Blackmagic Design offers HDLink software for 3-D monitoring

Blackmagic Design has released a new software update for its HDLink Pro 3D DisplayPort that adds HDMI 1.4a output support for full-resolution 3-D stereoscopic monitoring. HDLink Pro 3D is an affordable 2-D/3-D and 2K monitoring solution for HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort displays.

Heretofore, monitoring stereoscopic 3-D video often compromises image quality during the encoding process for side-by-side or top-and-bottom display methods because it “throws away” half of the picture resolution to combine both left- and right-eye video into a standard video frame.

With this latest 3.5 software update, HDLink Pro 3D DisplayPort now also supports 3-D monitoring using the HDMI 1.4a standard. This means that both the left- and right-eye video from the HD-SDI connection is combined into an extended frame dimension and sent simultaneously to a HDMI 1.4a-compatible 3-D monitor, providing high-quality, full-resolution 3-D images.

Kristian Lam, product manager at Blackmagic Design, said that when combined with real-time hardware lookup tables, the HDLink Pro 3D DisplayPort is ideal for any 3-D workflow, from live, on-set 3-D monitoring to high-end post production.

The new HDLink 3.5 software update is available for free to all existing Blackmagic Design HDLink customers at http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/.