Setting up AJA ColorBox

Livegrade comes with support for AJA’s ColorBox and OG-ColorBox devices.

AJA ColorBox

Adding the AJA ColorBox as look device#

To exchange look information with Livegrade, the AJA ColorBox needs to have a working network connection with the Mac where Livegrade is running.

Note: It is strongly recommended to connect the device hard-wired via Ethernet.

Please refer to the manufacturer’s documentation for setting up the ColorBox in your network with a dedicated IP address.

The ColorBox has a web interface for configuring the device’s IP address, watching a preview of the live video signal, configuring the system settings, and more.

Once you have obtained the device’s IP address, you can add the AJA ColorBox to any input slot using the slot manager.

Open the slot manager

by clicking on the Slot Manager symbol in the toolbar or
via the menu: Livegrade > [Slot Manager…]

Open Slot Manager

In the slot manager, click on the input you want to add the device to.

Within an input click on + Add Device in the Look Devices section to add your AJA ColorBox to the slot.

Configuring AJA ColorBox:#

While adding an AJA ColorBox, you have the following options to configure the device:

Host: enter the device’s IP address
ANC metadata: choose your camera’s manufacturer for appropriate detection of ANC metadata
Look Update: Choose how to update the look on the device.
- Interactive
  - Adjustments of the look will be sent immediately to the device.
- Manual Upload
  - Adjustments of the look will be sent on “Upload Look” actions. These actions are available as menu items (Slots > [Upload Look to Device(s)] menu), Toolbar button, Stream Deck and Tangent action
Pipeline: choose whether the HDR or SDR pipeline should be sent to the LUT box
- Note: this option is only available if “Use 2nd Pipeline” is activated in Livegrade’s grading settings.
Frame Grab:
- Preview / auto-refresh: Set the quality of the transmitted frame grab which is then shown in the slot’s preview and in the viewer
- Still creation: Set the quality of the transmitted frame grab when using “Create Still Shot” actions
  - High quality, slow transfer (Default): 16-bit TIFF at native resolution, common option for common Livegrade setups
  - Low quality, fast transfer : 8-bit JPEG at 960×540, common option for large Livegrade setups like Live-Events or Broadcast environments
- Activate Continuously refresh framegrab to auto-refresh your slot’s preview image
  - Note: a frame grab will only be sent to Livegrade if the frame grab is chosen in at least one slot as image source

Finally, click on Connect to add the device to the slot. After that the current look of the corresponding input slot will always be sent to the grading device as long as the input slot is in Live mode.

In order to change the configuration of the device

disconnect the device via pressing the Disconnect button
change the configuration and
press Connect to connect to the device again

Note: A high frame grab update interval at 4K resolutions requires a high performant hard-wired network connection.

Store LUT permanently on device#

The AJA ColorBox comes with 16 available LUT slots. These can be used to store looks from Livegrade permanently on the device, so that they can be used even without an active connection to Livegrade.

Save current look(s) of slot(s)#

The action to store the current look of a slot to an attached AJA ColorBox device can be manually triggered via the main menu or automatically triggered when quitting Livegrade.

This action will go through all slots and will save its looks to attached grading devices.

To manually trigger the action

Select* Slots > *Permanently store current looks on devices… via the main menu

To automatically trigger the action when quitting Livegrade

Check Store look in devices when quitting Livegrade in the Devices tab of Livegrade settings

On AJA ColorBox devices, LUTs will be saved as Last Permanent.cube

If a Last Permanent.cube already exists, it will be overwritten.

Setting a startup preset#

To ensure that your AJA ColorBox outputs a meaningful graded image even when it’s not connected to Livegrade, go to the device’s web interface (e.g. by pressing System settings… button within the device’s dialog) and click on presets.

There you find several slots to configure presets for your ColorBox. On the bottom, you will find the possibility to set a certain preset as “Startup Preset”.

The default setting is “No Preset (load last state)”. This will always load the last 3D LUT which was permanently stored on the device on startup.