target device specification.

 1. Check if the Playout server name is specified correctly

Open the Cinegy Air control configuration tool and check what is defined for the Engine 1 field. Here, enter the computer name or IP address (Examples: PC-11, 192.168.2.120, etc.). If the Cinegy Air engine and the Cinegy Air control are running on the same station you should enter the point (.) as a server name or simply tick off the Local check box (read more on Cinegy Open site, https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/air/user-manual/configuration/configuring-cinegy-air/#channels-configuration). 

If the Playout server is installed on a separate machine from the control application, it makes sense to check the Firewall settings as it may block the connection. 

 2. Check if the Cinegy Air engine is started and running

Find the Cinegy Playout icon in the system tray in the right bottom corner. Right-click on it and open the Dashboard - here is the status of each Cinegy Air engine can be viewed. If the Cinegy Air engine is stopped, check the Air log where the error messages with the text of the reason for failure should be described (read how to configure Logging in the article on the Open Cinegy site  - https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/playout/user-manual/configuration/logging/).

 3. Check if the license you have matches the installed Cinegy Air version

The Cinegy Air can only work with the Air PRO license. If the license is not installed, the Cinegy Air control application will not connect to the Playout server. Make sure the proper license is selected in the Licensing tab of the Playout configuration tool (https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/playout/user-manual/configuration/licensing/). 

You can set Cinegy Air to perform automatic program and commercials insertion via General Purpose Interface (GPI).

Please connect your 3rd party cuetone (DTMF or VBI) decoder to the GPI input, and set up the following parameters.

Any Sealevel board with "Sealevel's SeaIO Classic V.xx" API should be OK.

Board 8012 is tested by Cinegy development, boards 8004e and 8209FX (USB) are successfully used by our customers.

Please, note that any Sealevel board with SeaMAX API will NOT work.

Listen for SCTE35 cueing stream:

The latest Cinegy Air supports SCTE-35 technology, which does the same and even more with MPEG-2/H.264 signal distribution (it’s all distributed this way today).

Please refer to the "Automatic opt-out block" and "Multichannel Variation Block" sections in the Cinegy Air manual:

https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/21.2/air/user-manual/regional-variations/automatic-opt-out/   

https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/21.2/air/user-manual/regional-variations/multichannel-variation/  

 The local Cinegy Event Manager is installed on the playout server and can be used in case you have, for example, just one channel that should be switched between the playlist and external live signal through the external SDI switcher. In the case of the local installation, the GPI cards must also be locally installed on the playout server.

 The remote Cinegy Event Manager allows you to control one video switcher from several playout servers (channels) independently. In this case, you have to install the external Cinegy Event Manager on a separate PC, which should be connected to the controlled device.

 Please, refer to the document available on the Cinegy website to learn about Event Manager - https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/cinegy-event-manager/.

 To control the playout service by external (incoming) GPI signal, the SeaLevel card must be installed on each playout server ("input GPI signal handling").

 Cinegy Air supports most of SeaLevel Digital I/O cards, which use SeaIO Classic V.xx software drivers and utilities. For example, board 8012 was tested and approved by the Cinegy internal testing process; boards 8004e and 8209FX (USB) were verified and successfully used by Cinegy customers themselves.

 Please, note: SeaMAX is not supported.

The decoder(s)/encoder(s) work either on the CPU, or they are executed on the GPU if the decoder was created on a video card. Though "GPU acceleration" is a commonly used term, actually it means "GPU offload". If decoding is done on the CPU and it does not cope, when we turn on NVDEC or NVENC, the GPU does not actually starts to "help" or "speed up". Similarly, the CPU does not "help" in case the encoder/decoder is assigned to GPU that does not cope (overflowed). The CPU still continues to be used for various operations related to processing but in much less extent.

In order to configure automatic opt-out block in Cinegy Air do the following:

1. Go to PlayOut config=>GPI and set GPI Bit Number, whose change of state will trigger 'automatic opt-out block' (value 7 in the screenshot)

2. Set the Bit Number, whose change of state will trigger leaving this block (value 1 in the screenshot). After exit from the opt-out block the following item will be played.

Make a playlist in with normal blocks and opt-out ones. 

Start the playback of the "Normal block".

At the desired time change the state of Bit Number 7 - the playout will jump to the incoming opt-out block, a block with the name "ADV (Opt-Out)" will be played.

At the desired time, change the state of Bit Number 1 - the exit from the opt-out block to the incoming normal block takes place.

Please, note that the current process operates on playlist block level, while in older Cinegy Air versions the item level advance was used.

