Confused about Black Magic Varicam Support!!

[Jonathan Smiles]

[Emery] “1. NONE of the blackmagic cards will play native 720p @23.98fps (that was captured through firewire) out to a monitor correct?”

This is really a 720p over SDI thing, as 720p only supported 60p over SDI.

[Emery] “2. You CAN capture 720p @23.98 through HD-SDI? How does that work, does it detect the flagged frames?”

Yes, the DeckLinks detect the flagged frames and removes them on the fly.

[Emery] “3. You CANNOT use the software framerate converter if you capture through HD-SDI?”

Correct, the Pansonic/Apple plug in only works for DVCPRO encoded clips, if you transcode to DVCPRO it will work.

Using Cinema tools to slow a 60fps (59.94) clip to 23.98 works as there are no flagged frames, any other shooting speed and there are flagged frames.

[Emery] “Anyone have an idea what kind of support decklink will have for the 1080p flavor of DVCPRO HD that the Panasonic HVX-200 will record?”

The DeckLink HDs already support DVCPRO-HD at 1080, we use it as an offline format all the time. The HVX200 1080p modes are 30p and 24p which are handled as PSF just like HDCAM.

Jonathan Smiles
Managing Director/CEO
Digital Safari Ltd
UK – Specialist Reseller
dCinema – HD – SD
https://www.digitalsafari.co.uk

Members

[Emery]

Thanks for the info Jonathan

“This is really a 720p over SDI thing, as 720p only supported 60p over SDI.”

Am I mistaken or doesnt the Kona 2 support 720p at 24fps through all its outputs?

What is the workaround when using a Decklink Card?

Emery

[Jonathan Smiles]

If you have a DVCPRO-HD VTR you will notice that in other mode apart from 720p 60 (59.94) or 720p 50 it outputs upconverted 1080i.

You can only output 720 60p or 50p over HD-SDI, so for 23.98 you will have to add pulldown to get 59.94p, or up convert to 1080 which does support 23.98/24psf.

Jonathan Smiles
Managing Director/CEO
Digital Safari Ltd
UK – Specialist Reseller
dCinema – HD – SD
https://www.digitalsafari.co.uk

[Emery]

So how does the Kona 2 handle this. Does it just add the pulldown before sending out the stream?

[Sean Oneil]

[Emery] “So how does the Kona 2 handle this. Does it just add the pulldown before sending out the stream?”

I’m sure it handles it exactly how the Blackmagic does. It converts it to 59.94p upon playback. SDI doesn’t support 720p@23.98. It’s not an offical HD standard. Even if the Kona somehow did support it, you wouldn’t find any decks that would understand it.

[Emery]

So basically what you guys are telling me is that the decklink cards have all the functionality of the Kona 2 when it comes to the varicam?