Blackmagic Design IBC 2006 Update

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Peter,

While we don’t want to have a confusing array of codecs, if the demand is there and it seems to work well, there is always that possibility of adding a new codec especially if we haven’t already added something similar. I’ll mention your comments to the engineers.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Peter Gruden]

Luke,

The HD studio is a great little card and the HD jpeg codec is what we have been waiting for. I was watching 1920×1080 jpeg files playing out of HD studio and they were of a very high quality. The data rate was only 6.3 mb/sec.

On HD studio printed leaflet that I got at IBC it clearly says that it supports 720/50p, while on Blackmagic home page this format is missing. In the previous thread you are also saying that there is no 720/50p. I have been playing with Premiere presets on HD studio and 720/50p was there. A bit of IBC confusion I guess.

I mention this because EBU suggested 720/50p as the preferred present HD format for Europe, with 1080/50p as production format of choice and future standard. There was also an excellent presentation on EBU stand where different HD formats were compared side by side at different data rates, with progressive 720/50p being clearly superior over interlaced 1080/50i.

Regarding HDMI, it is great for 720p on LCD television sets, but for monitoring 1080 many will probably use an computer LCD monitor with DVI. I was asking about the possibility of HDMI to DVI conversion at Blackmagic and Convergent Designs and got different answers from different people.
I saw a small box in prototype stage on Geffen stand which would split HDMI source into DVI and analog audio (about 300$). I wonder if we can do it passively.

Peter Gruden

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your feedback about the JPEG codec. That’s great news and at 6.3 mb/sec is tiny and is only half the rate of DVCPRO HD which is about 14.5 MB/sec with audio.

[Peter Gruden] “On HD studio printed leaflet that I got at IBC it clearly says that it supports 720/50p, while on Blackmagic home page this format is missing.”

The good news is that 720p50 is supported but Final Cut Pro does not yet support 720p50 and so sometimes we mention it and sometimes we don’t. I guess we should add it to the web site if it’s on the brochure but I can imagine some customers buying cards and then finding that they can’t do 720p50 editing in FCP even though we mention support for it. Premiere Pro supports 720p50 on Windows and Blackmagic Deck Control supports 720p50 on Mac OS X. I’m just hopeful that an update to Final Cut Pro will allow for native 720p50 editing soon. Thanks for pointing this out.

[Peter Gruden] “In the previous thread you are also saying that there is no 720/50p.”

I did? Can you please give me the link as I can’t find it. Maybe I need to correct or clarify a previous post.

[Peter Gruden] “I was asking about the possibility of HDMI to DVI conversion at Blackmagic and Convergent Designs and got different answers from different people.”

HDMI to DVI conversion is a tricky topic so I’m not surprised you received different answers. DVI displays expect an 8-bit RGB signal at a fixed frame rate, typically 60 Hz. However television rates are 25 or 29.97 Hz and so cannot be directly displayed by a DVI monitor.

Add to this the fact that all of the HDMI sources I have seen are YUV and not RGB and you can see that there is going to be a problem outputting directly to a DVI display without the need for some kind of converter.

Let us suppose you were to capture YUV from a Sony HDR-HC3 camera or a HD-DVD player. There is no way that attaching a HDMI to DVI cable to Intensity (or to the camera or HD-DVD player) is going to allow you to use a DVI monitor to display your video as the video will be a the wrong frequency and will be YUV. It would be best just to use a HDMI TV which allows for a range of frame rates and will accept both YUV and RGB video. If you really want to use a DVI display for your video, I would suggest you check out HDLink and Multibridge Extreme which both provide DVI monitoring and include an adapter for use with HDMI displays.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Peter Gruden]

Thanks for clarification about HDMI to DVI conversion. I guess nobody had time at IBC to dig a bit deeper in the subject. I’m aware that HD link can output DVI or HDMI, but I would not want to give up to the HDMI input capability on HD Studio.

Your statement about 720/50p:

[Sean ONeil] “Will intensity capture 1080p?”

Yes, the specs page for Intensity lists the following supported formats: 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 720p30, 720p59.94, 720p60.

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=124&postid=862557&pview=t#head

Your explanation clarifies the subject, but it should also find it’s way into technical information relative to Mac and PC support on BM homepage.

regards,
Peter

[Motti88]

Hi,

Just one question about the Jpeg codec – Can the user specify the data rate – for use as an offline codec, for example ? (that would be realy great- as very often even DV is not compressed enough – ie large amount of source footage)

Thanks,

Gal Mosessco Kariel

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

I don’t think the initial release of the codec will allow for any variation in quality as the data rate is already very low. Maybe that might change in the future if there is a need but currently we intend to keep it at a fixed quality so that captured movies look great. Offline codecs used to be important but these days they aren’t used much as storage is cheap compared with the past.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Motti88]

Hi Luke,

Thanks for the quick reply. As a person who is involved professionally
in many documentary & long form drama productions I know that there is
still a very very large need for low data rate offline formats. In
fact in almost all the productions I’ve been involved (a large no. of
high profile work here in Israel) the Avid res of choice has still
been 15:1s. When you’re dealing with hundreds of hours of material
even today’s huge drives make the use of online or even DV compression
still impractical & cumbersome.
One of P-Pro’s weak points is the limitation of not having a standard
offline Codec for long form projects. So I think it would be a shame
if you wouldn’t introduce a feature which by all accounts should be
relatively minor to implement & would potentially bring real added
value to your product.

Thanks & keep up the good work,

Gal

[Sickfx]

Hi,
Wanted to know if Jpeg Online is 10bit and 4:2:2 & if Blackmagic intensity captures uncompressed HD at 10bits precision.Also i understand Jpeg Online’s bitrates are variable but would they be typically 3:1 or closer to 5:1.
Thanks