The basic concept is compression - the ratio of the compressed frame size to the uncompressed one. Based on this value, the bitrate is calculated.

The table of compression presets and corresponding bitrates (videoformats):

Please, note: only one controller object may be connected to Cinegy Air Engine at the same time. Once the new connection is established, the previous one will be dropped to have a single controlling source. In case only a live preview is required, please use the DPTPlayOutExPreview object.

A Cinegy Air playlist is represented as a set of playout items identified via GUID. The controller object can create new and remove existing playout items modifying the actual playlist. The host application is responsible for storing the playlist information locally as the Cinegy Air engine does not provide read access to the pre-loaded playlist. Once the playlist is loaded into the engine, the host application can request the item status via GUID associated with the corresponding item.

Please, refer to the Cinegy Air API description for more details: https://partner.cinegy.com/downloads/developer-information

Our as-run logs are output in comma-separated values format to allow their use in spreadsheets and other software. If the date field is correctly identified as such, importing the log into spreadsheets gives the correct date value as a number.

By adding a column to that spreadsheet next to the date column, setting the format for that column to an appropriate date/time format, and adding 0.229 (e.g. for India) to the numeric value, the correct UTC date/time will appear. 

This would not be the only solution. The file in comma-separated values format can be written to any location. A competent script programmer can create a script that monitors that location: when a log file arrives the date column can then be manipulated as required. 

For the list of supported SDI cards in Key&Fill mode, please refer to https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/system-recommendations/cinegy-air-and-cinegy-title/#input-and-output-boards-recommendations.

• DVS Atomix LT and  Centaurus II(LT)
• All multi-channel and multi-output AJA boards (not on simple Corvid or LHi)
• Black Magic Design DeckLink - with “4K” prefix -  Extreme, Pro. Also Duo 2 and Quad 2

 Please note: The special DVS KeyChannel license should be acquired.

In case the corresponding log file does not provide additional information about the issue reason a new ticket should be raised via Helpdesk with a report generated by the latest Cinegy Reporting Tool https://open.cinegy.com/products/support-tools/24.4/reporting-tool/ attached.

To enable Description filed export, please set appropriate Checkbox "Inventory" Descriptor, Presets tab in Cinegy Archive Manager. 

Scenario 1. Only RTP/UDP/SRT input is configured

To set up the RTP/UDP/SRT input signal a separate tab is used in Playout configurator.

To use the IP signal as the live feed, the "Enable RTP/UDP input" option should be selected. The source URL specified in the configuration will be used as default for the Live item.

In the playlist create a Live item and open its properties by selecting the "Item properties…" command from the context menu and switching to the "Parameters" tab.

If the Live item is launched with such parameters and without a configured Input device in the Playback tab, the default RTP/UDP/SRT input (rtp://@239.168.10.140:1234) will be used as the source.

A specific RTP/UDP/SRT live source can be defined for the Live item in item parameters. For this select the checkbox "RTP/UDP Live Source" and define the URL:

In this case the predefined rtp://@239.168.10.136:1235 will be used instead of the default rtp://@239.168.10.140:1234.

Scenario 2. Several input signals are configured.

Add Inputs on the "Playback" tab and RTP/UDP/SRT input on the “RTP input” tab:

In the playlist create a Live item and open its properties by selecting the "Item properties…" command from the context menu and switching to the "Parameters" tab.

As far as Input devices are configured on the "Playback" tab, the Live source for such item will be the device the number of which is specified in the Input number field (in this case - AJA Input).

To use NDI Input, specify "1" in the Input number.

Comment: Cinegy Studio doesn’t support the Input number property for Live items. The first configured input device is always used. 

 If the checkbox "RTP/UDP Live Source" is selected and the corresponding URL is defined, the RTP Input will be used as an input source for the Live item.

• The preview is generated from the UDP stream created by the playout server and Firewall may block this stream. Check for the presence of a rule in Firewall allowing the Cinegy Air Control application to receive the inbound traffic on all UDP ports;
• Check the Cinegy Air PRO Config settings - if Cinegy Playout Engine is running on the same station as Cinegy Air Control, instead of the server’s name in the Engine 1 field (or Engine 2, if applicable) there should be a dot (.);
• Check if the video overlay for your graphics card is available using the DxDiag tool (Start -> Run -> enter the "DxDiag" command). If the video overlay is not supported, you should consider upgrading the video card. Please, check the recommended graphics cards in the Cinegy System Recommendations document available for download on the Cinegy website: https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/system-recommendations/cinegy-air-and-cinegy-title/.

