TESSERA SOFTWARE 3.6.0 BETA 1

Please note – this software version is still in development. Full release notes will be published in due course. Please contact support if you have any immediate questions, feedback, or encounter any bugs.

Although this beta version has been tested, we do not recommend using beta versions of our software for live or critical shows, as there may still be instabilities in the software.

For the latest stable version of the Tessera Processor software, please see our Downloads page.

This build is the latest release available for use with Tessera G1 cards and RGBW panels and is recommended for use on live projects subject to the known issues listed in the release notes. Where you are not using Tessera G1 cards we recommend using the latest 3.5 release instead, which has completed our Quality Assurance process across all our products, and for that reason this build is labelled as a BETA release.

Of the capabilities that the G1 will bring, this release version unlocks the use of Truelight panels.

With the evolution of LED technology, large LED displays are increasingly used and due to the size and properties, they act not just as a video source but also as lighting. However, traditional RGB panels, while excellent for direct-view applications, struggle with accurate colour reproduction when used for lighting due to their limited spectral content. This limitation is especially noticeable in skin tones and complex lighting conditions.

The solution is to add additional emitters—Red, Green, Blue, and ‘Whatever’—where ‘Whatever’ is typically white. This enhances realism, reduces post-production fixes, and, when combined with advanced per-pixel calibration, enables seamless integration between digital and real-world elements, as background panels are calibrated to the same targets as the Truelight ones. This process introduces several challenges that have been carefully considered:

• Metamerism: There are now many ways to achieve each colour.
• Brighter Output: Using all four LEDs together creates higher brightness, but this is not always a good idea or desirable.
• On-camera: White LEDs may look different on camera
• Complexity dynamic RGBW requires a lot more real-time maths than RGB, and this requires a lot more receiver card processing power

This is where TrueLight makes a difference. TrueLight is our game-changing technology that allows colour-accurate, calibrated colours and intuitive control of panels using RGBW LEDs.

Enable/ Disable check box activates TrueLight in TrueLight-enabled RGBW panels fitted with G1 receiver cards and reveals the spectral controls and preview plot. Disabling TrueLight forces the panels to ignore its white LEDs and run as a regular RGB panel. The panels still use Dynamic Calibration, and all other features are still available.

Spectral Preference controls metamerism and defines how much of the panel’s fourth emitter to use when trying to achieve the desired output. With the slider at 100%, the panels will try to achieve the broadest possible spectrum by using as much of the fourth emitter as possible. At 0% (or “Narrow”) the panel will try to avoid using any of the fourth emitter at all. A position between these two extremes may be selected to achieve any desired spectral mix, all while maintaining brightness and colour accuracy.

• Narrow spectrum may be preferable for some direct view applications, as three emitters may be sufficient to achieve the desired brightness and colour gamut, while retaining the expected, well-known behaviour on-camera.

• Broad spectrum is preferable for most lighting applications as it provides much improved colour rendering of illuminated objects, at the expense of requiring additional care to ensure on-camera colour rendering remains accurate (see Spectral Balance, below).

It’s worth noting that while the Spectral Preference is respected as much as possible, it is a preference and not a guarantee. The system will override the specified Spectral Preference on a frame-by-frame and pixel-by-pixel basis when this is necessary to maintain brightness and colour accuracy. For example , even with a broad spectral preference, sections of the content requiring heavily saturated colours may not be able to use a white LED. Similarly, with a narrow spectral preference, particularly bright sections of content may still require the use of a white LED to achieve the necessary brightness. The Spectral Preference does however apply in all cases where the content’s brightness and colour may be accurately achieved through a range of different spectral mixes.

Spectral Boost enables the panel to achieve higher luminance by combining all four emitters when particularly high brightness levels are called for. To use this function, overdrive must be enabled and set to a higher limit than the normal achievable brightness.

With Spectral Boost, pale colours achieve the most additional boost, whilst there is a limited difference for saturated colours.

Spectral Boost can be particularly valuable when used with HDR content, as highlights are typically pale colours.
The higher brightness resulting from Spectral Boost can reduce colour rendering quality in sections of the content where the fourth emitter is used to boost the brightness.

Spectral Boost will override Spectral Preference, though only for pixels where this is necessary to achieve the desired brightness. Setting the Spectral Boost value to a lower value (but still greater than 1.0) will achieve a trade-off between higher brightness (at larger Spectral Boost settings) and respecting the desired Spectral Preference (at lower Spectral Boost settings).

With Spectral Boost enabled, pixels where the required brightness and colour can be achieved without requiring the fourth emitter will be unaffected by the Spectral Boost setting, instead using Spectral Preference to determine the desired spectral mix.

To access the Spectral Balance controls, enable the “Spectral Balance” check box. Separate controls are given for Red, Green and Blue to adjust the resulting colour balance when the fourth LED is in use.

Compared to RGB output, RGBW pixels may exhibit a colour or brightness shift when viewed on camera (and sometimes by eye), due to varying spectral sensitivity of the camera for narrow (RGB) or broad spectrum (white) light. This shift is dependent on the particular spectral sensitivity of the camera in use (and may also depend on other optical elements such as lenses or filters), so must be adjusted while directly viewing RGBW output through the particular camera setup in use.

RGB Spectral Balance controls compensate for the camera’s spectral sensitivity, minimising or eliminating this issue. Adjustment should be made to match the camera’s perception of RGBW output to its perception of RGB output. (I.e. The RGB response should be used as the ‘reference’.) This can be achieved either by toggling TrueLight on and off, or by grouping a subset of the panels to use as a reference by configuring them with TrueLight disabled. The controls have no impact on pixels where the fourth LED isn’t in use, so appropriate content and Spectral Preference settings should be selected to ensure the fourth LED is illuminated when adjusting Spectral Balance.

