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Intensity Pro HDV monitor output in Premiere CS4
Hey there,
I’m currently editing an HDV project in Adobe Premiere CS4 and am having trouble getting an image on my external HDTV monitor. The signal is passing through the HDMI port on the Intensity Pro card.
My source footage was captured from a Canon XHA1 in 24f mode, and my sequence settings in Premiere are the standard HDV 1080 24p preset. With these timeline settings, I get no image on the monitor. I’ve tried making a new sequence, this time using a Blackmagic preset. I’ve tried several, and this time an image does show up on the monitor, but I can only play the timeline for a half a second at a time, then it stops.
Does anyone know if there’s anyway around this without recapturing the source footage using the Blackmagic codec? Any files opened in Media Express seem to play fine on the external monitor (although at what looks like a reduced resolution). The output also works fine in After Effects, so the problem seems specific to Premiere.
I’ve updated the firmware to 3.5.2 on the Intensity and Premiere is up-to-date as well.
Here’s my setup: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit; Core 2 Duo 2.33Ghz; 8GB DDR2 800 Mhz RAM; Intensity Pro Card output via HDMI to Toshiba HDTV.
Any help would be much appreciated!
Thanks,
Raoul -
2 Replies
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Hi
It looks like your CPU isn’t up to the task.
If you wan’t to check what the problem is, right click on the taskbar, and open the task manager, select the performance tab, and leave it open while you try to cut your footage in a blackmagic timeline. If the CPU maxes out, you don’t have enough system system grunt to do what you want.
For HDV playback from premiere pro you need to use a blackmagic sequence. (this is the only way to get BM output) Use the 1080p settings.
THe problem is, the BM native workspace is 1920×1080, and your HDV footage, I believe, is 1440×1080 (anamorphic), therefore, your CPU is being called upon to not only decodee the MPEG 2 stream, run Premiere and Windows,(and all it’s services) but also rescale the footage in real time to playback via the card.
Not ideal, but nobody said HD was going to be easy…or cheap.
There is a work-around though, if you can stand to have your preview in SD while you do your main edit.
Use a BM SD sequence. When importing your footage, have “Scale to Frame size” checked. This should output an SD image onto your preview monitor, and allow you to cut as normal. (The scale to frame size handles things a little more efficiently)
The trick is getting that job into an HD sequence when you have cut the job.
Create a new HD project. Make your footage of the old edit offline. THe easiest way is to rename your Directory. Ensure you have scale to frame size unchecked. Then import your original edit.
Cut and paste it into your new sequence, then re-link the footage.
I suggest you do a small test. In some instances the footage is scaled to SD, then blown up to HD, with artifacts, so get the workflow right first.
It would be a nice feature to be able to turn this function on and off on a clip by clip basis.
Other than that, I would suggest getting yourself a quad core at the very least.
Cheers
Brett
Brett Howe
Creative Director / Producer
Brave Vision Pty Ltd -
I have an interesting if limited workaround for playback of HDV which was forced upon me recently. Problem: My new X58 deluxe AsRock Mobo won’t make friends with my Intesity Pro card. In fact they don’t even talk!
I need to monitor HDV…but not exclusively. I bought a cheapish 512mb ATI graphics card with HDMI out and installed it alongside my NVidia 9600GT (dual dvi out). IN CS4 I went to Playback settings and chose Monitor 3 (1920×1080)as my preferred external output device. Hey presto the Video output pops up on the LCD through the standard HDMI port.
Now this workaround isn’t 100% or even 90%. For a start the refresh is limited to the speed of the output card and the cpu’s ability to keep up (btw I have a core i7 950) So movment isn’t always as smooth as I would like. But it’s quite acceptable and is better than nothing. I will manage for the moment because I input and output most of my work through a second decklink card that does perform (albeit with XPSP3).
The big snag is that I can’t import direct from the i7 PC. I’m still waiting for a bios update that might sort the problem.
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