Symphony & BM Decklink

[John Pale]

If it will function with the latest Blackmagic driver, it will work.

I have the Decklink Studio and it works, apart from the kinks that apply to all Blackmagic hardware.

It is possible to hack your 1,1 to boot the 64 bit kernel, but I would only recommend it only if you are very advanced at tinkering. If you do it wrong, you can render your computer unbootable. The hack does work (I’ve done it), and it should allow you to run the kernel extension that will let your DX hardware to work.

https://www.jabbawok.net/?p=47

Honestly, I would stick with symphony 5.5 and run a stable system on the 32 bit kernel…DX hardware is superior to anything by Blackmagic.

[Timothy Miller]

Thank you John for your answer.

I do not have symphony 5.5, I’ll ask my reseller if 6.0 entitles me to 5.5!
Took advantage of the FCP to Symphony crossgrade last spring.
Made a bad bet then and kept my MC 5.0.3 dongle and licence
just in case Symphony upgrades turned out to be overexpensive.
Seems that MC is being replaced by Symphony anyway…

Will give my Decklink a try this afternoon.
What are BMD kinks?

Read that post about MP 1.1 booting up in 64 bit.I’d love to do it.
Question is: if you follow step by step and don’t make a mistake,
will it work 100% or is doing it wrong a lucky/unlucky situation?

[John Pale]

I have done the 64 bit hack and it works fine. Perfectly stable.
You are using an alternate boot loader for your computer that would normally be used for Hackintoshes. You are essentially turning your genuine Mac into a Hackintosh.

There is nothing about the 2006/7 Mac Pro that can’t handle 64 bit operation except That Apple uses an EFI chip to limit Mac OSX to Macs…the chip used in the early Mac Pros can only hold 32 bit code. The rest of the computer is not a whole lot different than later Mac Pros…Xeon processors , fast ram..etc.

Just because it worked for me doesn’t mean it will work for you. There are a lot of variables…and there are only a few hundred people on the planet that have even tried it. Most of them like me and the guy who wrote the blog I link to, learned how to do it via the netkas.org website. I did it as a project to see if I could. The machine I hacked is not my primary source of income.

If you have DX hardware and absolutely need a stable system to make money on, I would stick with Avid 5.x .

Blackmagic quirks….sluggishness in trimming in the trim window, , video unstable when trimming with caps lock audio scrubbing on, no universal mastering. Perfectly usable, but not as good as DX hardware.