Lines through picture w/ decklink extreme

Blackmagic Design

Lines through picture w/ decklink extreme

Posted by Lexerton on August 15, 2005 at 3:04 pm

Been working with a decklink extreme for the last few months of offlining. Loving it so far….
BUT I’m now having probs because I’m monitoring the component analogue out and the ghostly shimmery lines on the monitor are starting to annoy me.
They have been there since I set it up but I assumed it was inteference from mains or something. Now I am going into online I am trying to get rid of it but nothing I do seems to cure it.
Currently I go decklink – scope – monitor.
I can go SDI out – Deck – scope – monitor but I won’t get the deck until its online time so no way to test.

None of the cable runs are more than 2 metres and everything is terminated properly.

Is it simply bad shielding on the breakout cable or do I need to move the PCI card to a different slot (its in slot 3) on my dual 2.5 G5?

Any thoughts?

Lex

oh – FCP5 OS 10.4.2 Latest drivers

Luke Maslen replied 20 years, 8 months ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
6 Replies

Paul Provost
August 16, 2005 at 3:11 am

we have this on and off too. can you give more info on system, hardware, software, deck, drives etc. ?
we find it to be an analog thing only, not SDI. ever. so I wouldnt worry about the online.
there are a few other rare posts on this – search “ghost bars”
Luke Maslen
August 16, 2005 at 5:00 am

Hi Lex,

Your guess regarding interference if probably a good guess. Please review the technical note named Interference on analog video output and see if you can work through any of the three steps suggested there. If you are see electromagnetic interference from an unshielded AGP card, then these steps should help.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
Lexerton
August 16, 2005 at 8:52 am

thanks, guys

Things are pointing to the graphics card. Its a Radeon 9800XT 256. It has an enormous heat sink on it which takes up the 2nd slot as well which is a pain as I’d like to get a firewire pci card in it. Any ideas? (Slot 3 has the Decklink and 4 has a Sata card)

Hopefully the SDI option will sort it out.

Thank God I’m not in the support contract business – Luke, your input on this forum is one of the main reasons I went for a decklink over the competition.

Lex
Lexerton
August 16, 2005 at 9:10 am

Just to let you know.

Swapped the cards round and all is fine and dandy

Thanks again – beers all round.

Lex
Luke Maslen
August 17, 2005 at 6:41 am

Hi Lex,

The heat sink would not be the problem but if you can see exposed copper coils on the graphics card, then they probably are the source of electromagnetic interference. It would be worth swapping the cards around so that the DeckLink Extreme is in Slot 4 and is as far away from the graphics card as possible. Then use the SATA card in slot 3 to help shield the analog components on the DeckLink Extreme card from the electromagnetic interference. The SATA card won’t be affected as it is all digital and electromagnetic interference has no impact upon digital components. That is also why the SDI video on DeckLink Extreme is unaffected by electromagnetic interference and you only see it with analog.

Thanks for your kind words. I don’t always get as much time as I would like on this forum but it is a great place to find out if people are happy or having problems and it’s always a good feeling to be able to make a difference.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
Luke Maslen
August 17, 2005 at 6:43 am

Hey Lex,

That is great news and thanks for letting us know. I’m glad that solution works for you as it means you can continue to use the analog video with DeckLink Extreme and not have to worry about switching to a different AGP card.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

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