9.5.3 Driver Eats My RAM – PPro CS6

[Bo Higbee]

… out of curiosity … for future reference …

I read somewhere recently (Adobe Premiere support website maybe) that CEA-708 Closed Captions don’t work out of Blackmagic Design HD SDI hardware … and that you needed to use the “AHA!” brand hardware to get working CEA-708 closed captions out the HD SDI port to HD broadcast tape, etc.

Could a BMD support person here confirm that this “new” Beta 9.6.1a9 driver will indeed make 708 HD-SDI Closed Captions work correctly out the HD SDI port? (I have no way of testing.)

… or is there a hardware design issue with outputing 708 closed captions?

TIA

[Joshua Helling]

Okay..cool. Well, I’ll have one of my techs check this field order issue out.

I think I know why this may happen. Essentially DV is lower field and we don’t output DV over SDI, we don’t output DV at all. Instead we output D1 which is 720×486 UFF. The scaling should be handled by putting lines of black at the top and bottom which would be a standard DV->D1 conversion to preventing stretching and nasty softening. And the field order reversal should happen before it’s given over to our card. Because CS6 was such a large change with how our board integrated it is quite possible that this field order change simply doesn’t happen.

That said, can you define what you mean by the issue is different if you are using the hardware transmit engine and when you are not? I know you mentioned using the hack, which means we won’t know if the software even “SHOULD” render that correctly, but that’s not a sticking point. I’ll test both with a supported card, if the issue is the same we can rule out the CUDA board. But first I need to know what the differences are that I should expect.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.

[Bo Higbee]

I’ve been all day trying to upload a 163 meg DV clip to my website and finally had to use a Linux OS from a Live CD and their FTP program to get it there.

DOWNLOAD THIS :44 SECOND DV CLIP FOR TESTING: (save as to your PC)

http://216.92.39.145/DVfootage.avi …(it’s 163 megs)

Look at LEFT yellow shirt sleeve as I walk down plank to boat. Then – any camera pan with fishing rods will show all these flickering issues. (this is my 6-7 year old local cable footage)

My Nvidia card is a GTX560 1GB (Palit brand OC’d).

Only the hardware cuda GPU with REVERSE field checked on the file plays correctly and sharply on a Adobe DV 25 timeline in PPRo CS6 with the output set to Decklink SDI output hardware … from which I convert to NTSC using a AJA D10DCE mini converter. I’m monitoring on an old 27″ PICTURE TUBE Samsung TV/Monitor (this shows the fielding issues). If I use the software only GPU the image goes to crap. It gets VERY SOFT, but it doesn’t flicker… just NOT useable.

NOTE: If I put the same DV 25 footage on an Adobe DV50 timeline preset the same flickering happens, but only half as noticeable and is NOT controllable with ANY settings that I’ve tried. ALSO: When I use the software GPU on the DV50 timeline the footage is TWICE as soft and TWICE as FUZZY as when doing same test on DV25 timeline.

… probably due to DV50 editing is 4.2.2 and the DV 25 editing is 4.1.1 …. maybe … don’t know.

The main thing I see in both the DV25 & DV50 timelines USING SOFTWARE GPU ONLY is the image is stretched vertically, it’s soft and it’s fuzzy.

If you can just port over your DV25 & DV50 presets from CS5.5 and BLOCK the Adobe preset menues so they don’t show when using your driver software package … then this might solve this.

Download my footage clip above and play with it !

… now about that CEA-708 Closed Caption question I posed … ‘ya see I want to get on Outdoor Channel and they require HD programming with CAE-708 captions – either embedded in a file, or in DVCPro HD tape … any clues here ?

As an added note:

The day PPro CS6 was released for trial download I installed it and I played with it for TWO days. When I saw all the issues with CS6 … I ran right over to the B & H website and bought Premiere CS5.5
… WHILE IT WAS STILL AVAILABLE … 🙂

HAVE FUN !

EOM.

[Sarah Jones]

Hi Bo,

Thanks for uploading your clip. I’ve been testing out with it today and wanted to report back my findings.

The machine I tested on was an HP Z800 series workstation with an nVidia Quadro 4000 graphics card. The machine was a new, clean build only running CS6.0.1 and Desktop Video 9.5.3. I tested the output of a DeckLink SDI to a Blackmagic Mini Converter SDI to Analog to get component video to a Sony CRT monitor in order to as closely represent your workflow as possible.

When testing your clip in either an Adobe DV – NTSC sequence or a Blackmagic Uncompressed NTSC sequence, I found the following results.

When I utilized software acceleration only and kept the Reverse Field Order box for the clip unchecked, the video played back to my monitor very crisply.

When I utilized software acceleration only and checked the box for Reverse Field Order, the video played back with extreme flickering.

When I utilized CUDA hardware acceleration and kept the Reverse Field Order box for the clip unchecked, the video played back softly and appeared as if it was being deinterlaced.

When I utilized CUDA hardware acceleration and checked the box for Reverse Field Order, the video played back softly and appeared as if it was being deinterlaced.

As you can see, these results are very nearly the opposite of what you’ve come across, and unfortunately at the moment I don’t have a reason as to why this is. I checked to see if I could track down an nVidia GTX560 in order to get even closer to your setup, but we don’t have that card (or any unsupported card) available currently. My curiosity in both our cases is that the CUDA isn’t rendering out as expected, but this wouldn’t explain why your software acceleration setting is showing soft video and mine is showing crisp video.

We’d like to keep testing this and see if we can find any consistencies, perhaps on a different system configuration.

Regarding the 708 captions, I’ve confirmed with the product manager that the latest Desktop Video 9.6.1 allows 708 captions to pass through the SDI connection.

Sarah
Support Representative
Blackmagic Design Inc.

[Bo Higbee]

Regardless…

Everybody has differing hardware set ups and a proper functioning BMD preset (maybe even leaving the Adobe DV presets alone) will add functionality for those wanting to output DV25 and DV50 formats out to tape using BMD hardware with PPro CS6 when all else fails.

FYI …

After more testing I still have REVERSE field DV issues on a DV timeline.

I REALLY think you should go back and look at DV25 and DV50 timeline flickering problems again with hardware GPU enabled. NTSC timelines don’t have the issues that DV format timelines have out to Decklink hardware.

Just take some of your motion video footage (HD or otherwise) and render it to DV and put it on a Adobe DV timeline out to monitor.

eom.