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Decklink Pro always outputs solid “green screen” after 1 successful print-to-tape–ARGH!!!!!!!!!
Has anyone else here experienced this workflow-stopping problem with any flavor of the Decklink cards and Final Cut Pro?
My problem is that when I try to print a sequence out to any of our decks (we route our facility through the Workgroup Videohub and Multibridge, to either a UVW1800 BetaSP or DVW-A500 DigitalBetacam deck), it generally works the first time I do the ETT/PTV, but when I pop a new tape in the deck to make another dub of the same sequence, the Decklink will only spit out either digital garbage, or a full-field, solid green screen. I still will have deck control, but the input lights on the A500 deck will indicate that it’s not recieving a SDI input.
Sometimes, if i reboot the system, I might be able to regain output, but more often than not, the output stays buggered for the rest of the day. When I come in the next morning, everything seems to work fine, when when I go through the whole PTV/ETT process again, it will do the same goddamned thing.
I completely bypassed the Videohub, and jacked the SDI-Out (to deck) connector of the Decklink Pro breakout cable directly into my SDI monitor, and I still get the dreaded green-screen-of-death.
The wierd thing is that the SDI Monitor-out is always functional, no matter what. So thinking I was being clever, I tried looping through the monitor’s SDI, and put to the Videohub, but for some reason, I couldn’t get this to work.
This has happened on 2 seperate Decklink Pro cards we have.
I have no hair left on my head.
It’s really wierd the way that this is happening, because the actual SDI-Out (to deck) signal seems to work just fine all day long (the signal is visible in our machine room)…UNTIL you do a print to tape. Then it goes wacky, and never recovers.
The system in question is running FCP 5.1.1 on a Dual 2.7Ghx G5, running 10.4.7, Quicktime 7.1.2 and always the latest version of the Decklink drivers. I’ve experienced this problem, however, since 10.4.5 and FCP 5.0.2.
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4 Replies
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When I read the first part of your message it sounded like it could’ve been a heat-related issue but the last part of your message makes it sound like a black magic driver issue. Maybe you could try re-installing the black magic drivers? It sounds like the hardware isn’t resetting properly after that particular function but that’s just a guess from a non-BM user. 🙂 Could it be a reference (sync) issue since you’re using analog equipment?
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Yep, I know the problem with a “DeckLink Extreme”.
For me the solution is opening “Blackmagic Deck Control” en hit play, so the video out is enabled again.
Jump back to FCP and everything works again. -
Hi Mel,
I have heard of one other weird report of a green screen when simply playing out of FCP and not even printing to tape. In that instance, the solution was to delete the FCP preferences and then the problem went away.
You could test this by creating a new Admin account on your Mac and trying to print to tape from the same project you are using now. If this overcomes the problem, then it would suggest that the preferences are the source of your problem.
If this does not help, please try another project and see if it exhibits the same problem or not.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Luke,
Thanks for your response.
I guess I should have mentioned in my original post that I’ve trashed prefs and loaded the project under different users until the cows came home. Those are among the first things I do whenever I’m troubleshooting an issue with FCP.
Unfortunately, none of those procedures worked to fix the problem. In fact, a few weeks ago, I reinstalled the entire OS from scratch, thinking it was a system level issue. But this did not fix anything, either.
The problem seems to appear like clockwork now…print/edit once to tape, then try it again, and it barfs out the green (or no signal at all).
We are really at our wits end over this issue…please help.
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