BMD 5.7 with XP x64 – works with greater than 3GB ram?

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Yes, DeckLink 5.7 x64 drivers will support more than 3 GB of RAM.

Vegas 7.0a has been specifically written around the DeckLink 5.6 drivers and will only work with that version. The Vegas notes mention they have tested SDI capture and playback and analog monitoring but not analog capture. Vegas 7.0 will not work with the DeckLink 5.7 drivers unless Vegas is updated.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Ian Mcguffie]

Thanks Luke,

…. one step forward…. 2 steps back.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

That’s why we have an open architecture so that developers can plug in to our drivers via DirectShow and then those applications will automatically take advantage of any new driver update. Vegas doesn’t do that which is why Vegas 6.0 requires the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers and Vegas 7.0 requires DeckLink 5.6 drivers. Hopefully that model might change in the future so that Vegas can take advantage of the latest features, bugfixes and product support which are added to our drivers.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Sean Cusson]

I’m in the same boat. I had to take my Decklink HD card out of my system alltogether as I didn’t want to drop a 64-bit Quad with 10GB down to 2GB. So now it’s just sitting on the shelf waiting for the happy day when the new driver comes out.

Luke what about the 64-bit/Quicktime issue? Will that affect Decklink’s performance under Windows 64-bit? Quicktime works fine right now after having removed one of the Windows Security patches but I’ve heard that it’s actually still running in 32-bit mode.

Sean Cusson
Q media design
sean@qmediadesign.ca

[Dr. Dropout]

Shortly prior to release, the Vegas 7 dev team qualified Decklink driver version 5.6 on a number of SDI capable systems, using a variety of SD and HD SDI decks and monitors. If you are using Vegas 7, Decklink driver 5.6 is the only driver that Sony Vegas support will help you with.

Other Decklink driver versions _can_ be used with Vegas 7, there is no special code in Vegas to preclude their use BUT, be warned: other drivers might work properly, they might not, nobody at Sony will have tested them to any extent, you are on your own in terms of Sony support if you choose to use another version than the one that has been qualified.

We appreciate that the Decklink folks update their drivers on a constant basis but it is impossible to test with and make changes to an application to accomodate constantly changing drivers. Other apps typically or at least quite often appear to have officially certified drivers that are out of sync with the most current Decklink drivers version, presumably for similar reasons.

DH/SMS

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sean,

I’m guessing you’re developing your own applications if you are interested in running 64-bit versions of Windows as mainstream applications will not derive any benefit from running on a 64-bit version of Windows with extra memory. Should I use 32 or 64-bit versions of Windows? discusses the pros and cons of using 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows.

There is no 64-bit version of QuickTime at this stage but that won’t matter for most people as applications such as After Effects are 32-bit anyway so the existing version of QuickTime would be the best one to use with mainstream applications.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your information and that’s good news that Vegas 7 might run with newer versions of drivers than DeckLink 5.6, and of couse it’s fair enough that Sony Media Software (SMS) only provide technical support for a certain, known configuration of hardware and software.

[Dr. Dropout] “We appreciate that the Decklink folks update their drivers on a constant basis but it is impossible to test with and make changes to an application to accomodate constantly changing drivers.”

Unfortunately that approach would place great restrictions on our ability to support Vegas with our new hardware products and also to add major new features such as the Motion JPEG support that we’ve released in the DeckLink 5.7 drivers.

As I think we’ve mentioned before, we would rather avoid placing any burden on SMS in this regard by simply writing our own plug-ins to Vegas. That way the onus for testing would be on us and we can rapidly add features, bugfixes and support for new hardware in to the drivers and immediately have compatibility with the latest versions of Vegas. Vegas doesn’t have that kind of architecture but that would certainly be my wish for Vegas in the future. It would mean less work for the Vegas team at the same time as providing us with a lot more flexibility to add features and new hardware products to Vegas and ultimately enable mutual Vegas & BMD customers to take advantage of all of the features offered by this powerful combination of products. It would also avoid having to repeat this kind of information every time a DeckLink user understandably asks why we only support Vegas with our old drivers and why we can’t support Vegas with our latest hardware.

[Dr. Dropout] “Other apps typically or at least quite often appear to have officially certified drivers that are out of sync with the most current Decklink drivers version, presumably for similar reasons.”

While I wouldn’t expect that other developers would certify every version of drivers that we release with their software, those other applications do typically either plug in to our drivers via QuickTime or DirectShow or else allow us to plug in to their application. Either way, that does allow us to update drivers and have them work with those applications. That’s why we are big fans of using open and common standards and architectures in everything we do as it makes it so much easier to provide compatibility with the greatest diversity of third party applications. We look forward to future Vegas and DeckLink updates!

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Sean Cusson]

Hi Luke,

No I’m not a developer. The reason I’m using 64-bit with 10GB of RAM is because I use Nucleo Pro ( http://www.gridironsoftware.com ) with After Effects and it certainly does benefit from the extra RAM. Nucleo runs multiple instances of AE each able to access up to it’s maximum of 3GB of RAM. Render times are cut in half (when compared to a system running 3GB of RAM). What I really want the Decklink HD card for is merely the HD output to an HD client monitor when using AE. I already have a 32-bit system running a Decklink Extreme and Premiere Pro. This box is mainly for motion graphics production.

Sean Cusson
Q media design
sean@qmediadesign.ca