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Decklink NTSC monitoring with Sony Vegas
We’re trying to test Sony Vegas for integration into our editing workflow. We currently use Premiere with the Decklink HD Extreme. None of our editors like Premiere, so it rarely gets used.
The problem we’re having is we can’t get Vegas 7 or Vegas 8 to recognize the Decklink card, either for SDI input/output or external monitoring to an NTSC monitor.
We’ve tried virtually every driver version available from 5.x.x to current 6.4.4 (I think). Nothing works. We’ve installed/uninstalled Vegas. No go. We’ve even done a complete reformat and install of the WinXP OS and all programs (due to a defective motherboard), and still cannot get the Decklink to see Vegas or vice-versa.
This is something that has been promoted in Vegas since version 6, and by Blackmagic for at least a year or more. Any suggestions on how to get this to work? Or are the Blackmagic drivers just that flaky?
We’ve been pretty disappointed with the performance and integration of the Decklink with Premiere CS3. Compared to editing with VelocityQ and Velocity systems, it’s like taking a giant step backward in terms of functionality and performance.
Any help is appreciated.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
3 Replies
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We finally got this to work by uninstalling all Blackmagic drivers and then deleting all entries of Blackmagic from the registry,including all codec references. Then uninstalling Vegas and deleting all references to it in the registry…then reinstalling both with Vegas first, then Decklink drivers.
There must’ve been something that was conflicting in an install somewhere. We’ve updated Blackmagic drivers at least a half a dozen times…so who knows what caused the issue.
Fixed now and we can test the software.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Any news? I have Vegas 8.1 installed on Vista 64 Ultimate and am interested in the HD Extreme.
mobo is an Intel based one (X38 based chipset, 2 PCIe16x2 plus 1 PCIe4). -
I’ve only tested it for a couple hour-long sessions. Our setup is on an HPxw6200 with 4GB RAM, WinXP, using Apace vStor NAS shared storage.
It played 2 to 3 channels of Blackmagic MPJG clips in real-time at full resolution (depending on how many effects you had on it).
The HPxw6200 has 2 older dual-core processors (4 processing cores), so it’s not the fastest PC around and that could contribute to it not handling more streams and effects in real-time.
It’s able to bring in just about any format at any resolution. Playback and real-time performance with non-Blackmagic codecs appears decent. I’ve stacked 3 or 4 layers of video with effects and it played back at reduced resolution to our NTSC monitor (but still good enough to see what you’re doing). That included AVI’s using our DPS codec, HD Quicktimes from Istock, and SD Quicktimes.
We did get a couple of crashes while testing. In each case we were trying to bring in a “non-supported” clip from our VelocityQ system. They’re .dps files and we just wanted to see if it would load them. Our VelocityQ can import a few files that aren’t documented, so we just thought we’d give it a try. So we were doing something we shouldn’t have…but not sure why it caused the software to shut down.
But we really haven’t tested it enough to give any sort of “thumbs up” with the Decklink HD Extreme. I think there are others out there using it successfully with Vegas, so you might ask on the Vegas forum too if you haven’t already. Plus, we have so much video in other formats that it’s hard for us to test a timeline using just the Blackmagic real-time codecs.
I do like the ability to build effect heavy sequences directly in the timeline…things like glows, light effects, complicated blurs etc. have to be done outside of out VelocityQ system so you have to plan how you’re going to build stuff. With Vegas, you can build just about anything directly in the timeline. But…there is a pretty steep learning curve. They use language and terms I’m not familiar with and I’ve been editing for 25 years. But I think if I spent a month editing real projects on it I’d probably like it very much.
When I have more time to test it I’ll report back.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com
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