TESSERA SOFTWARE 3.4.4

Tessera HD processors (M2, T1 and S4) must be running processor firmware V3.3.2 prior to upgrading to V3.4.1 or later.

Tessera HD processors (M2, T1 and S4) must be running processor firmware V2.3.2 or later prior to upgrading to V3.0.1 or later, or the upgrade will fail requiring a SD card restore.

Due to a new hardware revision, SX40 and S8 processors with serial numbers starting with 02 are only compatible with software versions 3.4 and above. Any attempt to downgrade the processor software version lower than 3.4 will be rejected.

The Tessera S8 processor requires software version 3.0 or later.

Extended Bit Depth is a ground-breaking new way of utilising LED driver chips that further improves the already impressive low-level brightness by increasing the PWM bit depth. This improvement is dependent on the frame rate, the maximum frame rate supported by the panels and the shutter angle of the camera being used. The most significant improvement can be made using lower frame rates (such as 23.976 or 24 fps) with LED panels that support HFR+ up to 250 fps. The results are quite striking even at extremely low brightness levels, with significant improvement in the visual quality of video especially in dark areas of the image, greatly reducing artefacts like noise and speckling.

Frame rate is set in the Genlock section of the Network property editor, and camera shutter angle is set in ShutterSync.

Extended Bit Depth does not affect the maximum peak brightness of LED panels and can be used in conjunction with Dark Magic.

For example, a panel running at 24 fps with a camera shutter angle of 180° might offer an additional 2.3 bits of PWM precision, giving five times the number of achievable brightness levels at the low end, with 125 times the number of achievable colours. The result of this is that the panels can achieve an additional 2.3 stops of dynamic range at the low end. This means that the camera can focus more sharply on the LED, and because of the increase in dynamic range of the screen, shadow detail on the LED panels can be boosted during grading.

To enable Extended Bit Depth select the Colour Tile and tick the Extended Bit Depth checkbox.

Extended Bit Depth checkbox

Extended Bit Depth is enabled by default, and for on-camera applications must be used with ShutterSync.

Stacking is our new feature that allows users to group several processors together and control commonly used parameters simultaneously from a lead processor over a local area network. A member of this group or ‘Stack’ of processors are referred to as ‘Member’ processors, whilst the processor that is controlling the other processors is referred to as a ‘Leader’ processor. A ‘Stack’ can have multiple processors all being controlled by a ‘Leader’ processor, and a network can have multiple ‘Stacks’. Each Stack is identified with its own Stack ID number. Parameters and Features that can be controlled with Stacking are as follows:

• Input (this also includes input selection and input gamut settings
• Colour Replace
• 14-Way Colour Correction
• Curve
• Pattern
• Freeze
• Blackout
• Global Colour (including panel output gamuts)
• Camera based parameters
  • Genlock source and phaseu
  • FRM and frame remapping
  • ShutterSync
  • StarTracker

To use Stacking, press the Control tile in the System section of the processor pipeline. This opens the Control property editor.

Decide whether the processor is to be a Leader or a Member processor, and its Stack ID

Leader is selected on this processor. Note the Members displayed in the Members list

Member is selected on this processor

When you have assigned processors to be either a Leader or a Member, you will see the members in that stack displayed in the Members list.

Tiles with Stacked parameters have a downward facing double arrow icon in the bottom righthand corner when the Stacking feature is selected. This is darkened when there are no Stacked parameters in that Tile. A Tile with stacked parameters has a White double arrow icon in the bottom righthand corner.

A Tile with no Stacked parameters              A Tile with Stacked parameters

When you adjust a Stacked parameter on a lead processor then this parameter will be updated in real time on the Member processors with the same Stack ID.

To activate Stacking on a Tile, select the tile, and then click on the Stacking icon on the Tile property editor. For example, clicking on the Stacking icon in the Global Colour property editor activates Stacking for Global Colour.

Clicking on the Stacking icon activates Stacking for Global Colour

Two new Live Control Profiles have been added for use with DMX/ eDMX.

Global Brightness, which has just a Global Brightness parameter, and Global Colour which has Global R,G,B Gain, Intensity gain, Colour Temperature, Global Brightness and Gamma parameters.

PureTone is now enabled by default.