In case you have completed all the checks above and the problem is still not resolved, please raise a new ticket with a detailed description of the issue.

This buffer (queue) is between the decoder and SDI output and it’s set in video frames. Normally the decoder is able to read and decode frames faster than real-time, and it puts the decoded frame into this buffer in advance, until the buffer is full. So, if for some reason a single frame (or several frames) are being read longer, the frames from the buffer will be sent to the output, until the buffer is empty. Only if the buffer is empty and we still have no decoded frame – there will be a drop on the output.

 It means, the bigger the buffer is, the longer reading/decode delay it can process without drop. But it consumes extra memory, as the system will need to allocate the memory for all the frames in the buffer. E.g. the buffer 150 frames long in 60 fps mode means 2,5 seconds. So, if the frame reading and decoding takes less than 2,5 seconds, the buffer can correct it without any drops on the output. In case the frame reading or decoding is longer, it cannot send the output frames anymore and it will drop output frames, that results in distorted sound and jittering video.

Practically in every Air log you may encounter messages like “Total frame read time is too long. Takes 104 ms”. Those messages are actually not errors but rather information messages (notifications) that the time to read a certain frame has taken more than the real time. The average frame read speed should be faster than the real-time. The usual frame read time for PAL format is about 40 ms.

Such messages usually appear at the start of the file reading or while reading the next chunk. If such messages are not very frequent, not for each frame - such fluctuations of media files reading are easily smoothed and compensated by buffers (queue) and do not affect Broadcast output.

Here is the sample line in the log:

29.09.2016 08:39:48.282 (616) PERF: Read 71 ms (R,P,D): V(P,53,0) ANC(D,0,0) A0(P,18,0)

And this is the explanation of the messages:

PERF: Read XX ms - time spent for performing reading in milliseconds

(R,P,D) - (READING, PROXY, DIRECTLY). Reading from proxy or reading file directly from its location.

V - video; ANC - vanc data; A0 - audio

For example: 

PERF: Read 77 ms (R,P,D): V(P,48,0) ANC(D,0,0) A0(P,29,0) – reading is performed in 77 ms.

V(P,48,0) – V (reading video from Proxy, spent 48 ms, 0 - time spent on reading directly)

ANC(D,0,0) – ANC (reading vanc data). There is no vanc data due to 0 value.

A0(P,29,0) – A (reading audio from Proxy, spent 29 ms, 0 - time spent on reading directly)

The media files bitrate doesn't affect the size of proxy, because during building proxy video and audio files are re-compressed using the predefined compression settings, which are set in the Playout configuration tool -> Proxy tab. It ensures the most optimal and smooth data allocating; such data can be read from the disk smoothly and fast. Storing data on the local disk, we avoid any network related issues.
Video, audio and VANC data are cached into separate files.

To calculate the necessary volume of the drive for proxy, take into consideration the following.
For instance, you use media files of 1080i25 format and the “Best performance” proxy rendering preset. The compression ratio of this preset equals 4. There are 2 bytes of information in one pixel.
One-hour video takes: (1920х1080х2) / 4 compression х 25 fps х 60 sec х 60 min = ~ 90 GB
Plus extra disk space for audio tracks and VANC. About 0.66 GB for 1 hour of audio (one audio track) and 0.5 Gb for 1 hour of the VANC data.
So for 24 hours you will need about 2 TB of proxy disk space. This concerns a playlist comprised of absolutely unique items, which are not repeating.
Besides the proxy folder is being cleaned from time to time: the items that were played long time ago are cleaned in order to free space for rendering of the next items.

If you wish to decrease the proxy size, there are the following variants:
You can choose the "High quality" rendering preset - it gives better quality but significantly increases the CPU load, the disk performance becomes lower.

To decrease CPU load you can adjust "Throttle speed" option. It is used to set the proxy speed limit. As a result, the CPU usage will be decreased by increasing proxy time. So, if you set 100% for example, the process will be performed slowly, but CPU usage will be smaller. If you set 250, it will increase CPU load and speed up the process.
If you select too small value, proxy might not finish the process before video item is played back. But if you use long playlists (day-long, for example), it might be enough in case if you have a big enough proxy folder.
But if you have small proxy folder, the program will be unable to proxy all items from the playlist and it might cause direct reading of the files because there is not enough time for the proxying.

Finally, it depends on you to choose the proper option for your particular case and determine what the best configuration.

