Anyone else a little frustrated?

[Danny Hays]

If your using it on a Windows machine, can you restore it to before you installed the H.264 Pro Encoder?

[Scott Francis]

Has nothing to so with restore, it was a fresh install on a new machine. A moot point since I returned it. My real issue is that BM does not over the best support after they release products that are not really ready for prime time…

Thanks

Scott Francis
Mind’s Eye Audio/Video Productions

[Joshua Helling]

Of course we understand the frustration when a product comes out and doesn’t have the features you expect. That’s one of the toughest things.

We are constantly making choices that basically equate to, put the product out now (example TVStudio without SD support) or hold it back for another few months. For those that needed the SD, this is less than ideal. Though for people using HD only, this actually works out better. It’s a bit of give and take. Though we do our best to add those features in as soon as we possibly can.

As for the H.264 Pro Recorder, that’s a very strange situation. The response time seems VERY long which should not be happening. Interestingly enough the updating drivers advise was probably good advice as there have been several stability tweaks in the Desktop Video drivers specifically for that product. Though it is clear that as you mentioned the point is rather moot.

But I apologize that you had a bad experience, we’ll try to make it better next time.

Sincerely,

Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.

[Richard Freemantle]

Hi Joshua,

Hopefully, things have quietened down for you guys & you or a colleague will have opportunity to respond to my queries (I assume everyone at BMD have been quite busy recently).

I also share in Scotts frustrations. After receiving no official response on this forum (which was surprising given the size of the threads) I contacted support, although they did get back to me fairly promptly they couldnt tell me anything remotely useful, as it seems communication between support and the developers is non-existent. The closest thing to progress was an apparent mentioning of my questions / ideas for solutions at an event (I think it was another product launch)

I bought the H.264 Pro recorder for its hardware encoding, naturally assuming this would equate to low cpu overhead.
But to my horror, to actually record with it uses ~80-90% of my quad core CPU just to view the video stream (VLC uses ~30%).

So for my purposes I get better performance using FREE screen recording software!!!

The solutions I have already suggested are as follows;

Media Express – Possible alternate preview modes (in order of increasing cpu usage)

1: Off = Dont decode the stream at all
2: Minimum = Just check stream integrity ie. gop/frame headers ok (pos unrequired)
2: Reduced = Only decode I-Frames in low priority background thread (allowing skipping frames if neccessary)
3: Full

The thinking being that if CPU use is an issue, a user could start at full (or reduced) preview mode & then drop to a lower level once they are sure everything is connected ok etc…

If not the above, could we not at least have a [REC]/[STOP] style super basic interface with no preview!
nb. the streaming overhead of the encoded stream is only ~4%

And why is there a Win 64-bit requirement when the software /drivers are 32-bit? I can only assume this relates to cpu usage issue!
I only ask because I know it can work in 32-bit (earlier builds did) & its annoying having to dual doot.

Please respond

[Joshua Helling]

So the encode itself is done on the hardware and does not require much overhead at all. But as you’ve mentioned the preview is generated in software is quite intensive.

I think we’d like to optimize this in the future, but I don’t know if there is any specific plan for it. I’d personally like to see the file decoded on the GPU which would reduce overhead greatly as the GPU’s do this very elegantly already. But doing this for all types of graphics boards on Mac and Windows is not necessarily a small task. But still it’s something I’d like to see done.

If I’m not mistaken the driver itself is actually a 64 bit driver. I thought the software was 64bit as well but it is curiously in the 32 bit folder. So I’ll try to verify that if I can.

As far as using it on 32bit, we haven’t done anything to make it NOT work. However it is not a platform that we test. Currently all of our testing is done on 64 bit platform. It is quickly growing as the dominant Windows OS and it helps to streamline our testing (we have a lot of products).

Many of us at Blackmagic try to respond to as many threads as possible but we simply can’t get to all of them. But we do our best.

Sincerely,

Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.

[Jack Welten]

Hello Joshua,

so you are telling us, we all bought a fuel efficienct car with a big hole in the fueltank! Don’t forget Black Magic Design is also the supplier of the big hole!

I could better bought a state of the art laptop and a cheap intensity shuttle i think,

I am still not able to capture in 1050@50p due to the high CPU load I get glitches, so I have to reduce quality,

Please do what Richard askes for and make the preview switchable, now the complete computer gets unusable/unreliable by the 100% CPU-use,

regards Jack Welten

[Jack Welten]

Look my response 3 months ago, https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/124/877308

almost the same, please Johua create a media express light version

regards Jack Welten

[Richard Freemantle]

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

And thanks for the information regarding what you would like to see & naturally we would like to see these things too. However, as a customer I would really like to know what we will see & when? (ie. concrete information!), as I must make financial decisions based upon it!

Who actually has the plans? (/are there any?)

I whole-heartedly agree with Jack & a media Express light version is a requirement!

To this end, could I suggest an interface as Jack has described in his previous (linked to) post & to minimise your development time; The simplest preview solution would be to pipe the h264 stream across the internal network via UDP, so that we could use the very efficient VCL player to preview it (if required). Hence this light version would require no preview at all!

As a software developer, the solutions I have presented are the simplest (ie. quickest to implement) I could think of. Please…, please! talk to the developers, or get them to talk to us directly so we can discuss & explore this!

Without any real communication, we are left asking questions such as: Am I wasting my time with BMD Products?…Is it worth the risk?… Should I return it?…

Please note, I originally raised this issue over 4 months ago! (see https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/124/877024 & again 3 weeks later https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/124/877307). I believe I & others have been extremely patient regarding what I feel is an easily fixable yet critical flaw in the product we have purchased.

Very much, looking forward to hearing from you

Thanks,

Richard Freemantle

[Richard Freemantle]

Hi Joshua,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

And thanks for the information regarding what you would like to see & naturally we would like to see these things too. However, as a customer I would really like to know what we will see & when? (ie. concrete information!), as I must make financial decisions based upon it!

Who actually has the plans? (/are there any?)

I whole-heartedly agree with Jack & a media Express light version is a requirement!

To this end, could I suggest an interface as Jack has described in his previous (linked to) post & to minimise your development time; The simplest preview solution would be to pipe the h264 stream across the internal network via UDP, so that we could use the very efficient VCL player to preview it (if required). Hence this light version would require no preview at all!

As a software developer, the solutions I have presented are the simplest (ie. quickest to implement) I could think of. Please…, please! talk to the developers, or get them to talk to us directly so we can discuss & explore this!

Without any real communication, we are left asking questions such as: Am I wasting my time with BMD Products?…Is it worth the risk?… Should I return it?…

Please note, I originally raised this issue over 4 months ago! (see https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/124/877024 & again 3 weeks later https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/124/877307). I believe I & others have been extremely patient regarding what I feel is an easily fixable yet critical flaw in the product we have purchased.

Very much, looking forward to hearing from you

Thanks,

Richard Freemantle

[NOTE: This is a repost as I originally, accidentally replied to the wrong post, sorry. I wanted to ensure that you got it]

[Joshua Helling]

Err…um. Perhaps there is confusion. I don’t write software? I just help narrow down what’s wrong. Development is done by a completely different team.

This is something we’d like to see improved, but there is no timeline for such a thing.

Sincerely,

Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.