Setting up Flanders Scientific BoxIO

Livegrade comes with support for Flanders Scientific’s FSI BoxIO LUT box.

FSI BoxIO

Adding FSI BoxIO as grading device#

In order to exchange look information with Livegrade, the FSI BoxIO needs to have a working network connection with the computer where Livegrade is running on.

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

Once you have obtained the device’s IP address, you can add the FSI BoxIO 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…]

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 and select FSI BoxIO to add the LUT box to your slot.

After adding the FSI BoxIO a configuration form will appear.

Configure and connect FSI BoxIO#

• Host: enter the device’s IP address
• ANC metadata: choose your camera’s manufacturer for appropriate detection of ANC metadata
• Channel mode: choose whether you want to use FSI BoxIO in single or dual channel mode.
  • Single:
    • The devices channel mode will be set to single.
    • The look of the input slot will be sent as 33x33x33 LUT.
  • Dual:
    • The devices channel mode will be set to dual.
    • The look of the input slot will be sent to the to the connected channel of the LUT box as 17x17x17 LUT.
    • Find more information about dual channel mode below in the section “Dual channel mode”.
• 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.
• Signal ranges: if you have a signal path which is not legal in -> out legal nor full in -> out full you can enable this option to overwrite the device’s ranges setting. Please refer to the article Legal and Extended – SDI-Signals and LUTs in Livegrade to learn more about the range control in Livegrade.
• Frame grab: activate Continuously refresh frame grab to get automatically frame grabs from the device in the set interval
  • 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

Dual channel mode#

Note 1: In dual channel mode, the BoxIO works with 17x17x17 LUTs. These have a lower accuracy than a 33x33x33 LUT as used in single channel mode.

Note 2: In previous versions of Livegrade, selecting single or dual channel mode had to be done via FSI’s IPRemoteUtility. This is not longer necessary.

When configuring a FSI BoxIO you can choose the channel mode to be dual.

The devices channel mode will then be set to dual and the look will be sent to the device as 17x17x17 LUT.

Dual channel mode can be helpful if you want to

• grade two camera signals using one device or
• grade the HDR and SDR pipeline of one camera signal using one device

Configure dual channel mode to grade two camera signals#

To configure your device so that one of both channels is assigned to a different camera signal, activate just one channel in the slot where you added the device first and click Connect

FSI BoxIO one channel per slot

Your device’s channel 2 will then be available in other slots via the + Add Device menu.

FSI BoxIO add 2nd channel to different slot

After adding channel 2 to a different slot, you will get the configuration form for the device also in the second slot. That means, that you can re-configure your device from every slot where at least one channel is currently assigned.

Configure dual channel mode for HDR/SDR#

To configure your device so that both channels are assigned to the same camera signal, activate both channels in the slot, configure the pipeline of each channel as needed and click Connect

FSI BoxIO dual channel for HDR/SDR

Further reading: Learn more about activating dual pipeline looks in our knowledge base article.

Using FSI BoxIO frame grab as image source#

To use the frame grab as image and metadata source, select it as source in the Image and Metadata section of your input slot.

FSI BoxIO Image and Metadata source

Store LUT permanently on device#

The action to store the current look of a slot to an attached FSI BoxIO 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 FSI BoxIO devices, LUTs will be saved as Last Permanent.cube

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