EEVblog #598 - Sony DME7000 Video Multi Effects Processor

[simontheu]

Are TV stations still use such equipment or do they use ordinary off-the-shelf computer hardware to do this all in software nowadays (especially with everything beeing digital)?

Still done in hardware now for HD/SD realtime live applications, software is not time deterministic enough. The hardware always takes a frame to process (40ms for 1080i50), and the hardware's user interface is tightly coupled with the vision mixer hardware.

However our company used to use the exact same model DVE7000 for video editing where the timeline was played out and recorded back in with effects on (Lightworks - could play and record simultaneously). Now however its all done with After Effects and Fusion, plus basic timeline effects (Grass Valley Edius).

[havard]

To me, the most interesting part is that Sony PCBs look like Sony PCBs, regardless of whether they are for some high-end gear or a mass-produced low tier item.

[funkyworm]

What a great video; I used to install & service these (and the smaller DME3000) in the nineties/early-noughties. Here are a few notes;

• Serial number - Sony pro video gear has the first two digits as a year marker - 50xxx would be from 1995. To see 50760 (or whatever Dave showed) surprised me - generally most TV DVEs (digital video effects) sold in the low hundreds.
• Depending on options and year these were between £50,000 and £100,000 which was very standard for this kind of machine.
• The Sony DMEs were an awful lot more reliable than the equivalents from Ampex (the ADO range), and Abekas (the A50-series) all of which were very common in TV Studios, edit suites and Outside Broadcast trucks.
• Since the mid-90s post production has been done on workstations which can handle digital video effects either as an internal PCI-e card or (more common now) via the GPU. In Studios where real-time, synchronous performance is needed dedicated hardware is still used for handling video.

Phil.

The Engineer's Bench Podcast - video & screencasts for broadcast engineers
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEC413419B348B9D5

[Kibi]

Marvellous teardown that was.
I found two DME7000's today. If I can find the rest of the bits that go with them I'll see if I can fire one of them up for a laugh.

[OzOnE]

I agree with Kibi - fantastic teardown vid, Dave.

@Kibi - would you be interested in selling one of the DME7000 units at all?
Just wondering roughly how much they would be worth nowadays?

I bought a Quantel Harriet about 18 months ago, but there are a few people I know who might want to buy a DME7000 system.


@funkworm - I hadn't seen your YT channel before - subbed!
btw, have you worked with any Quantel Paintbox / V-Series boxes in the past?

Your name sounds familiar? Have we spoken about the Paintbox before?

EDIT: Ohhh - Big Brother! That makes sense...
http://philtechnicalblog.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/celebrity-big-brother.html


Would anyone be interested in the service manual for the DME7000?

If people fancy a look, I don't mind paying for it...

http://www.sony.owner-manuals.com/DME7000-service-manual-SONY.html

http://www.manuals-in-pdf.com/download-DME7000-SONY-p-1420398.html


I've been helping to restore an original Quantel DPB 7001 Paintbox for Steve (RetroGamerVX on YouTube), so I found the Sony teardown fascinating...



That particular Paintbox was used by the BBC for the effects on things like Doctor Who and Tripods.
We're not 100% sure about exactly which programs it was used for, but definitely for a lot of the BBC News stuff / logos / credits etc.

I spent about 5 months reverse-engineering it's 68000 based CPU1 board from two rather grainy photos of the PCB (Steve is quite a few miles away from me in the north of the UK, I'm down in Devon / Mordor).

After I did that bit of RE on the CPU1 board, they guy who donated the PB said he'd found the full service manuals for the damned thing in his loft! lol

It looks like the Sony works in a similar way to the PB, although obviously far more advanced.

The PB uses almost all '74 series logic chips on most of the boards, and some oldskool ADC / DAC / Digital Multiplier chips for the image processing.

It has two main framestores, which consist of 640KB of DRAM each (IIRC).

It then has a separate smaller "Brush" store, which gets loaded with the specific pattern for the currently chosen brush.
During the drawing process, the brush pattern gets multiplied by the image data from one or both framestores, or from a solid colour.

The multiplier for the brush process is taken from the pressure data from the tablet stylus itself.

As you can see in the vid above, it came with a gigantic 335MB Fujitsu SMD hard drive with 14" platters.
We don't yet know what data is on the drive, but we've been told that the whole lot was decommissioned apparently with the data intact.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to get it to fully boot 'cos it's stuck waiting for the hard drive.
The status lights on the hard drive suggest that it's working fine, so it must either be a cable or interface board issue?

The same goes for the 8" floppy disks - some of the disk covers have actually been signed by the BBC gfx dept.
We've tried to recover the data on them using a PC and adapter cable, but haven't had much luck yet.

A large number of the Tantalum bead caps inside the Paintbox chassis exploded after a few hours of being switched on, so most of those had to be replaced.

And then both the big 1000 Watt original Gould HiFlex power supplies exploded.
So, I had to rig up a "new" PSU based on a big Cisco server PSU.

Most of it runs off +5V of course, but it also needed +/- 12V for the opamps / ADCs / DACs etc., and a -5V supply at quite a few amps.