The Spectral Preview updates in real time to provide an indication of how the spectral output will vary based on the selected Spectral Preference, Spectral Boost and Spectral Balance. (Note that changes to these controls are also reflected in real time on connected panels, for highly responsive and intuitive feedback.)

In the current V3.6 beta, Spectral Preview is only available in “Simulate” mode. This produces a simulation of the expected spectral output for a typical RGBW panel. For the release version, Spectral Preview will give a visual representation of the spectral output of the connected panels based on the exact properties of their RGBW LEDs.

Due to a new hardware revision, SX40 processors with serial numbers starting with 02 are only compatible with software versions 3.4 and above. Any attempt to downgrade the processor software version lower than 3.4 will be rejected.

Unsupported Features

The following features are not yet supported on G1 based panels: MLC, PureTone, ThermaCal, Cable Redundancy and Failover.

G1 panel reset/repeated connection whilst associated intermittently leads to Processor output Lock-up

If G1 panels are reset or repeatedly disconnected/reconnected while associated, there is a chance for all of the processors outputs to lock up. To resolve this issue, the processor needs to be restarted.

No warning is given when adjusting TrueLight controls whilst incompatible fixtures are on the canvas

TrueLight controls are not greyed out for incompatible fixtures, modifying the controls has no affect on the incompatible panels

Switching trunk ethernet mode can cause crashes and load widget errors

SX40 output trunks can either be in XD mode or G1 mode. Switching happens automatically, however if switched too quickly (less than 10 seconds), the processor can in some instances crash. Under similar circumstances, the Network Load Widget can also display the incorrect load bar.

XD and panels may not show up on the processor if a processor Trunk already contains a string of G1 panels

If an XD and its panels are connected to a trunk while a processor already has a string of G1 panels in a separate trunk, there is a chance the XD and its panels may not show up on the processor

Panel alert values sometimes empty

When viewing device alerts sometimes the values disappear, however they still show up in the log and flash up at the top.

Panel Status indicators are unable to be turned off on G1 based panels

The tickbox to disable this is present, but it is unable to be ticked, and clicking on it will have no effect.

G1 panel reset whilst associated results in inconsistent card return behaviour

Initiating a software reset on G1 panels can sometimes result in the panel returning but then disappearing after a certain amount of time. This can be rectified by power cycling the panel.

ShutterSync errors reported when no panels are reporting errors

ShutterSync errors sometimes reported in the UI even though no panel errors reported and no bandwidth overflow. Error message stays when ShutterSync is then disabled.

Built-in subfixture packs not removed on software upgrade

When you upgrade software version, the built-in fixture pack for the previous version is removed. This does not include subfixture packs, as they aren’t tied to a software release.

Custom markers rotate incorrectly (across multiple panels)

Custom markers are not rotated correctly if a group of panels are rotated. This is true both for the case where they’re grouped, and also if they’re rotated and translated manually.

Stacking Camera Settings

Stacking Camera settings can cause panels to blackout before reconnecting. To avoid this issue it is recommended that once you have used stacking to set the parameters in the Camera tile, that you disable stacking.

XD and panel firmware updates when Failover is enabled
It is not recommended to have Failover enabled when updating the firmware of Panels and XD’s, otherwise the update may fail. To recover from this state, both of the processors should be rebooted.

Processor fails to lock to certain YCbCr 4:2:0 HDMI inputs
Certain resolutions and bit depths, and changing source bit depth can cause the processor to fail to lock to YCbCr 4:2:0 inputs. This can normally be resolved by a hot plug of the source.

Adding additional video delay in the processor settings causes video snapshot to be non-functional
Eyedropper tool in Colour Replace will also become non-functional when additional video delay is used.

Switching the Phase Offset type to Absolute when on Active Input can state “Not locked”
If the processor gets into this state, switching to the opposite control method (Remote or Local) where you saw the problem will rectify it.

Processor output can be affected by some operations when Freeze is enabled
– Enabling/Disabling frame store test pattern with a non-native colour space changes the colour space to the whole frame
– Changing the input from HDMI to SDI or vice versa, with different scaling settings, causes displacement of a frozen frame store frame.

Exporting a frame store with 12 images to USB can cause the processor to watchdog under certain circumstances
Disabling the watchdog in processor settings can allow the USB export to complete.

IP Control and firmware reload
IP Control can cause issues with firmware reload when upgrading or downgrading from software versions prior to 3.4.3. It is recommended to either disable IP Control or close the project before initiating a firmware reload from software versions prior to 3.4.3

Version compatibility
In order to use V3.0.1 or later, it is necessary to run all elements of the system (processor, XDs and panels) on V2.3.1 or later. For panels where V2.3 firmware is not available please continue using V2.2 processor firmware.

Restore factory defaults/format SD card can cause fixture library instability
If you perform either of these operations please reboot your processor before browsing to the fixture library window as this may otherwise be unstable.​​

Tessera Remote may fail to import project files
In some cases, Tessera Remote may fail to import project files from local storage. As a workaround create the project from scratch or use a local monitor, keyboard and mouse to import the project file before connecting with Tessera Remote.​​

Some input devices on KVM switches do not work
We have had reports that trackpads may not function correctly when connected to the processor via a KVM switch. As a workaround we recommend using a mouse, or connecting input devices directly to the processor’s USB ports.​​

Monitors connected via DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters may be unstable
Local user interface monitors connected to the processor via certain active DisplayPort-to-VGA adapters may give an unstable image or the monitor is not detected at all. As a workaround we recommend using a DVI or DisplayPort monitor.