Plays in Quicktime but not on Decklink

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

I’m not sure what is going wrong but going from DV to Animation codec to uncompressed is going to degrade the quality of the video because of the compression/decompression cycles.

If possible, I would recommend that you use the Adrenaline system to output uncompressed video via SDI and then use the DeckLink system with Premiere Pro to capture to an uncompressed timeline. This will capture in the AVI file format and maximum quality will be retained as you will be working with uncompressed material and not have to worry about generational loss with DV and Animation codecs.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[John Baum]

We don’t have the cables run yet to do this…soon hopefully.
As an alternative I installed the Blackmagic codecs on the Adrenalin. I first tried rendering out of the Adrenalin with the standard 8bit NTSC 4:2:2 codec. It pretty much behaved like the animation codec on the Decklink machine. The audio was fine, but the video was a slide show, and it needed to render just to do this.
So I looked at the clip properties of this clip and everything looked correct except the famerate, which was listed as 3FPS. We, of course, double checked the settings in the Adrenalin and everything was correct. And obviously that wasn’t the framerate of the file because the Quicktime player played it back perfectly.
Then I looked at the properties of a clip I had captured on the Decklink machine that did playback correctly and noticed that, although the clip had a .mov extension, the compressor was listed as microsoft AVI YUV.
So in the Adrenalin, instead of going under the quicktime export settings, I went into the AVI settings. The Blackmagic codecs were also listed there, but not all of them. Only the HD and 10bit. So I tried the NTSC 10 bit codec, brought it into Premiere and it worked perfectly without rendering.
So…could I get an explanation of the difference between Quicktime and AVI Blackmagic codecs and some possible ideas as to what is going on?

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Firstly, well done on solving the problem and thanks for letting us know of your solution as that is sure to help others. Installing the Blackmagic codecs on the Adrenalin system and then exporting in the AVI file format was a very good idea.

I’m not sure why the Adrenalin QuickTime files did not play back well in Premiere Pro using either the Apple Animation codec or the Blackmagic 10-bit codec and yet it played back OK in QuickTime Player. My guess (and that’s all that it is) is that the information you noticed regarding Microsoft AVI YUV and 3 fps was used by Premiere Pro but ignored by QuickTime Player. QuickTime Player might have some other ways to determine the attributes of a file.

In regards to our QuickTime codecs, we supply both 8 and 10 bit 4:2:2 codecs for use in standard definition and high definition. We also supply an RGB 10-bit codec for 4:4:4.

The situation with AVI codecs is a little different. Microsoft already include 8-bit AVI support for standard definition and high definition. So we adopt their codec for 8-bit 4:2:2 work and then supply our own 10-bit AVI codec for 4:2:2. We also supply an RGB 10-bit codec for 4:4:4.

This should explain the difference in the export options you saw in Adrenalin. If you had just wanted to export in the 8-bit AVI format, you could have chosen the Microsoft codec. However using the Blackmagic 10-bit AVI codec means you have retained maximum quality so that is a good thing as long as you have enough disk space.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design