Since Cinegy Air v21 the playout engine generates the feedback stream using SRT protocol and also supports the ability for anyone to request the "preview stream".

In the "Playback" tab of the Cinegy Playout configurator select the video codec to be used for this preview stream. For example, select the H.264 codec to get a few megabits of reduced-scale feedback stream.

The SRT feedback stream can be viewed in any SRT-supporting application.

In your application define the SRT URL address as follows: srt://<StreamIP>:<Port>, where

StreamIP – defines the IP address of the machine transmitting the SRT stream;

Port – should be set to 5421+N for playout preview or 5471+N for cued preview; where N is the zero-based Playout engine instance number.

For example, if you have Cinegy Air engine #0 on a machine with IP 192.168.0.1, in Cinegy Multiviewer you can define MPEG-TS input URL as srt://192.168.0.1:5421 to get the playout preview stream and srt://192.168.0.1:5471 for cued preview; the result will be as follows: 

It is being set up on the Playback tab of the Playout configuration:

The Queue Size is specified in frames.

As a pre-read buffer, it holds frames to be output that are rendered in advance, not adding any additional delay to output.

The Queue Size may play a significant role in compensating for reading performance issues. 

150 frames for 25 fps means that reading issues less than 6 sec in total will be compensated from the buffer. In case issues take longer than 6 sec (150 frames) they might become visible as frames will be read directly from the disk. It can be verified by PERF read messages in the log. Each PERF message contains information about the frame read time in ms. This message does not appear when the time to get the next frame is below the specified threshold.

The PERF read message appears in the log when the time to read the next frame from disk exceeds the frame duration (40 ms in case of 25 fps). In case such messages appear seldom, the performance read issues are compensated by the mentioned pre-read buffer. If PERF read messages appear in the log often, this signals that the pre-read buffer may be depleted at some point (reading speed is below the real-time) and this may affect the playout.

The above idea can be illustrated by the log example:

2024-06-01T18:22:41.951Z (9096) PERF: Read 48 ms (R,P,D): V(P,48,0) ANC(D,0,0) A0(P,0,0), id {E4018210-E9F3-46A0-AFDE-B094E1C76EDA}
2024-06-01T18:22:41.951Z (9092) PERF: Read 73 ms (R,P,D): V(P,73,0) ANC(P,0,0) A0(P,0,0), id {02772728-DA0A-4767-B132-774E2030FC1B}

V(P,48,0) – means that reading from proxy took 48 ms. In the case of reading directly, the message would be V(D,48,0).

This pre-read buffer also reserves memory from RAM to hold uncompressed frames data. For example, for 150 frames - 150*width*height*2 bytes.

150*1920*1080*2=593 MB.

The Queue Size also reserves some GPU memory when the Cinegy Title templates are used. It is the same 150 frames, but the memory usage will depend on the number of graphic layers and their complexity for each frame.

For high-resolution content (4K, 8K) it is recommended to reduce the default queue size to the values more appropriate for GPU RAM (e.g. 25).

• The file is no longer available (has been moved or deleted). In this case try to re-insert the file to the playlist.
• The file is not accessible by the user account under which Cinegy Air Engine is running.
• If the Cinegy Air Engine is running on a separate station, make sure the file is added to the playlist from the shared folder, but not from a local folder.
• If nothing from the above matches your case, try to play back this file in the Cinegy player and check if it can be played successfully – probably you will need to install an additional decoder to decode the specific video format.

The main GPU offload feature is enabled in Playout x64 Config tool. On the Playback tab in Config tool you can define what “Video effects accelerator” to use. Here is the list of all installed graphics cards where you can select video effects accelerator card capable of processing real-time graphics. Selecting “Direct3D 11 – Nvidia xxx” you can choose the specific Nvidia card for effects rendering.

Having defined RTP/UDP Output device for a given output resolution (e.g. 1920x1080 25 Hz), first define the multicast parameters, and then choose as video encoder “HEVC Nvidia GPU” or “H.264 Nvidia GPU”, which will use NVENC for encoding. 

Either way is possible. But please note that the storage should be fast enough for reading video files in real time. So in case if the files are stored in the local drive - it is important to ensure it can provide a good reading performance, especially it is important for HD video with high bit rates. It is not recommended to store the video files in the system drive (disk C), it's better to get a separate drive.

In case if the files are located in the network storage - in order to exclude any problems with network connection, we recommend to enable the Proxy functionality. For this you should have a proxy drive which should be able to provide a good enough reading and writing performance simultaneously. The recommendation is to have the separate physical drive for proxy, preferably several disks joined into a fast RAID array (raid 0 or 0+1), read more recommendations for Proxy drive in the Cinegy System Recommendations document. 

