Realtime AE preview through Intensity Pro?

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bill,

Connecting the HDMI cable would not cause the RAM preview of After Effects to fail. Please check if you are still able to output component analog video from After Effects. If that doesn’t work, then nor will your HDMI output. If that is the case, you could try moving the Intensity Pro card back to the slot where it was last working well, then confirm that component output works fine and then attach a HDMI display and see if that works fine.

If you have an Early 2008 model of Mac Pro, I would recommend slot 3 or 4.

If you have the original series of Mac Pro, shut down your Mac and place the Intensity Pro card in slot 4. Start up the Mac, go to /System/Library/CoreServices and launch the Expansion Slot Utility. Select the second PCI Express Profile, ie: x16 Lane Graphics Slot + Two x4 Lane and One x1 Lane Slots. The click the Save and Restart button. Upon restarting, check that you can see video output on your component analog and HDMI outputs.

I hope this helps and please let me know how you go.

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Bill Paterno]

Luke,

I think you have misunderstood what my problem is. I can get RAM preview through HDMI to my plasma monitor. However, its not in real time. I will try your suggestions though.

Thanks,
Bill

[Bill Paterno]

I just sent this to BM tech support:

Ok. Here is the thing. I cannot get real time Hi Def RAM previews through HDMI or Component. I tested previewing a 1080i comp in After Effects with Video Preview set to Intensity Pro 1080i 59.94. When I go to preview it is only a quarter speed at the Faster setting. At More Accurate, its only 4 fps.

I bought this card because I believed that you can watch Hi Def RAM previews on a HD monitor. So far, that doesnt seem like it is possible. I can view NTSC fine and can set up NTSC preview for a HD RAM preview, but the image is not very good.

Is this the limitations of the card or am I missing something here??

Thanks,
Bill

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bill,

SD RAM previews should play through in real time once rendered to RAM. HD RAM previews will usually be below real time even after having being rendered to RAM. 1080i50 video seems to play a lot faster than 1080i59.94 so we’re investigating why there is such a big difference in RAM preview speed between these two formats so we can try to speed it up. I expect this can be improved because it doesn’t make sense that there should be such a big difference between these two formats. This issue is currently scheduled for completion two driver releases from now.

You mentioned that you previously saw faster RAM previews (via component output) when you used the card in a different slot so it might be worth reverting to that configuration and see if you can obtain an improvement in speed. If so, please let us know which slot and which PCI Express profile you have chosen as this will help us to investigate the problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design