• Blackmagic Design

  Multibridge Pro 2 newbie question

  Posted by Mike Raff on May 26, 2011 at 9:50 pm

  First time poster on the BMD forum.

  I edit on Final Cut (FCS 3/MacPro 12-core/CalDigit HDPro2 16TB) and edit entirely with P2 footage (DVCPRO HD). My employer recently decided to upgrade our facility and purchased 55″ SONY LCD for V.I.P. viewing and a 24″ Flanders Scientific for my use. The boys back in IT purchased a Blackmagic Multibridge Pro 2 as a way to feed an HDMI signal to the Sony and an SDI signal to the FSI monitor–and also as a means to connect a VTR, should a client ever show up with a tape.

  Everything seems to be installed properly, but I can’t seem to get video to play on the monitors. If I scrub the timeline, I see video moving. And when the sequence is stopped, I get a still frame on both monitors.

  But when I play a sequence, it plays only in the Canvas, not on either external monitor; both of them are showing a freeze of the frame where the playhead last stopped.

  Is there something in the set up somewhere that I have overlooked? Feels like this should be a simple fix and yet I can’t figure it out. Is it in the Blackmagic pane of the Sys Prefs? Or is it FCP A/V Settings thing?

  Any advice would be appreciated.

  Mike Raff
  Richmond, VA

  Mike Raff replied 14 years, 11 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Dane Henry

  June 2, 2011 at 3:03 am

  What flavor of DVCPRo HD? 720 60,30 or 1080i, p, 23.98, etc.

  Make sure your sequence settings match your output? What you’re describing sounds like you have a framerate discrepancy between your sequence and your bm output.

  -Dane Henry
  DeepRootsMedia.com
• 

  Mike Raff

  June 2, 2011 at 5:06 pm

  Hi, Dane

  Thanks for the reply. Yes, I think you’re right about it being a sequence setting/BMD output discrepancy.

  Here’s the problem. The frame rate of most of my sequences is 23.98, but I don’t see any BMD settings for 720p 23.98, so I imagine that’s why I get no signal out.

  (Maybe you can clarify this: When I look at the Item Properties of the Seequence in FCP–or the clips, for that matter–the Compressor is DVCPRO HD 720p60, but the Vid Rate is 23.98 fps. I have to confess I have no idea what that even means.)

  I do see that the BM has three options for HD 720p60 (8-bit, 10-bit and RGB), but none of those gets videos to play in the monitors. Last frame played shows up as a still, but no video in motion when I play the sequence.

  Curiously, I can get the video to play if I set the BMD output to HD 1080p 23.976 (8-bit or RGB 10-bit), but then text looks jaggy (as if interlaced but with the field order reversed; however, if I select 720p 50 8-bit, I don’t get any video in motion, but at least the text looks crisp in the stills.) Also odd is that if I go into Sys Prefs>Blackmagic>Processing, it doesn’t seem to matter whether “Select output processing” is set to HD 720p to HD 1080i or Off.

  Normally, most of what we shoot is 720p 23.98. I do have one project that was shot on a Canon 5D at 1080 and I can get that sequence to play at either 1080p 23.976 10-bit or 8-bit (but not RGB 10-bit).

  Needless to say, I’m fairly confused at this point. Any insight you can offer would be most appreciated.

  Mike Raff
  Richmond, VA

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