-
External monitoring on Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme
We’re testing Sony Vegas for possible integration into our workflow on a high-end HP workstation with a Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme.
Vegas promotional stuff since v.6 has touted you can monitor using Decklink cards. We’ve tried repeatedly to get this to work with Vegas 7 and 8 without success. Regardless of the driver version from Blackmagic, the Decklink just does not show up as an option for extermal monitoring or for SDI input/output.
I’ve built dozens of high-end workstations and half a dozen NLE systems over the years…and I’ve read every relevant post on here and other forums about using and installing the Decklink with Vegas.
Obviously some people out there are getting this to work. So I give up…what’s the secret? Is there some mysterious keyboard combination I have to hit while installing? Should I stand on one leg and sacrifice a live chicken on the desktop during the install?
No doubt this is a Blackmagic driver issue, but there’s little help to be had from Blackmagic support or the Blackmagic forum on here. So any suggestions?
After our experience trying to get the Decklink to work correctly with Premiere I’ve come to the conclusion that Blackmagic makes great hardware…but writes horribly flawed drivers…because we’ve experienced the same problems with getting it to work the way Blackmagic says it should with Premiere. And this is all installed in a Adobe/Blackmagic recommended HP workstation with plenty of RAM (4GB), (2) dual-core CPU’s, recommended graphics card, huge SATA hard drives etc.
Thanks in advance.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
8 Replies
-
Well, I don’t remember sacrificing any chicken, but my Decklink HD Extreme works perfectly for external monitoring and SDI/Y,R-Y,B-Y input and output. I’m running XP Pro SP2, Vegas Pro 8 (it worked with 7 too). I used driver 6.6.2 that I downloaded from Blackmagic’s site.
Do you have the DeckLink icon in your Windows Control Panel?
-
How is your HD external monitoring (monitor used, conection, is real time and full frame, any issues ???) …. I’m very interested too…(Vegas 8pro)….
Kind regards
-
when I talked to the BM guy, he said it was recomended to have Vista business, and not personal. I never did buy the unit……….yet.
Charlie
-
We’re using 6.6.4 drivers but we’ve tried the older ones too. Yes we have the decklink icon. We’ve tried every combination of settings we can think of. It works fine with Premiere with any driver version but we cannot get Vegas to recognize the Decklink. Have been through complete uninstalls/reinstalls (of Vegas and Decklink software etc.)
I’ve found scores of posts on other forums where people have the same problem…so it apparently is a pretty common issue. I just don’t understand why it works for some but not others. It makes no sense, and Blackmagic is clueless about it.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’m not actually monitoring HD – we shoot in HD, then down convert and capture/work in SD via firewire – or we shoot in DigiBeta and capture SDI.
To monitor my signal, I am going SDI out of the DeckLink HD Extreme into my DigiBeta deck, then going component out of the DigiBeta deck into a Samsung LCD widescreen. Full screen, real time, very slight lag (less than 1 sec.) no issues.
-
So are there no other suggestions for getting a Decklink HD Extreme to work with Vegas? We’d love to give the software a serious look, but without being able to input/output SDI from our DVCPro50 decks…or being able to monitor to an NTSC monitor via SDI or component…we wouldn’t be able to use it.
I still can’t believe Blackmagic & Sony have promoted this since version 6, and with obviously “known” issues, they both STILL promote it now at version 8.
We’ve spent hours trying to get Vegas to recognize the Decklink without success. Could the fact that Premiere CS3 is installed have any bearing on whether Vegas works correctly? As I’ve posted, we’ve tried drivers going back into the 5.x.x numbers…all the way to the most current on the Blackmagic site. We’ve installed and uninstalled Vegas 7, Vegas 8 and made sure we have all the latest updates on it. We have WinXP 32 bit, updated to latest service packs. In fact, this is on an HPxw series workstation that is only a few months old, and runs perfectly in every other way.
Thanks
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
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 Decklink drivers first, then Vegas.
So 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 -
Congrats on getting it up and running. Hopefully your tests will be less frustrating.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up