Jun 2021
Updated Jan 2024
At the time of writing, the CE1 only operates in either HD or UHD mode (variant 1 and variant 2, don't ask me what variant 3 is).
So if the unit is set to UHD mode, you cannot do a HD encode (white lie, you can but the M1 CPU tries to upscale HD to UHD and you run out of CPU).
So to change mode you have to edit a file and then reboot the unit. This should be addressed around August 2021.
To change variant we need to edit one file on the CE1. This file is located at:
/var/opt/mediakind/platform/ The file is called dta_2174b_variant_force
You can either edit this file in vi, and change the parameter to be either a 1 (for HD) or a 2 (for UHD). After editing you need to reboot the unit.
A slightly quicker way to edit this file is to use the following command:
echo 2 > /var/opt/mediakind/platform/dta_2174b_variant_force
After 'echo' type a 1 or 2 depending on whether you want HD (1) or UHD (2) then reboot.
If you have multiple SDI cards (say in EL G9 where you could have 3 cards) you can use the following:
Navigate to the following directory:
/var/opt/mediakind/platform
There should be a file here called:
dta_217x_platform
rename this file or you won't be able to create the relevant directory:
mv dta_217x_platform dta_217x_platform.org
Now you can create the following directory (ensure you are in /var/opt/mediakind/platform)
mkdir dta_217x_variant
Navigate to /var/opt/mediakind/platform/dta_217x_variant
cd /var/opt/mediakind/platform/dta_217x_variant
To set the card variant type we need to assign a number for that card mode, lets assume we want card 1 in HD mode (variant 1) and card 2 in UHD mode (variant 2):
echo 1 > /var/opt/mediakind/platform/dta_217x_variant/1 echo 2 > /var/opt/mediakind/platform/dta_217x_variant/2
This file is read at boot, so for the configuration to apply you need to reboot the unit.
• Variant 1: HD SDI input (each input is up to 3G-SDI) • Variant 2: 1 UHD channel over 4x3G-SDI on ports 1,2,3 and 4 with DTA-2174B 1 UHD channel over 4x3G-SDI on ports 1-4 or 5-8 with DTA-2178