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Sony J3 – BM HD Extreme – Mac Pro 5 settings
Hello,
I need help with my set up which does not result with any video input. I am using a Sony J3 betacam deck to digitise some betacam tapes using Blackmagic HD Extreme into my Mac pro 5 using Final Cut. I have connected 3 BNC cables to the BM loom, respectively
from – to
Ext Sync – Ref in
SDI Out – R-Y in
Composite – B-Y inwith no device control.
on FCP i have set capture settings and videoplay back onto “blackmagic PAL 10 Bit” and the sequence preset onto “uncompressed 10-Bit PAL 48 KHz
the tape is playing and power is on.. (obviously).. yet no video input..
what am i doing wrong??
Thank you in advance
Cheers Jasmine
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4 Replies
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Hi Jasmine,
You are going to need to change some of those connections. Please start by completely disconnecting all of the cables you have connected between the DeckLink card and the deck as that will make it easier for me to explain.
Here is the connection diagram for the DeckLink HD Extreme.
Your J3 deck might have analog or digital connections. Here is a picture of the back of the J3 deck with digital SDI connections.
Here is a picture of the back of the J3 deck with component analog connections.
If you have the J3 SDI deck…
Go to the Video output of the deck and connect the SDI (not SDI Super) output to the HD/SD-SDI input of the DeckLink card. That is the lowest BNC connector shown in the connection diagram for the DeckLink card.
If you want to control the deck for performing batch captures, you will need to connect the Deck Control RS-422 cable to the Remote In (9P) port of the deck.
If you find that the video connection is unstable, you might need to use a stable, external reference signal to keep the J3 deck and the DeckLink card in sync with each other. If you use one of these signal generators, you will need to connect it to the Ext Sync port of your deck and also to the Ref Input of the DeckLink card. External sync is also known as External Reference, Blackburst and genlock.
If you have the J3 analog deck…
Go to the Video output of the deck and connect the three Component output connections to the three Component inputs of the DeckLink card, ie:
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Sorry about the funny formatting of the last post. I’m not sure why that happened but I guess it was because the graphics were big.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hello,
thank you very much, have to say… what a nice picture of the back of the machine…
what I did is I simply connected one BNC from the composite and from the SDI output directly into the computer BNC plugs… avoiding the loom altogether and using it only for the audio… what i gathered is that the computer does not need the ext.sync signals anyway… apparently it works perfectly and i have been digitising now over 8 hours….
but … another problem happened..
yesterday i was using the analogue version of the J3 which has no firewire and much less options on its back while today I had to use exactly the machine which is on your picture. I observed this morning that digitizing about 3 and a half hours costed me 70 Gb which really is about 10 Gb pro 30 minute Digibeta Tape. Today , however… SHOCK, after 4 more hours FCP said my memory was full… and I had only 2 Gb left…. I went to check the individual quicktime files on the capture scratsh and found that each 30 minute tape had an average of 50 Gb!!! one even took 74Gb!! Is this normal? Did I change something without noticing or is this really possible?
Thank you soo much
Jasmine
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Hi Jasmine,
[Jasmine1919] “what a nice picture of the back of the machine”
Those pictures are linked from Sony’s web site. I take no credit for them 🙂
[Jasmine1919] “what i gathered is that the computer does not need the ext.sync signals anyway”
That is often true if you have a simple setup consisting of just a computer and a deck. If you need to connect to other decks and computers, then you will need external reference.
[Jasmine1919] ” apparently it works perfectly and i have been digitising now over 8 hours”
That’s great news. Thanks for letting me know.
[Jasmine1919] “I went to check the individual quicktime files on the capture scratsh and found that each 30 minute tape had an average of 50 Gb!!! one even took 74Gb!! Is this normal?”
If you choose to capture video in an uncompressed format, it will quickly use up a lot of disk space. You are working with PAL video so the following numbers should provide you with an idea of the amount of disk storage you will need.
625 PAL uncompressed
8 bit @ 720 x 576 @ 25fps = 20 MB per/sec, or 70 GB per/hr.
10 bit @ 720 x 576 @ 25fps = 26 MB per/sec, or 93 GB per/hr.If you don’t have enough disk space to cope with uncompressed video, then you will either need a bigger disk array or else you will need to use compression. The quality of uncompressed video is noticably higher than compressed video but you might not have any choice.
If you wish to capture compressed video, launch Final Cut Pro, go to the Final Cut Pro menu and choose Easy Setup. You will find lots of Blackmagic Easy Setups and I suggest you choose Blackmagic PAL – DV50. The DV50 format is also known as DVCPRO 50 and is much higher quality than DV as it uses 4:2:2 chroma subsampling. This format also supports Apple’s RT Extreme real time effects so it is probably a good choice as the data rate is only 6.25 MB per/sec, or 22 GB per/hr.
You could use the Blackmagic PAL – DV easy setup and then your video capture would only take 11 GB per/hr. However there will be a visible decrease in quality and so I’d recommend you use DV50.
[Jasmine1919] “Did I change something without noticing or is this really possible?”
My guess is that you might have chosen a different easy setup. Perhaps you switched between using an 8-bit uncompressed easy setup and a 10-bit uncompressed easy setup. In any case, the guidelines above should help.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
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