Anywho - would anyone like to see if the full schematics are in that Sony DME-7000 service manual?

OzOnE.

[Richard Crowley]

Great teardown!

The "key" references probably have to do with chroma key channels/masks which have to do with compositing. You'd run news anchors filmed against greenscreens through that and swap it out with a weather or sports background. Among other things.

....rather than keyframes as Dave suggested.

Yes, the "key" signal is used to "switch" between the background video and the "overlay" (typically text, etc.)  Or, in the case of "chroma key" (where the weather reporter stands before a green-painted wall) the "key" signal is used to switch between the foreground (reporter) and the background (plain green wall which is replaced with weather graphics from a computer).

To the graphics people, the "key" is refered to as the "alpha channel" or "transparency key".  In the UK, chroma-key is called "CSO" (Color Separation Overlay)

The key signal can be binary (which would create a "hard-switch" between the video signals such as a reporter against a green-screen).
Or it can be linear/analog, where you see semi-transparent backgrounds behind fancy "lower-1/3rd" titles.

Just returned last week from the NAB convention in Las Vegas. The largest collection of TV/cine production gear on the planet.
Many vendors were demonstrating 2nd and 3rd generation green-screen "chroma-key" systems where multiple sensors in the lighting grid tracked the exact location and orientation of the cameras, and various prop proxy gadgets to allow downstream computers to "key in" all kinds of synthetically-generated backgrounds, etc.  Even to the point of stopping a football(soccer) game in mid-play and the commentator moving between the players to describe key plays.

And American football viewers are used to seeing all sorts of graphics "projected" (keyed) onto the green sod of the playing field.  How convenient that grass turned out to be "chroma-key green"!   

[Richard Crowley]

I'm sure one of the (few) community TV stations in Australia would love this unit, if only it had the console unit.

Haven't all TV production switched over to HD digital (16x9) by now in Australia?
That is why that (presumably perfecly good and functional) unit is just dead-weight at this point. It is analog, standard-definition.
There is a glut of perfectly good analog, standard-definition video equipment all over the place because the world has moved on.

And all the gear manufacturers at NAB last week tried their best to convince us that even HD is antiquated.
Everything is 4K now!

[hikariuk]

I'm sure one of the (few) community TV stations in Australia would love this unit, if only it had the console unit.

Haven't all TV production switched over to HD digital (16x9) by now in Australia?
That is why that (presumably perfecly good and functional) unit is just dead-weight at this point. It is analog, standard-definition.
There is a glut of perfectly good analog, standard-definition video equipment all over the place because the world has moved on.

And all the gear manufacturers at NAB last week tried their best to convince us that even HD is antiquated.
Everything is 4K now!

Sony are pushing 8K for the production side of life, iirc.

[Richard Crowley]

Sony are pushing 8K for the production side of life, iirc.

Yeah, and 6K was seen in some places, as well.  But when I go to my local cinema, they are projecting 2K!

[andersm]

The chipset for the original Playstation is supposed to have its roots in Sony's DME-9000 effects processor. Was that an earlier or later model? Early revisions of the PS1 also used an IDT-manufactured MIPS CPU (a 33MHz 3051).

[tekvax]

Dave,

we tossed a bunch of these out at work! sad sad day! no more linear editing systems! everyone WANTS avid non-linear editing these days!

i think i may still have the service manual around somewhere!

The Key i/p is a keyhole matte signal for cutting a hole in the picture for graphics and wipes... think alpha channel...?
 
They were a PIG to align the boards!! tons of op-amps and voltage dividers! and the tiny caps were really tough to replace!?

those sbx1602's were MADE of pure expensive!! They are serial digital CCIR601 to parallel digital conversion chips!! I had a buy a couple and replace the i/p's and o/p's on a switcher once!!! $400 or $500 buck US a piece!!?
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matrix encoder chips... likely for the video switcher crosspoint routing of the video signals to and from the various other modules... *(he says without checking the manual!)?
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2 dash 3 may be 3 - 2 pull down correction...?
 
the relays are likely for GPIO contact closures...?

Cheers.
Dan

[dexters_lab]

i'm cringing at the massive thread bump here, sorry 

...but i seem to have a mixer/effects panel that worked as a system with the DME-7000

if there is enough interest i could do a teardown on my channel

[Richard Crowley]

That is the "front end", the User Interface, while the box that Dave tore-down was the "back-end" that did all the work.

Those things are big and impressive, but underneath they are a bit disappointing. They are just a big, glorified keyboard. with T-bar faders instead of mouse or touch-pad.  The unique parts are that display panel on top, and the tiny alphanumeric displays above the sections of buttons.

I really covet those switches, though. Those field-labeled, soft-action, lighted pushbutton switches are >$10 each.  I build video switcher panels (for Blackmagic Design ATEM switcher boxes) and those things are NOT CHEAP.  What are you going to do with them?

I tore down this thing last year and salvaged the switches, T-bars, etc.  It had an interesting little computer/controller inside with a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive just like the Sony panel you show.