BMD: Please comment on plans with Mac Pro

[Aaron Neitz]

I’m sure we’ll know soon enough. And i’m willing to bet decently stable drivers will be realeased sooner than later.

[Kristian Lam]

[Adam Levine] “Can I pop my MBE in a Mac Pro and keep working?”

Hi Adam,

Yes, we will support the Mac Pro with a driver update. Apple has been testing our cards in the Mac Pros and we’ve also been working on the drivers for quite some time now.

regards

Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design

[David Roth weiss]

Well Kristian,

Now I know why the DVCPro100 24p “bug” I brought to your attention was simply listed as bug and essentially just shrugged off by Decklink support. You guys are have put all your resources into the next big thing, and having already paid for my Decklink product puts me at the end of the line. Okay, I guess its time to trade up to the competitors card which can actually handle DVCProHD without issues.

DRW

[Kristian Lam]

Hi David,

We have multiple personnel working on various projects including the Intel transition. The issue that you’ve raised is already assigned to an engineer to be looked at. The Apple Intel transition has been a long on going project. This does not mean that other issues don’t get looked at. I hope you understand.

regards

Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design

[David Roth weiss]

Kristian,

Call me fickle if you will, but my love affair with Blackmagic is waning. I am running a business here and my business depends on hardware that works as advertised. As you can well imagine, my client was not terribly happy when he read your email which said, “It’s logged in our system as a bug. However, I’m not sure when the engineers will be assigned to fix this.”

As far as I see it, the situation leaves me with the following as my only choices:

1. I can tell the client to wait indefinitely for a fix that may or may not happen.
2. I can send them away to another facility that has the competitor’s card without this bug.
3. I can purchase the competitor’s card myself.

None of these alternatives makes me particularly happy, and I just thought you should know how these types of realities affect your customers.

DRW

[Herb Sevush]

DRW –

What bug? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[David Roth weiss]

Hi Herb,

The apparent bug is a problem displaying DVCPro100 at 24P to a SD broadcast monitor using a BM Extreme, which is supposed to downconvert on the fly. The timeline plays quite nicely and all navigation works well when the BM card is disabled, but when turned on it causes FCP to crash almost constantly. It is simply not useable. It crashes FCP about 33% of the time whenever the timeline is played in reverse, and it crashes intermittently and unpredictably when starting, stopping, or when going frame by frame when searching for an in or out point. I’d call it more than a bug, its more like a bear. In any case, looks like I’m gonna be forced to switch over to one of those cards that sounds like coffee from Hawaii. Its a shame, because I was a very happy customer, however, BM is simply not offering to provide a solution.

DRW