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Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme 2 and Premiere CS6 Source Monitor Issue
Hi there,
I’m having a hard time diagnosing the following problem.
Here’s the setup: I’m editing a PAL project in Premiere Pro CS6. I’m on 2.6 GHz 12 core Mac Pro with 16GB of RAM and an NVidia Quadro 4000 graphics card. Connecting to shared media storage via ATTO fibre channel. I’m using the latest Blackmagic software for the Decklink card (Desktop Video 9.6.2).
When I’m working on a 1080p23.98 project, I have no trouble getting video to display on my client monitors. When I’m watching something in the Source Monitor in Premiere, it goes out the Blackmagic card and to the client monitors just fine. Ditto for when I’m playing something in the timeline.
However, now that I’m in PAL I’m running into a problem. I can play out of the timeline just fine and it goes to the client monitors. However, when I’m in the Source Monitor in Premiere, that signal is not getting to the client monitors.
Another quirk to mention: in my 23.98 project, when previewing audio in the source monitor, WAV files are going out through the Blackmagic card to the client monitor speakers. AIFF files, however, are not, and will only playback through the computer’s audio output.
We had the source monitor issue with CS5.5 and fixed it by setting the Playback preference option for “Default Player” in Premiere CS6 to Blackmagic. However, that option is not available in CS6. Adobe Player is the only listed option in the “Default Player” pulldown. The Blackmagic card is listed as a video output option in the Playback preference, though, and it’s selected.
The ad agency I’m working with sent some stock footage over and oddly, one of the clips, which is a low res PAL file, gets upscaled and goes out to the client monitors just fine when I play it in the Source Monitor in Premiere.
I’ve spent hours today trying to find someone having a similar issue online and haven’t had any luck. Any help would be very, very much appreciated.
I have clients coming in this week and would love to get this working. Otherwise I have to bring the project over to FCP.
Jon
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2 Replies
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Here’s an addendum to the problem. I’ve found that if I double click a clip in the timeline to get it to the source monitor, the source monitor contents will then be broadcast to the client monitor. However, if I drag that same clip from the project pane into the source monitor, it won’t display on the client monitor. Holy moly this is weird.
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SOLVED!
The issue seems to be that when dealing with 25 fps footage, either Premiere or Blackmagic needs that footage to have a field dominance setting in place to make it to the client monitors as a 50i signal. The eureka moment came when I tested some 24fps footage and found that 23.98 would make it to the client monitors but not 24 fps. FCP does the same thing. So, the same way 24 fps footage needs to be 23.98 to make it to a monitor, PAL footage needs a field dominance setting applied.
The way you do this in Premiere is select your clips, right+click and select Modify > Interpret Footage from the pop-up menu. Once there, you simply set your field dominance and that’s that. I used upper field first and it works fine. PAL footage in the client monitor. And there is much rejoicing.
Hope this is helpful to someone besides me someday!
“If you can describe what it is, that’s not it.”
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