[Callum Mclay]

Hi Anmol

The Decklink SDI, as well as all the current Decklink range, is a full 10 or 8 bit, HD/SD capture card, and you can check out the tech specs for the Decklink SDI card here:

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/decklink/techspecs/

Our previous range of Decklink cards did include SD-SDI only capture cards, but our current range of Decklink cards are all brand new as of 2009, and can do HD or SD capture on the same connections.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Allby

When working with HDV video at 1440 x 1080, Premiere automatically scales this back up to 1920 x 1080 for playback. Therefore, you can choose a Blackmagic timeline at 1920 x 1080, and your footage will playback at 1920 x 1080 through the cards outputs.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Luc

Intensity Pro does not have any gain controls for audio at a driver level, although this is possible for analogue audio on our Decklink range of capture cards. If you are capturing embedded audio over HDMI, this would not be affected by gain controls on the card.

Some software applications will allow you to drop the gain on capture, but it might be worth checking that your settings on the consoles are at the default level output or lower if you are using Blackmagic Media Express.

If you have sent a support request through the web, you might wish to follow this up with a call to your local support office, and one of our guys would be happy to work through some basic troubleshooting with you.

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/company/

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hey Guys

Today we have posted new drivers for our capture cards, Decklink 7.5. These are available from the downloads section of our website here:

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/software/

So far, we have not seen the audio sync problem mentioned above with these drivers, so anyone experiencing this problem should update to v7.5. If you experience any problems, or need further assistance please get back to me either here, or at our support address!

Have a very Merry Christmas guys!

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hey Tony

We’ve actually been working through the problems mentioned in this thread and we are still running through them. I didn’t spot the MJPEG thing on first glance, that’s my bad, but we are aware of this particular problem, as are our engineering team.

As an update for you guys, the issues with laying off to tape being out of sync has since be raised to our development team, and they are looking into it right now. I know a couple of people have contacted us directly after my post, and so we will also be looking into possible work arounds in the mean time.

We are still running through Claus-peter’s issues, and some of these appear to be the way Premiere works (ie having to re-render effects on a sequence after duplication), and some of them are not the way it is supposed to function (ie when using BMD timelines, you are only supposed to use the Decklink serial control, our driver is not really designed to use the system serial ports)

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Guys

I am from the European support office for Blackmagic Design.

These aren’t problems that we have had reported to us so far, however I would be happy to look into them for you, and ensure that any problems that do exist are addressed.

Please feel free to contact me directly at:

support-emea@blackmagic-design.com

and we can begin looking into the problems you are experiencing, and see if we can help in any way.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Baz

Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate finding out what our customers are doing with our hardware, and what features they do or do not need!

I’m not sure whether we will be looking to bring the Extended Desktop feature back in the future, but I’ve passed your comments onto Kristian (our Product Manager) as he is collating feedback on Extended Desktop.

I hope your phone is calming down now!

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Dane

The Extended Desktop display feature has been removed from our latest drivers for all systems and products, starting with the Decklink 7.3 generation of drivers.

I’d like to quote you a previous post from one of our product managers:

“There are numerous reasons why we’ve removed the extended desktop feature. The main reason is that Apple Color checks each desktop it detects for OpenGL compatibility and because the extended desktop output is not OpenGL, Color fails to launch.

Also, the way the OS enumerates the displays may sometimes cause issues which are undesirable and beyond our control.

Extended desktop was first conceived many years ago so that users can have proper TV colorspace output from Photoshop and After Effects by dragging the canvases across to the “tv screen”. However, we now have proper plugins so that users can output directly from Photoshop and After Effects so the desktop feature is no longer used much.

However, do keep the feedback coming about this and I’m certainly happy to see if there’s anything we can do or recommend.”

I hope this helps explain the situation. Of course, if this is a feature you need to use, it can still be used with the Decklink 7.2 generation of drivers. Please do not hesitate to get back to me for any further information.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Phil

I am the Technical Support Manager in the EMEA region for Blackmagic Design. If you require some assistance with your card, please do not hesitate to contact me at our UK based office.

If you are in our region, I can help you out with your product return, and if not, I can put you in touch with the best person to help you out. You can give me a call between 9 and 5 GMT on the office number listed here for Blackmagic Design Europe:

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/company/

I look forward to hearing from you!

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Guys

As I believe what Aristides is trying to say, the Decklink cards are not designed to capture just audio on their own.

All our capture hardware requires a video signal to be present, in order to capture audio as well. This is down to the way the hardware works, as the audio takes it’s timing from the input video.

As Aristides also suggested, you could try just sending a stable black video signal (or any video signal really) to the card while you are capturing.

On the Mac (depending on your capture application) you will then end up with a QuickTime movie file with your audio embedded with the “random” video. You can then extract the audio etc, or do as you wish. I haven’t tried this but i believe it should work!

Callum McLay
Technical Support Manager
Blackmagic Design EMEA