Decklink Pro on modest Windows system for preview ONLY?

[Yves De muyter]

> someone on the Canopus forum said they were the min specs
> for video editing/capture. Apparently with my setup I can
> run it just for the purpose of Video output monitoring in
> PShop and as a framebuffer in AFX/Comustion? Is this true?

I successfully tested a decklink plus in a rather boring PC: intel desktop motherboard, 2.6Ghz P4, 512MB ram, single PATA disk of 80GB.
We mostly run our own software on it, in keying mode. No clip playback, and of course, the graphics shown must not be too heavy, but that’s not a problem of BMD. That’s why we ship beefy pc’s for our applications instead of cheap ones.

> – Can I successfully run the Decklink with Pshop CS1 rather
> than CS2?
Yes. Even Photoshop 7.0 seems to run fine. This indicates that the photoshop plugin is clean and simple.

> – Will the DeckLink run two PC CRT monitors (for workspace, etc)
> ASWELL as the Broadcast monitor? I just want the B/mon to show
> the artwork document itself (no menues, etc.) in PShop?
Yes. Please not, you won’t get a realtime preview on the broadcast monitor, you’ll have to do a single step to show it on the monitor. A little script and put it on an F-key helps a lot.

> – Will DL work with AFX 5.5 Pro and Combustion 3.0 just as
> well as with the upto date versions of the apps?
I don’t know about AFX 5.5, but it works for AFX 6.5.

-Yves

[Jimmy Brunger]

Thanks for your reply Yves,

Yes, I know – a bit of a rubbishy system at the mo…Basically I moved onto PC/Adobe s.ware from Quantel Paintbox a couple of years ago and my machine never got properly configured to run AFX,etc to it’s optimum. So I’m stuck with this machine until we move to Hi-Def and probably Macs/Discreet kit sometime in the near future.
So no massive upgrades for me until then. But I figured a DeckLink would help my workflow until then..

So, with Photoshop I will see the full file (PAL 720×576 16:9anamorphic for instance) on my b/cast monitor? And the image on the vid monitor will not refresh as I paint then?..Is it instead a case of assigning a hotkey to do the export to video action and then you just keep tapping the key to update the file’s video output? I can live with that.
That’s much faster than flattening, saving out a TARGA and then uploading to Clipstation, then patching my old Paintbox monitor everytime I want to check a frame!!!

Also, with AFX (I should hopefully get 7.0 when I get the DL card) will the DeckLink just mimic what’s in my viewport and refresh each time I change something, or scrub the clip then? Or is it only active when I hit RAM preview?

Thanks for your help. So *hopefully* I can install this card on my current system then!? Phew!

[Jimmy Brunger]

…My Motherboard is an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe. Any ideas if that will do the trick? I think it’s only got a 33mhz slot.

Cheers, Jim.

[Yves De muyter]

> Also, with AFX (I should hopefully get 7.0 when I get the DL card) will the
> DeckLink just mimic what’s in my viewport and refresh each time I change
> something, or scrub the clip then? Or is it only active when I hit RAM
> preview?

Yes. AFX 7.0 will show the current frame on the decklink.

What you might have in such a low-spec pc is that doing a RAM-preview might introduce flicker/black frames on the output.
Also, you will lack some CPU power to do complex stuff in AFX, unless waiting is no problem. And with that amount of RAM, you won’t have a big cache to do your RAM-preview. There is some tricks to extend it to disk, but I guess disk-speed will be slow too.

Also, be aware that recent PC’s will be PCI-express, so in case you want to upgrade later, you’ll probably have to upgrade the decklink again.

-Yves

[Jimmy Brunger]

>What you might have in such a low-spec pc is that doing a RAM-preview might >introduce flicker/black frames on the output.
>Also, you will lack some CPU power to do complex stuff in AFX, unless >waiting is no problem. And with that amount of RAM, you won’t have a big >cache to do your RAM-preview. There is some tricks to extend it to disk, >but I guess disk-speed will be slow too.

Thanks for your reply. Hmm..interesting. We run AFX on our Toaster machine aswell, which is a pretty similar machine to mine (only with 1GB RAM, but a 3GHz P4 proc) and that handles AFX fine from what I can see. I don’t know whether the VT[3] card adds some kind of hardware acceleration or not (?) but that has a live SDI output and RAM previews seem good.

2GB seems to be serving me pretty well so far – we do mainly 30″ commercials and rarely do I have a client sat over me on anything with a longer duration. I can whack upto 4GB in my 32-bit Windows machine can’t I? Isn’t there some kind of programmable switch to force AFX/Combustion to use more than 2GB of RAM? That might be a temporary help?

[Danny Princz]

i had a decklink extreme in a dell p4 2.4 system and it worked great for after effects.
whatever is in the active comp window will show live through the card (minus the cursor) and ram previews are realtime for D1 comps… no problem

who is that masked man…

[Jimmy Brunger]

Cheers.

Masked? Who? ME? Never..

Yeah, luckily I’ve found a reseller who is willing sell me a new boxed card and if it doesn’t play ball in my system they’ll give me a refund, so that’s a backup if it all goes wrong.

I should be bumping up to a 3GHz p4 proc and possibly get another gig or 2 of RAM to give myself a head start..Hopefully we’ll be getting all-new equipment soon (fingers tightly x’ssed), so I won’t have to worrry about out-of-date gear too much longer!

——————————
**On a side note – anyone know where I can find a 3.2GHz P4 proc (478 socket, 800MHz FSB) ?? Can’t find one anywhere!!**

[Danny Princz]

you can find them on ebay…

though i have one right here i was sitting next to me p4 2.4 system for about a month now…

[Jimmy Brunger]

Yeah, that’s the only place I could find them – I don’t trust ebay for stuff like that though.

Too late – I’ve just bought a 3GHz one. Bum…thanks anyway!

[Elvir Radeljas]

Hello, I need help how to export clear picture from photoshop. Every time when exporting picture is not sharp, like lines missing.
I need this for exporting graphic for sport.
Thank you…