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Summit Emulator:

The Summit Emulator is available for download here.

It is recommended that you install the Summit Emulator on a dedicated machine or a virtual machine such as Microsoft's Virtual PC. The reason for this is to not conflict other Grass Valley software that you may have installed or other components that you may have installed for other development efforts.

Download:
Click here to download the Summit Emulator Prerequisites Installer - Size: 152 MB
Click here to download the 7.4 Summit Emulator - Size: 37 MB version 7.4.3.1667 updated Feb 8, 2012

Click here to download the 8.1 Summit Emulator - Size: 37 MB version 8.1.8.1664 updated Feb 8, 2012

**WARNING: If you install the 8.1 Summit Emulator and decide to use the 7.4 Summit Emulator afterwards - you must first run the DBTool to reset the database for the 7.4 emulator.  To get this tool please contact GV Developer Support.**

Test Clips are also available for downloading and importing into the Summit Emulator. Click here to download them.

Requirements:
The PC requiremments for the Summit Emulator are the same as the ControlPoint PC System Requirements.

Functionality:
Click here on K2 Summit information and API additions to see what new functionality Summit offers.

The Summit Emulator is the full Summit software with the hardware codec portion emulated. That means:

  • You can load a clip in AppCenter and press play. The application will show the clip playing and the time code will progress, but since there is not a real decoder, you cannot see the output displayed anywhere.
  • You can record a "fake" clip. You will see the recording growing in length. It will not have a thumbnail since there is no real video to decode.
  • Transfers and FTP are supported.
  • All APIs are supported - AMP, BVW, VDCP, and AppServer over both Ethernet and RS422 connections.
  • RS422 protocol control has been successfully tested using a RocketPort Plus 2P SMPTE RS422 PCI card. However, a USB Digi Edgeport/4 RS422 converter box was not recognized by the emulator.

To change the configuration to use PAL and not NTSC in the c:\profile\config directory:

  • copy config.xml to ntsc-config.xml
  • edit config.xml by replaceing all the “Format525_29_97Hz_2To1” with “Format625_25Hz_2To1” and save config.xml.

Licensing:
In the emulator, the K2 Client software and AppCenter Pro software have a default 30-day trial license. If you want to extend this or want to add DV100 support, please contact GVDeveloperSupport@grassvalley.com about extending or adding licenses.

Installation Steps:

  1. First, install the Summit Emulator Prerequisites (download from link above). Unzip the prerequisites zip file and run "setup.exe".
  2. Next, install the Summit Emulator (download from link above). Unzip the emulator zip file and run "setup.exe". After the emulator is installed it will ask to reboot your system. Say Yes.

Starting:

  1. Click Start / Run and type "log". This starts the K2 log viewer so that you can see the services starting up.
  2. On the desktop, double-click "WinRtpMgr". This starts the K2 services.
  3. Watch the the log viewer for startup messages. Be patient.
  4. If you do not have an RS422 serial card connected you will likely see "invalid serial port" messages. This is normal and expected.
  5. Look for messages that all controllers (channels) are created. At this point the services are up and running.
  6. Start AppCenter either from the WinRtpMgr icon or the desktop.
  7. Login using an administrator username and password that you have setup for your system.


Limitations:

  • Imported MXF files do not show thumbnails of the clips correctly. Imported GXF files do not have this problem.
  • Cannot use the 'V:' drive for asset storage - must use 'C:'.
  • ONLY DV25 assets  can be loaded into a channel.
  • Playing an asset in a channel is not really played - this is a simulation.
  • Recording a new asset will only contain black video.
  • Striping clips does not work in the emulator. It depends on a lower level driver that is not present in the emulator.
  • In AppCenter in a channel's Option / Timecode panel, if you choose any of the “Recorded Timecode” choices, the value that will be used is just a simulated timecode that is ever-increasing.  The reason for this is that on a real K2, timecode information is provided from hardware (and that hardware interface is only simulated by the emulator).  However, if you choose the “Generated Timecode” option in the emulator, when playing back a clip you will get a timecode that is relative to a clip starting point of 00:00:00,00.  On a real K2 of course, all timecode modes are supported, and if you choose “system clock” as the time of day source, and select the “Time of Day” timecode mode, you would be able to record clips using the system clock as their timecode source.
  • Scheduled context changes are not implemented in the K2 Emulator. On a real K2 Client these are messages we pass to the real-time system telling it to do something at a specified timecode (e.g. start playing at timecode "xx:xx:xx.xx"). Pre-roll commands in protocols are also implemented using scheduled context changes. So for testing purposes with the emulator, you can still watch the log output to see that a "Play" command is received.


Troubleshooting:
1. Cannot login to AppCenter or cannot see and control channels in the emulator:
When AppCenter starts it checks to see if a user has administrator rights before granting access to channels. It is checking for administrator rights by looking for one of these conditions:

a. user is part of the group "BUILTIN\\Administrators" (this works for US versions of Windows XP), or
b. user is part of the group "\K2Administrators".

If you are using a non-US version of Windows XP, there are two ways of resolving this problem:

First option:
- Change all of your Windows "Regional and language options" to "US / English"
- add your username to the "BUILTIN\Administrators" group
- reboot
- login to AppCenter with username.

Second option:
- create a local group name on the emulator machine called "K2Administrators".
- create a new local user on the same machine and make them a member of the "K2Administrators" group.
- restart AppCenter and login with the new username.