ShutterSync now features the option to change the camera Sensor Type. There are three options: Any, Global Shutter and Rolling Shutter. By default, the Sensor type is set to Any, which regardless of sensor type, gives the broadest camera compatibility and is likely to give the best results on camera with the most leeway on Genlock Phase Offset. Global and Rolling Shutter give the system more information to work with, potentially reducing flicker on a small number of panel types when non-standard shutter angles are used. Rolling Shutter additionally allows the entry of the camera sensor readout time. With Global Shutter and Rolling Shutter the Genlock Phase Offset must be more accurately specified.

A 12-bit custom gradient has been added to Test Patterns

The start and end of the gradient can be made of any 12-bit colour and can be vertical or horizontal.

The Pipeline UI has been re-organised and improved. Camera-orientated settings, such as Genlock, Frame Remapping, Frame Rate Multiplication and ShutterSync now have their own Tile. Failover and Control have their own System section at the far righthand side of the Pipeline.

Network Tile
The Network Tile now features a real-time graphic indication of the network load of the Tessera 1G Outputs connected to each of the Tessera 10G outputs.

Front Panel Controls
The front panel button controls have moved to the Control Tile property editor.

Then new pipeline

Selecting the Camera tile opens the Camera property editor.

The Camera property editor

The API has been extended.

• Added colour replace endpoints+
• Added test pattern restrict to achievable colours switch
• Added group and global brightness overdrive switches
• Added DynaCal highlight out of gamut and overbright pixels switches
• Added Genlock source and internal source framerate endpoints
• Added endpoints for the remaining StarTracker parameters
• Added Dynacal gamut endpoints for all inputs and output

Support for high DPI screens has been improved for Tessera Remote.

The panel OSD has been improved to give better video status information. NB The effects of Extended Bit Depth are listed here.

The new Video Status pages in the OSD

Before 3.4, Tessera Remote and Tessera processors relied on SLP (Service Location Protocol) to locate other processors on a LAN. Whilst this is convenient in small networks, it has limitations for use in enterprise level networks and WANs. Direct Connect allows the user to specify the processors you wish to connect to via their IP addresses and port number and is designed to work via a Firewall or Router using port forwarding.

Direct Connect can be accessed from Settings and Settings when you ‘Start Tessera Remote’ in Tessera Remote. Direct Connect cannot be configured from the Tessera Remote in off-line editor.

Adding processors can be achieved by clicking Add and typing a relevant IP address and port number. You can also add an Offline Name to help identify your processors. The list of processors will saved into the project file. Note the default port for Tessera processors is 37564.

Adding processors to Direct Connect

Beta versions are now clearly marked as such on the UI.

IP Control and firmware reload
IP Control can cause issues with firmware reload when upgrading or downgrading from software versions prior to 3.4.3. It is recommended to either disable IP Control or close the project before initiating a firmware reload from software versions prior to 3.4.3

S4 firmware reload
When upgrading an S4 processor to/from 3.1.0.BETA4 firmware, after firmware reload has finished, the processor will not reboot automatically and will require a manual reboot. After reboot, the processor will operate as normal.

Version compatibility
In order to use V3.0.1 or later, it is necessary to run all elements of the system (processor, XDs and panels) on V2.3.1 or later. For panels where V2.3 firmware is not available please continue using V2.2 processor firmware.

Restore factory defaults/format SD card can cause fixture library instability
If you perform either of these operations please reboot your processor before browsing to the fixture library window as this may otherwise be unstable.​​

Settings from Tessera Control are not applied to newly discovered fixtures
If using Tessera Control to alter Brightness, Temperature or Gamma, these settings are not sent to newly discovered fixtures until a change is made to the value.

Tessera Remote and Tessera Control may not work on Mac OSX El Capitan
When running on a Mac OSX El Capitan the Tessera Remote and Tessera Control applications can fail to detect network ports. This appears to be limited to cases where no default gateway is specified on the computer’s network interface. In situations where no default gateway is set using DHCP, we recommend specifying a default gateway manually. PCs running Windows and Macs running OSX Yosemite or earlier are not affected.​

Tessera Remote may fail to import project files
In some cases, Tessera Remote may fail to import project files from local storage. As a workaround create the project from scratch or use a local monitor, keyboard and mouse to import the project file before connecting with Tessera Remote.​​

Some input devices on KVM switches do not work
We have had reports that trackpads may not function correctly when connected to the processor via a KVM switch. As a workaround we recommend using a mouse, or connecting input devices directly to the processor’s USB ports.​​

Monitors connected via DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters may be unstable
Local user interface monitors connected to the processor via certain active DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters may give an unstable image or the monitor is not detected at all. As a workaround we recommend using a DVI or DisplayPort monitor.