Brompton Tech Announces Beta Tessera v3.3
Designed to optimize the performance of LED panels, Tessera v3.3 includes Operating Modes, per-batch PureTone and conditional support for Mo-Sys StarTracker.
Brompton Technology has released a beta version of Tessera v3.3, a software update designed to optimize the performance of LED panels to further streamline professional workflows.
New features include Operating Modes and Per-Batch PureTone. Additionally, the Tessera SX40 and S8 now have a preset to support the ACES AP1 color space as used by ACEScg. Finally, in collaboration with Mo-Sys, Brompton has added support for the company’s StarTracker camera-tracking system when using panels fitted with the Tessera R2 or Tessera R2+ and an SX40 or S8 processor with Frame Remapping.
The new Tessera R2+ receiver card has the same SO-DIMM form factor as the R2. It is backwards-compatible with all existing R2-based panel designs, but brings additional data pins and capability to support new LED drivers, ensuring continued support for more panel types.
Typically, when FAEs work with panel manufacturers to create a panel configuration, certain trade-offs must be made between different aspects of visual performance; pushing for faster refresh rates might mean reducing PWM bit depth, and increasing maximum brightness might compromise low-brightness performance. Even though panel manufacturers seek a good balance, there is currently only a “one-size-fits-all” configuration that is applied for the life of the panel.
“This presents a real challenge if you need to use LED panels across various scenarios that all require prioritizing different aspects of visual performance,” says Brompton Chief Technology Officer Chris Deighton. “For instance, you might require maximum brightness for an outdoor, live event and need the highest effective refresh rate to optimize performance with certain camera types in a studio. With the Operating Modes feature in Tessera v3.3, both scenarios can benefit from the best possible panel performance.”
Operating Modes enables a single panel type to have multiple operating modes, each with a slightly different configuration for the panel. Different modes can therefore prioritize different aspects of visual performance. Additional operating modes can be created by Brompton engineers working with the panel manufacturers. Once activated, users can instantly switch panels between operating modes via the processor, depending on the requirement of each event or project, giving them greater control to get the best out of their LED panels.
The challenges of matching different batches of LED panels are well known. Despite being the same type and being calibrated to the same brightness, color temperature and color targets, often a new batch of LED panels will look noticeably different when displaying real-world content. This is typically because of differences in the non-linearities of different batches of LED or driver chips — a behavior that Brompton’s PureTone feature was developed to correct.
In Tessera v3.3, PureTone has been extended to allow each individual batch of panels to be measured separately to generate a PureTone profile specific to that batch. To create a profile, a PureTone profiling kit is required that incorporates a sensitive colorimeter. A single LED panel is measured within a dark room to generate the profile, which can then be used with all the panels in that particular batch.
“With PureTone, our customers and panel manufacturers can correct the non-linearity for each batch of panels, ensuring neutral grayscales and accurate luminance performance in all operating modes,” says Deighton. “Matching different batches of LEDs is now much easier. PureTone is also really useful in film and broadcast work, where screens are often run at much lower brightness to match camera exposures but still need to maintain neutral grayscales and accurate color reproduction.”
The Tessera SX40 and S8 now have a preset to support the ACES AP1 primaries, used by the ACEScg color space that is increasingly the choice of CG artists. This avoids the need for a color-space conversion in the source device.
ACES AP1 will be automatically recognized by the processor when received over HDMI 2.0; alternatively, it may be manually selected on the processor. The user can also reference the ACES AP1 color gamut within Brompton’s dynamic-calibration tools.
Brompton has added support for Mo-Sys’ StarTracker when users are employing Tessera R2-based panels together with Tessera SX40 or S8 LED processors and Frame Remapping.
“Although there are many different systems for tracking camera position, a common approach has been using visible markers, which can be challenging within an LED volume, especially one with an LED ceiling,” says Deighton. “This can now be resolved by displaying suitable markers on the LED itself.”
The markers are overlaid on the video content being displayed, with Tessera’s Frame Remapping feature used to only display the markers on output frames that are not visible to the main camera. The markers are automatically generated, with the ability to configure the color and size of the markers from within the processor UI.
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