Graticule
Test patterns and LED tile maps, for Resolume
What it does
An FFGL source for Resolume Arena and Avenue: SW Graticule. Drop it on a layer and it draws at the size the composition or the slice gives it, so the grid you're looking at is the output's own raster and not a picture of somebody else's. It's the live version of Test Card, which renders one PNG per output from an output map; the patterns are the same, ported line for line.
Every line is a whole number of pixels and nothing is anti-aliased, on purpose. A 1-pixel line is one column of pixels, the Pixel Check's checkerboard is 1 pixel on, 1 pixel off, and the alignment chart's border sits on the very edge. If any of that arrives on the wall soft, grey or doubled, something between Resolume and the LEDs is scaling, and the pattern has just told you so.
The SMPTE RP 219 bars are laid out from a measurement of ffmpeg's smptehdbars rather than from a drawing of them, and their colours are computed through Rec. 709 at full range (0 to 255, for a media server or a GPU) or legal (16 to 235, for an SDI chain). The LED Tiles pattern takes a real wall's numbers, cabinet size, module size and origin, as integers, and letters every cabinet. A burn-in, a marker that sweeps or bounces across whatever's underneath, and a frame counter make it a working tool rather than a still: film the wall and the monitor together and the difference between the two counters is the latency, in frames.
- SMPTE RP 219, 75% and 100% bars, Grid, Alignment, LED Tiles, Solid, Greyscale and Pixel Check
- Drawn at the output's own raster, in whole pixels, with nothing anti-aliased
- Full range (0 to 255) or legal (16 to 235) levels
- LED cabinet maps from a real wall's cabinet and module sizes, every cabinet lettered
- A pixel-exact 5x7 burn-in with the resolution, the pattern's name and your own text
- A moving marker and a frame counter, for spotting dropped frames and measuring latency
- Thirteen presets, from bars at each range to 500 mm cabinets at P2.6, P2.9 and P3.9
- Universal macOS bundle and a Windows x64 DLL
Where it stands
v0.1.0, and early days. Every pattern is checked pixel by pixel through the plugin's own code on an Apple Silicon Mac, the RP 219 bars match ffmpeg's measured geometry at 1920x1080, 3840x2160, 1280x720 and 2048x1080, their fifteen colours land on the measured code values, and all 69 controls change the picture. On Windows it loads, registers and draws in Resolume Arena 7.27.1 on software rendering (no GPU), with every control as declared and 68 of the 69 seen changing the picture there; the 69th is a 1-pixel edge that Arena's thumbnail can't see. It hasn't been loaded into Resolume on macOS yet, and no real wall, projector or SDI chain has looked at it. There's a user guide and a browser demo, which runs the plugin's own C++ compiled to WebAssembly, but no OpenFX port. Try it in your own rig before you trust it in a show.
Watch it running
Nothing loads from YouTube until you press play.Watch it there instead