DeckLink Macintosh 4.8.1 drivers released

[Jeff Bernstein]

Thank you!

Jeff Bernstein

Digital Desktop Consulting
Apple Pro Video VAR
XSAN Certified

323-653-7611

[Richard Squires]

Why do you advise against using this with 10.3.9?

I am curious as I have 10.3.9 and it seems to work fine with the 4.8 drivers. I really don’t want to have to re install 10.3.8.

regards

Richard

[Francois Stark]

Hi Luke

I downloaded and installed the 4.8.1 on my G5/extreme/os X.3.8 system on Friday. After restarting the capture presets were gone. I checked library -> prefs and the blackmagic presets were there.

Inside the app, the blackmagic timeline presets were available, but only the standard DV apple capture presets. No Blackmagic capture presets available.

I re-installed 4.8.1 with no change. Then I ran out of time since I had to capture urgently. I duplicated the DV PAL firewire capture preset, and changed it to use the blackmagic capture input and DV compressor, and created a second version with the uncompressed codec.

I captured the urgent footage and it worked fine. So: If this problem pops up somewhere else, there might be a problem with 4.8.1 not showing blackmagic capture presets after installation.

Regards
Francois

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

I’m a big fan of “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!” If your system is working fine, then that’s great and I would suggest that you keep using it as is unless you encounter problems.

We have received numerous customer reports of problems with Mac OS X 10.3.9 whereas Mac OS X 10.3.8 seems very stable. The reports regarding Mac OS X 10.3.9 seem eratic in nature but many of them relate to audio problems which do not occur with Mac OS X 10.3.8 and Mac OS X 10.4.x. There are also other more general problems unrelated to DeckLink such as the inability to log in to managed user accounts in Mac OS X 10.3.9.

If all is working fine for you, stick with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and only consider downgrading to Mac OS X 10.3.8 if you are encountering problems.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Francois,

Can you please try running the Uninstaller first and then reinstall the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers?

The fact that the Blackmagic Easy Setups did not appear in the Final Cut Pro HD menu after installation suggests one of two possibilities:

1. You are running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.x. The DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers are designed for use with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and the Blackmagic easy setups will not appear in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.x. If you are running Final Cut Pro HD 5, download the latest DeckLink 5.0 installer and then run its Uninstaller before installing the latest drivers.

2. There may be some problem with the Final Cut Pro preferences file which caches the information about which easy setups are present. Running the Uninstall Blackmagic DeckLink utility and then installing the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers should help to avoid such a problem. If this still doesn’t work, run a permissions repair with Disk Utility and then run the Uninstall Blackmagic DeckLink utility and then reinstall the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers again.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for all your help too.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Richard Squires]

Hi Luke

thanks for the reply. Yes I too am a big fan of “if it ain’t broke” so perhaps I should give the Decklink update a miss. I don’t think from reading your post, that any of the improvements relate to me. I guess it’s easier to update the drivers than it is to update the system, but at the moment my system is running fine so I think I’ll leave it

regards

Richard

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

Yes, that makes a lot of sense given your system is working well 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Francois Stark]

Hi Luke

“1. You are running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.x. The DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers are designed for use with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and the Blackmagic easy setups will not appear in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.x. If you are running Final Cut Pro HD 5, download the latest DeckLink 5.0 installer and then run its Uninstaller before installing the latest drivers.”

No, I’m running FCP 4.5 on os X.3.8 on a G5/2.0DP/4 GB RAM.

“2. There may be some problem with the Final Cut Pro preferences file which caches the information about which easy setups are present. Running the Uninstall Blackmagic DeckLink utility and then installing the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers should help to avoid such a problem. If this still doesn’t work, run a permissions repair with Disk Utility and then run the Uninstall Blackmagic DeckLink utility and then reinstall the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers again.”

I would have time for uninstall/reinstall, but every time I lose all my prefs: scratch disks, autosave time, default timeline settings, window layouts, etc.etc. Lot’s of stuff I have to reset with every driver re-installation so I’m not going to do that now. If I backup the user prefs to save my settings, I would probably be backing up up the problem as well…

Regards
Francois