This function is primarily intended to display the image in the live preview in Cinegy Multiviewer Remote Control and can be configured in the Cinegy Multiviewer сonfigurator in the "Output settings" tab, but only for H.264 encoder.

In the Web browser of your choice enter the URL address to the server running Cinegy Multiviewer in the following format: http://<yourmachinename>:8000. Alternatively, you can click on the corresponding link in the "General settings" tab of Cinegy Multiviewer configurator (if it is started under administrator) which will open the web page with Cinegy Multiviewer Remote Control panel:

If you monitor multiple input streams in the Cinegy Multiviewer Remote Control panel, you can switch between them with a simple mouse click on the desired stream in the "Layouts" panel. 

On each layout, the default player is the first one, and accordingly, the first audio track from it will be played automatically when switching to that layout. That is, if we have three layouts when switching between them, the first track from the first player will be played automatically. To switch to others, you need to select the player and then only the audio track.

1. First, select the active layout (the same is done with the F1... F12 keys).
2. Next, select the active player in the layout (keys are assigned individually for each player in Cinegy Multiviewer configurator -> Input Settings -> Parameters -> Selection Key).
3. Then you get the opportunity to control the audio tracks by pressing the corresponding green keys.

To learn more about Cinegy Multiviewer Remote Control, refer to this article.

- Green line - Working Set Size shows the amount of RAM owned and used by the corresponding Playout instance that resides in physical memory;
- Pale Golden - Commit Size shows the amount of RAM reserved by the corresponding Playout instance for possible future use. The physical RAM is not really allocated to the process immediately but OS guarantees that application can access such amount of RAM (either from physical memory or restored from swap file).

You will also need extra disk space for audio tracks and VANC data. This is about 0.66 GB for 1-hour audio (one audio track) and 0.5 Gb for 1-hour VANC.

To observe signals and detect different issues you might use Cinegy Multiviewer.
Cinegy Multiviewer is detecting events like frozen frames and is making notifications to different destinations e.g. Cinegy Telemetry (based on Grafana) server:
https://open.cinegy.com/products/multiviewer/24.2/multiviewer/user-manual/installation-and-configuration/alarms-settings/#video-still-alert-settings
https://open.cinegy.com/products/multiviewer/24.2/multiviewer/user-manual/installation-and-configuration/notification-settings/#telemetry-notifications

Also, the detection of dropped frames might be supported using API to drop frames detection as described here:
https://open.cinegy.com/posts/2021-02-17-major-changes-in-cinegyair21-2/#real-time-engine-telemetry-metrics

If media files are MXF files, you can analyze them using Cinegy Player PRO.
Also, if you are using Proxy on Cinegy Air, the Proxy indicator will be red when the file becomes proxied (usually it happens much earlier than the item went on Air)

There are many various media validation tools, some of them are online as:
https://www.aconvert.com/analyze.html

Free of charge:
https://github.com/svt/media-analyzer:
FFProbe as a part of FFMpeg -
https://ffmpeg.org/ffprobe.html

and the commercial as:
https://www.jongbel.com/manual-analysis/media-analyzer/
https://www.interrasystems.com/analyzers.php

And, finally, there are systems like Baton that do QC on files:
https://www.vidispine.com/platform/vidinet/media-services/baton-qc-by-interra

NOTE: Refer to https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/24.1/system-recommendations/cinegy-air-and-cinegy-title/#deltacast for the recommended Deltacast board driver.

If the mapped drive is supposed to map onto a hard-coded configuration on the engine (e.g. an externally synchronized copy of the server share, or a SAN-mounted volume like Quantum StorNext) then this automatic conversion may cause unexpected problems.

A machine-wide registry flag was introduced to disable the automatic mapping mode in Cinegy Air. To disable the automatic mapping, assign the value "1" to the NotConvertToUNC DWORD key, located in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Cinegy LLC\Cinegy\MCRStudio.... Depending on which product and in which version you want to use it, the path in the registry will change- ...\MCRStudioEditor. 

If all was done correctly, the file paths should not be changed to the UNC path:

To enable the automatic mapping again, please change the value of this registry key to "0".

"Throttle speed" is used to relieve the system from peak loads.

Sometimes it happens that with rapid rendering of the next chunk, CPU utilization reaches 100%, which negatively affects the work of other modules of the system. If there is a margin for the speed of rendering, you can use "Throttle speed" and thus achieve more smooth system operation, without overloading.

