Affordable 4K Baseband SDI Recording

It is now possible to perform 4K baseband SDI recording using standard and affordable PC hardware. Village Island and DekTec jointly announce VF-REC v3, a new version of the VF-REC application widely used for recording of transport streams and SDI signals using DekTec’s range of video I/O adapters. With this release, VF-REC receives a major GUI overhaul and introduces the exciting “J2K” option for JPEG 2000 compression.

Recording/playout of an uncompressed 4K video stream in a PC is extremely challenging because of its high bitrate (12Gbps) and requires a special and expensive hard-disk sub-system. Without considerable integration effort it is practically impossible to record or playout 4K signals with a standard PC setup. VF REC v3 overcomes this problem by incorporating JPEG 2000 compression technology from Comprimato. It applies real-time visually lossless compression of 4K video, reducing the data rate sufficiently to use a PC with a standard hard-disk setup. Comprimato’s JPEG 2000 compression technology leverages the GPU resources from graphics boards provided by companies such as NVIDIA and AMD.

VF-REC v3 with new JPEG 2000 compression option

VF-REC stores the JPEG 2000 compressed 4K signal as an MXF-file (OP1a), which means the recorded files can be used by any tool supporting the OP1a MXF-file format. Version 3 also includes functionality for playing back the recorded 4K files.

The recording and playout of UHD requires the usage of a 4K capable DekTec adapter. DekTec’s current flagship 4K product is the DTA-2174 (Quad 3G-SDI/ASI Input/Output adapter), with multiple new 4K products on the roadmap. As they appear, support for these cards will be added to VF-REC.

Please note that support for RF recording has not yet been included in the VF-REC v3 GUI. Therefore, users requiring RF recording shall temporarily keep using VF-REC v2 as maintained on the DekTec website, until VF-REC supports all recording features. The two versions are enabled under the same license.