I never said it was a good idea, just a possibility as to why someone would use two frames. Believe me, I've had enough trouble getting effects to work with only one frame, it would take a lot more confidence in my abilities than I currently have to step behind a single panel controlling two frames with slightly different effects.

Stephan, your answer is logical but there is one issue. Unless you monitor both complete paths. how do you know everything is going well on the other path? Have you ever had a distribution amp fail or a score bug video out or key cutter die? If you go with a two path approach, you better have people baby sit both paths. I think we use the Sony HDC-910 cameras, nice camera. One flaw, the 4x3 output has separate detail circuits and in the truck, video can't see 4x3. When the truck was new and we were sharing game camera or a HH the other feed would complain that the picture looked over processed. What the issue was was that the 4x3 detail was set too high. It didn't matter to the HD show, video had the HD detail perfect. In a dual path truck, every source has to be double checked.

Well, one reason to use two frames would be to create entirely different effects for the SD and HD feeds. It eliminates the problem of effects created with the 4x3 safe area in mind looking awkward in the HD feed. Split screens especially suffer from this problem. And I do think that is a rather serious problem, but one that I feel would be better solved by letterboxing the SD feed rather than using two switcher frames or center cropping the picture.

[quote="Mike Cumbo"]Bill, I forget what brand down converters are in the back of the HD truck I work on regularly. Southwest/ Core Digital built a truck with two 8000 frames, one with 4x3 cards, the other 16x9. I think they were trying to solve a problem that didn't exist. When NESN did the Red Sox in HD last year they did Wednesday games with a letterbox 4x3 feed. If I'm not mistaken, current downconverters can be set for center cut or letterbox with the computer.[/quote] That sounds cool that the converter could do either way. That was something I was wondering, I have heard of trucks wth two frames in the past. I think Bonnie or Clyde (not sure which truck company). Seems like two frames are a thing of the past perhaps. Maybe when they started doing this there were not that many good downconverters for aspect ratio conversion etc. It may have looked a lot better to take the SD outs on the gear and feed the other frame. Interesting to hear any reasons why or if this is still done. Bill

Bill, I forget what brand down converters are in the back of the HD truck I work on regularly. Southwest/ Core Digital built a truck with two 8000 frames, one with 4x3 cards, the other 16x9. I think they were trying to solve a problem that didn't exist. When NESN did the Red Sox in HD last year they did Wednesday games with a letterbox 4x3 feed. If I'm not mistaken, current downconverters can be set for center cut or letterbox with the computer.

I believe standard practice is the switcher only puts out HD signal and a downconverter in the truck (if it's a remote) creates an SD version. The SD version is a simple center crop, so viewers on SD sets don't get to see things that go on in the "wings" of the HD picture.

[quote="Mike Cumbo"]Ahh, the fun of learning HD... Maybe they will learn that "wings" are your friends when playing 4x3 stuff. Are they using 1080i or 720p?[/quote] No idea which format, I believe it is a 2 ME 8K they are using. Looks like they stretched the video to work with 16:9, but when downconverted everyone looked fat. What do they normally do for HD/SD shows?, sports etc. I have heard of using two frames with one panel in the past, seems like now maybe they just downconvert. Is this downconverter external of the switcher, or does the switcher send out an HD and SD version (I don't think so). If external does it actually do anything with the aspect ratio or does it just crop sides and slightly blow it up a little? Bill

Ahh, the fun of learning HD... Maybe they will learn that "wings" are your friends when playing 4x3 stuff. Are they using 1080i or 720p?