1920x1080 25fps - 196,991,240 bps;

1920x1080 50fps - 393,982,480 bps;

1920x1080 29.97fps - 228,509,838 bps;

1920x1080 59.94fps - 464,899,326 bps. 

This means that when a new item is started on-air, there exist two reading processes from the disk:
- on-air item starts to fill in its buffer while frames are played out;
- cued item starts to fill in its buffer until it is filled in.

In case the storage is not able to provide enough read performance or on-air item is started immediately after being added to the playlist, there is no buffer to compensate drive performance issues and output will be affected.

Please, refer to https://open.cinegy.com/products/air/21.2/playout/user-manual/configuration/playback/#queue-size for additional information.

MPG (TS) files don't have an index, they have timestamps instead, which need to be located within the file. This results in jumping back and forth and reading larger chunks of data (with overhead to locate the timestamp), so it will always be significantly slower than MXF.

As the low proxying speed in the customer configuration may be associated with reading from the network storage, for further improvement of the proxying speed Cinegy recommends looking into its configuration and performance (e.g., to check whether file cashing has been enabled which may contribute to reading performance, etc.).

The parameter responsible for the color is IdleColor="#0000FF" (blue in this example). The color is specified using a hex color code.

We will change the color to black by updating the code to #000000.

Once the change is saved the engine needs to be restarted for it to take effect.

We began implementing the SRT protocol in 2019, starting with Cinegy Air as the pilot product. Since then, we have successfully integrated SRT into most Cinegy products.

First of all, you need to know that Cinegy software works with both VMWare (VMware ESXi Server (formerly VMware ESX)) and HyperV. The only thing is that you need to use an NVIDIA A10 GPU card or newer analog and, definitely, the NVIDIA Virtual GPU driver; otherwise, you won't get the necessary acceleration. The card cannot be "shuffled" between VMs, see below for GPU and Virtual GPU support:

https://www.nvidia.com/content/dam/en-zz/Solutions/Data-Center/a10/pdf/A10-Product-Brief.pdf 

Plus, the page from NVIDIA below has some recommendations for ESXi versions and Nvidia driver packages:

https://docs.nvidia.com/grid/13.0/product-support-matrix/index.html#abstract__vmware-vsphere-required-edition 

The link below goes on to a presentation created in 2017 about this type of deployment:

https://open.cinegy.com/posts/2017-03-20-techcon2017-virtualization/ 

Or read the following article to learn about Cinegy Cloud Broadcasting:

https://open.cinegy.com/posts/2024-03-25-cloud-broadcasting/

 Alternatively, you can try running test feeds on Amazon EC2 G5 https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/g5/, they use this type of card.

 It is possible to easily restart the Dashboard window to renew previews. You have to do it carefully, NOT via the tray icon, because you may restart playouts as well.

Instead, you need to close the "PlayoutDashboard.exe" process in the Task Manager.

Then start PlayoutDashboard.exe from the "C:\Program Files\Cinegy\Cinegy Playout" folder.

To change the order of devices in the Cinegy Playout configurator, you will need to remove them and add them again in the desired order. This process requires reconfiguring each device, which can be time-consuming.

However, you can avoid this by directly editing the engine configuration files. This method allows you to reorder devices without the need to delete and re-add them.

Example Scenario

For example, you have configured 2 inputs and 3 outputs for Instance 0 as follows:

In this example, we need to swap the inputs so that the Deltacast Input becomes the main input. Additionally, we will switch places between the Screen Output and the RTP/UDP/SRT Output.

Steps to Reorder Devices

1. Locate Configuration files. Configuration files are stored by default in C:\ProgramData\Cinegy\CinegyAir\Config

Note that ProgramData is a hidden folder, so you may need to enable viewing hidden files and folders.

2. Backup Configurations. Before making any changes, copy your current configuration files from the Config folder to another location to avoid data loss.
   
   
3. Edit the Configuration File. Open the Instance-0.Config.xml configuration file in a text editor of your choice. In our example, the part with Input and Output configuration looks as follows:

4.  Rename the devices:

Set Input0 for Deltacast Input and Input1 for WebCam Input.

For output devices, set Output0 for RTP/UDP/SRT Output, Output1 for AJA Input, and Output2 for Screen Output:

5. Apply changes. After making these changes, save the configuration file and restart the Cinegy Playout engine. You should see the following configuration:

Troubleshooting

If something goes wrong, restore your configuration using previously saved backup config files (see Step 2) in the Config folder and restart the engine.