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effect handling
we have had a reccuring intermittent problem with one of our three mac based decklink extreme systems over the last two years and it’s back again. during playback we get random glitches if effect handling is set to FCP. no problems at all if effect handling is set to BMD. all software/drivers are the latest available for everything. what could cause this?
medea RTR, ATTO UL3D
dual G5 osx tiger, fcp 5 etc, etc… -
6 Replies
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Hi Paul,
[Paul Provost] “during playback we get random glitches”
Can you provide some more detail about this? For example, does this mean that the broadcast monitor “jumps” or flickers or that there is some kind of color problem or artefacts on the monitor? Does any audio distortion accompany the video glitches?
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
hey Luke
this is the same problem I’ve had over and over again. it comes and goes. It’s not the decklink card (it’s been replaced for another problem)
it’s only on playback, and only a video problem-not audio. the picture sort of “tears” (it kind of splits in two horizontally, top half goes left
and bottom half goes right)
what was never made clear to me in my many other posts over the years is:
how does effect handling effect this? why do I not have the problem when it is set to BMD? is it easier on the cpu? I would just leave it set this way, but you loose most of the real time effects, and have to render constantly…
our other two systems have firewire 800 drives striped raid 0 and work great
this system has the ATTO/Medea RTR setup
we work in 10bit NTSC almost exclusively
I think I pulled the ram too, but am not sure -
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Hi Paul,
I don’t suppose you’re running an “old” Medea disk array? I remember when G5’s first appeared, there were a number of strange problems using Medea disk arrays including some strange video problems. I really don’t know if this explains your intermittent problem but, given it has come and gone over a few years, perhaps this might be the consistent factor which would have been present over that time.
I would suggest that you contact Medea with your model of disk array and firmware version and see if they think your problem might be related to firmware. They might have newer firmware for you.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
thanks for the reply Luke
we bought the RTR new late 2003. I have been over and over with medea about this. they have been very helpful, but as I said this problem has come and gone so many times it’s hard to tell if it’s bmd drivers, fcp, osx, QT, atto, medea, hardware, ram, cables, or what.
could you please ask the engineers one question for me though?
what does changing the effect handling setting in fcp actually do? does it tell rt effects to be processed by the cpu as opposed to the decklink hardware or what? this is the one constant in the equation -set it BMD and no problems. set it to FCP and we get the glitches.
Last time I ask – promise
Paul -
Hi Paul,
Intermittent problems are very frustrating. Ideally it would be good to test with a different disk array but if the problems are only happening every few weeks or months, then that might be impractical.
[Paul Provost] “what does changing the effect handling setting in fcp actually do?”
Commencing with the DeckLink 5.0 drivers, I would discourage use of Blackmagic effect handling. Blackmagic effect handling uses the Blackmagic codecs to provide realtime effects provided in the DeckLink drivers and the system is used to perform a lot of this work. We started adding our own effects before Apple introduced RT Extreme. RT Extreme has a lot of great effects and we stopped adding to the Blackmagic effects quite a while ago. The option is still there for use with legacy projects but I wouldn’t use it with any new work as RT Extreme is the way to go. Blackmagic effect handling supports 2 layers of effects in SD compared with 7 or 8 using Apple’s RT Extreme. We might have developed our effect handling further but there is little point given Apple’s effect handling.
The DeckLink cards put very little load on the Mac system and so setting effect handling to Blackmagic is likely to have minimal impact. I don’t understand why you are seeing better results with Blackmagic effect handling as it really shouldn’t make much difference.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
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