• Blackmagic Design

  Matrox APVe Video Card ???

  Posted by Stewart Mayer on November 23, 2005 at 6:19 pm

  Hey PC Decklink Users,

  I’m wondering if anyone here has experience with the PCI Express Matrox APVe triple head video card and a decklink system?

  I know black magic doesn’t recommend matrox or at least the older cards, but still it would be great to get some user responses.

  I’m having to do a lot of long form HDV and am using Aspect HD to edit it without rendering, and then importing my finished edit into a decklink uncompressed HD project for rendering and output. The APVe would allow me to have full res hd monitoring (via overlay) while in HDV mode. I’m doing this now with my Nvidia card, but the overlay “switchover” is slow and the Aspect HD guys say the APVe is the fastest for that application.

  Thanks for any input.
  Stewart

  Yves De muyter replied 20 years, 5 months ago 5 Members · 9 Replies
• 9 Replies

• 

  Bill Buchanan

  November 23, 2005 at 6:50 pm

  Stewart:

  I’ve been using a Parhelia 128mb AGP since installing a Dklnk Extreme with no (graphics card-related) problems whatsoever. With PPro, the monitoring feature it provides and that you want is a real plus.

  I have yet to learn from BMD or from other users exactly why Matrox cards are not recommended or “supported.”

  Bill Buchanan
  Buchanan Film Co.
• 

  Luke Maslen

  November 24, 2005 at 1:50 am

  Hi Bill,

  I’m a intrigued that you seem unaware of the problems given your previous post regarding Parhelia cards.

  The reason for specifying a lack of support for the Parhelia cards was due to many customer reports last year indicating problems using them in conjunction with DeckLink cards which did not occur with either NVIDIA or ATI cards. One of the more common reports related to black flashing on the output of DeckLink cards which went away (in most cases) when another card was used. There are other reasons why you might see black flashing including lack of PCI bandwidth or genlock issues. However there certainly have been significant problems in the past and we wished to avoid those. It is possible newer cards or drivers work in harmony with DeckLink cards but I’m not aware of any recent testing of the problem so I couldn’t say for sure either way if the problem remains or if you can use the Parhelia cards reliably with DeckLink cards.

  Regards,

  Luke Maslen
  Blackmagic Design
• 

  Bill Buchanan

  November 24, 2005 at 2:58 am

  Hey Luke:

  Got me! When I wrote that message, I believed my crashing problems were related to the Parhelia. But, after temporarily replacing it with a nVidia 5200, the crashing continued. Also, with the 5200 I was unable to monitor (to TV) a DV project I was cutting at the time. BTW, I never experienced the black flashes others were having.

  So, I reluctantly reinstalled the Parhelia. Matrox has updated their drivers any number of times since then, and perhaps you’re right that now their cards do work well with BMD cards. Apparently mine does and has all along.

  That said, I’m considering swapping the Parhelia for a nVidia 6600 or 6800 to take advantage of Magic Bullet’s faster rendering feature. And, since I’m not cutting any DV projects, I don’t need Matrox’s monitoring feature.

  You guys might want to run some tests with the Parhelia. Who knows, they might work just fine, like mine.

  Cheers,

  Bill Buchanan
  Buchanan Film Co.
• 

  Luke Maslen

  November 24, 2005 at 3:25 am

  Hi Bill,

  Thanks for your information and that does sound encouraging about the Parhelia card with newer drivers. When we get a chance, I hope we can retest this and see if there are any current issues.

  Regards,

  Luke Maslen
  Blackmagic Design
• 

  Stewart Mayer

  November 26, 2005 at 4:19 pm

  Thanks for all the info guys. I’m going to try the card, i’ll post if there are any problems.

  stewart
• 

  Jeff Anderson

  November 27, 2005 at 1:00 am

  Our system has a Parhelia and a Decklink Extreme card and there has been no problems related to the Parhelia. Everything works well together. We have never had black flashes on the output.

  Jeff Anderson

  MB – Supermicro P4SCT+II
  CPU – P4 3.4
  RAM – 2GB
  OS – Win XP SP2
  Video – 128MB Matrox Parhelia with dual LCD monitors
  Boot HDD – WD 7200 RPM
  Video array – Stripe set of 4 x 250 GB SATA HDD with Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 RAID controller
  Video Capture – Decklink Extreme v5.2.2
  Video Editor – Adobe Premiere v1.5
• 

  Luke Maslen

  November 28, 2005 at 12:13 am

  Hi Jeff,

  Thanks for this information and that sounds encouraging. What version of drivers are you using for both cards?

  Regards,

  Luke Maslen
  Blackmagic Design
• 

  Jeff Anderson

  November 29, 2005 at 5:44 pm

  Our system is using the Matrox 128MB Parhelia on version 1.10.1.2 and the Decklink Extreme is using version 5.2.2. We have not had any conflicts for the past couple of versions of the Decklink driver.

  Jeff Anderson
• 

  Yves De muyter

  November 29, 2005 at 6:16 pm

  I just did the test and the black flashing seems to be gone using the latest drivers.

  128mb parhelia

  -Yves

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up