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Help! Decklink probs for a newbie…!!
OK, so my CineWave has finally died which has given me the perfect opportunity to get a Decklink Extreme.
So far, everything was going OK. Pictures looked good…
But then I captured a bunch of stuff over the last couple of days (Beta SP and Digi), and its now a nightmare to try and edit. In fact, its nigh on impossible!!
I’m sure it must be something I’ve done – Blackmagic have a decent reputation.
The footage will play forward fine, but if I try to run it back to where I want to cut it will suddenly start jerking all over the place. Even just trying to step back a few frames at a time is a nightmare. One thing I did notice after the footage was captured was that rather than being BlackMagic 8 bit, it was listed as Uncompressed 8 Bit. Surely some mistake? I tried recapturing various clips, and also some new clips with all the settings saying Blackmagic 8bit, but to no avail……
Another problem: I still had some CineWave footage that I needed to get on to tape. But this is dropping frames all over the place. Also, when outputting to tape, I’ve noticed that its editing in about 3 frames late. Is this a known issue?
I’m running FCPHD, OSX10.3.9, and QT7.0.3 on a dual 1.25 G4, with a fibre RAID Eonstor. Hope someone can help!
Cheers,
Jamie -
4 Replies
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Hi Jamie,
You appear to be in the UK and so are probably working in PAL. Please review the support note How do I work with Cinewave files without rendering? PAL. If you are working in NTSC, there is also a support note How do I work with Cinewave files without rendering? NTSC. This might well help with any video which appears jerky. Cinewave uses the 8-bit 2Vuy uncompressed format and my suspicion is that you might be mixing some legacy 8-bit 2Vuy material on an 8-bit 2vuy timeline. The Apple codec (which we use) captures in the 2vuy format. If you need to use both 2Vuy and 2vuy material on the same timeline, rendering will be necessary. There is support note named Why are there multiple 8-bit codecs? which is worth reading when you get a chance.
It would also be a good idea to ensure you have uninstalled any Cinewave drivers and removed the Cinewave card to ensure that it does not conflict with your new capture card. More to the point, the PCI bus in the G4 is a shared bus and can easily run out of bandwidth. So you should at least remove the Cinewave card even if you leave it’s drivers installed.
Mac OS X 10.3.9 is not a support configuration due to the number and variety of weird customer reports we have received about this specific system version. However if you are going to run it, then please ensure your versions of Final Cut Pro, QuickTime and DeckLink drivers are up to date. You mentioned you are using QuickTime 7.0.3 so I expect you are using Final Cut Pro 5.0.x and this should be updated to v5.0.3. If you are using Final Cut Pro HD 4.5, choose to uninstall QuickTime 7 and downgrade to QuickTime 6.5.2. The latest DeckLink drivers to be used with Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.3 are DeckLink 5.1.2 drivers. If you are runing Final Cut Pro HD 4.5, then use the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers from the software downloads page.
Please let me know how you go.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Thanks for the reply Luke.
That all sounds like it may be where my problems are. Everything was actually installed by the guys we get our kit from, so I *presumed* they knew what they were doing. Looks like I may need to undo a thing or two 😉
The main problem may be that we’re still running FCPHD, not FCP5. I thought when I saw QT7 on there it was a bit odd. Now it appears I’ll need to strip it back to QT6.5.2 for the time being.
Thanks for the help. I’ll let you know how it all works!
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Hi Jamie,
“Final Cut Pro HD” was introduced as version 4.5 but the lastest version of “Final Cut Pro HD” is version 5.0.3. So please verify the version of “Final Cut Pro HD” you are using before changing you software versions.
If you do need to big 8-bit 2Vuy material with 8-bit 2vuy material on the same timeline, it could be a good idea to recapture your previous 2Vuy material on to a 2vuy timeline. In other words, use a Blackmagic 8-bit PAL easy setup and it will invoke the Apple 8-bit 2vuy codec.
The alternative is to render to the Uncompressed 4:2:2 8-bit codec but this would be slower.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
It’s version 4.5 I’m running.
I stripped the OS back to 10.3.8, QT to 6.5.2 and now it works like a dream. Now I’m gonna go kick the a** of the monkey that installed the wrong versions and took two days out of my editing time!!! 🙂
Cheers
Jamie
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