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CYPRESS, CA, March 6, 2007 – FOR-A Corporation of America, a leading manufacturer of video and audio systems for the broadcast and professional video industries, will introduce expanded optional capabilities for its FRC-7000 HD frame rate converter at NAB 2007 in Las Vegas from April 14-19, 2007 (Booth #C4234).
When the FRC-7000 debuted last year, it could convert between 1080/59.94i and 1080/50i, and between 720/59.94p and 720/50p HD frame rates in realtime. However, at NAB 2007, FOR-A will unveil new enhanced features including advanced scene cut detection and roll/crawl text detection. Later this year, FOR-A will also offer optional support for different frame rates including 23.98psf, 23.98p, 24psf, 24p, 30p, 30psf, 29.97psf, 29p, 25p and 25psf.
“After its NAB 2006 debut, our FRC-7000 met with very enthusiastic and positive response, and it’s now being used by broadcasters, production companies, and satellite uplink facilities around the world that want high-quality HD frame rate conversion. Considering the proliferation of HD formats worldwide, we believe we will continue to see strong demand for this high-quality HD frame rate converter because it is capable of converting accurately between all the leading HD formats in use today,” said Andrew Alexander, Vice President, FOR-A Corporation of Canada.
“Currently, there are very few purely HD-based frame rate converters in the marketplace. The high-quality frame rate conversion that the FRC-7000 achieves stems from FOR-A’s over 35 year history of signal processing innovations and our use of advanced Vector Motion algorithms,” Alexander added.
The FRC-7000 with enhanced optional features is ideal for many applications, including converting the frame rate prior to transmitting the international feed of a major sporting event, and for converting filmed content for HDTV broadcast.
FOR-A predicts a bright sales future for this product. “We have been selling a lot of units to clients who convert between the European 50 frame standards and the North American 60 frame standard,” Alexander said. “However we feel the biggest market will be converting from the 23.98 production standard to the 60 frame broadcast standards and we expect to be the first to do this with advanced vector motion processing.”
The FRC-7000 uses vector motion compensation processing to analyze and determine the pixel movement in each image frame. This is accomplished by comparing the movement in the frames before and after the ones being converted.
The FRC-7000’s advanced scene cut detection automatically detects scene changes and turns off motion compensation processing so as to not affect the scenes before and after the frames being converted. A complete, new set of frames is then created in the required output standard.
“This function has such a high degree of accuracy that it automatically recognizes similar scene cuts involving the same subject or similar visual content,” said Alexander. “The result is frame rate conversion with minimal judder or artifacts.”
The FRC-7000 supports eight-channel 48 kHz 24-bit embedded audio signals in sync with the video clock. There is also a delay function for synchronization with video processing. The system offers an optional embed/de-embed card to allow eight channels of AES/EBU audio to be extracted or inserted into the HD-SDI signals.
Dolby E materials can be extracted or re-inserted using the FRC-7000’s embed/de-embed option then passed through or changed using an external Dolby E encoder/decoder. Dolby E is the surround sound compression system introduced by Dolby Laboratories that is becoming increasingly common in the broadcast production pipeline.
The unit also provides for genlock. Process control can be performed for the post-conversion video. For test signals, the unit has a color bar, ramp signals and 1 kHz audio output for signal checking. An alarm tally output indicates power supply, fan and temperature errors. The video level, chroma level, chroma phase, setup level, and clips can be adjusted to produce the optimal video quality.
FOR-A is a major manufacturer and distributor of video and audio systems to the broadcast, postproduction and professional video markets. For more information about FOR-A’s product line visit their web site at www.for-a.com.
Dolby and the double-D symbol are registered trademarks of Dolby Laboratories.
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