[Callum Mclay]

Hi David

The Intensity card only outputs YUV colour space over HDMI. DVI is a purely RGB colour space. Therefore, you will unfortunately not be able to use a HDMI to DVI adapter to connect to your screen, as your DVI monitor will not be able to display the video signal.

Using the adapter to go the other way, from DVI to RGB works better, as HDMI can carry RGB or YUV. However, Intensity only ouptuts YUV as the more common video/television colour space.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Redzinald

The Blackmagic SDI to analogue mini converter is a fantastic and cost effective solution to convert your SDI signal into an analogue component connection for your betacam.

However, please be aware that the mini converter does not do any down conversion, and so if you put in HD SDI, you will get HD analogue component out.

You should be able to a down conversion with your Kona card before outputting over SDI, and our converter will change the PAL SDI signal into an analogue PAL signal for your deck.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Hector

The HDMI output of the HD Extreme 2 is a fully fledged HDMI output, for the full information please check the technical specification here:

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

The HDLink is able to convert the SDI output of the HD Extreme 2 into a DVI or HDMI output (using an adapter) for use with computer LCD screens. If your screen already excepts HDMI input, then you can just go directly out of the Decklink card via HDMI into your screen, as long as it supports the appropriate resolutions (1080i, 720p etc)

So to connect to a HDMI monitor or TV is a great solution, especially to use a cheap HDTV as a HD Monitoring solution!

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Steve

As far as I am aware, the PS 3 should have a HD component output, which you can use to input into either of your Multibridges. You should be able to get the same quality as you would over HDMI, as you can do up to 1080i over HD component. You *can* get 1080p over HDMI for higher quality, but our products do not support the 1080 progressive formats.

Your further problem using HDMI will be the HDCP content protection from the PS3, as none of our HDMI based products will allow a content protected signal to pass through.

The current model Multibridge Pro 2 and Multibridge Eclipse both have HDMI input and output, whereas the older Pro 1 has only HDMI, and the Extreme has DVI output.

So I think your best solution would be to go component from the PS3 into your computer, through either of your Multibridges.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Daniel

Unfortunately, your Decklink HD Extreme is not capable of doing this feature, what is called a split down conversion. With the exception of the Decklink HD Pro DL PCI-X, all our cards utilise software down conversion, which means any processing is done by the host computer.

This also means, that when a video signal is passed to our board, it is already down converted, and the card can only accept one video signal for output.

However, the Decklink HD Pro DL PCI-X has the ability to do a split down conversion, which is hardware based on the card. This will allow you to send HD video on SDI out A, and SD video on SDI B.

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/

We also do not have a convertor box that does a down conversion, the mini convertors only do a straight format conversion.

Both of your questions are very good ideas, and I will be passing them on to our development team as feature suggestions to raise awareness that our customers are looking for these features.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Hari

Other than the Intensity, and the standard graphics card, have you any other expansion cards installed in this machine?

If you look on your desktop, an application called Blackmagic Media Express is installed with the Intensity drivers. Please start up this application, and see if an error message is received.

If you could please check these things for me, I would like you to contact me at support-emea@blackmagic-design.com as soon as possible for further assistance.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Martin

It really depends what you define as a speed increase. An increase in the speed of your workflow, or do you mean an increase in the speed at which you can process the footage (ie realtime playback etc).

HDV is a native encoding standard to Premiere CS3, and so the software copes very well with the decoding of the footage on the fly, if you have a system with good processing power.

Bear in mind that if you capture via HDMI to BMD uncompressed, then your data rate will shoot up and you will need a decent size disk array to cope with the extra bandwidth. You will have HDV like quality, but you will lose the advantage of the small data rate.

I perhaps need to understand your workflow a bit better to give any solid opinions, but maybe the quickest workflow would be to work in HDV for the edit, and then render what you need into an uncompressed .AVI, which you can then supply to Squeeze for compression to other formats?

These are just my opinions, but unfortunately it really comes down to trial and error to determine what is the most efficient workflow for yourself. MAybe you could give me an over view of what it is you would like to do from start to finish?

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

HI Luke

Firstly my apologies, you do get a great little capture playback application with the Intensity card, however it is called Blackmagic Media Express, not Deck Control. Blackmagic Deck Control is the application that comes with the Decklink family of cards on the Mac.

So please use Media Express to see how your Intensity outputs. Media Express also requires no settings for playback, just open a Quicktime movie with suitable encoding (Uncompressed, motion JPEG etc), and you should see output on your Screen. Where is your source footage coming from? Is it a camera capture or existing media on your system?

You will also need to ensure that your Media is a supported format of the Intensity, such as 1080i50 or 720p50. You can find a full list of supported formats for the Intensity cards here:

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

If you still do not have any luck getting an output, it may be worth contacting the Blackmagic support office for your region, and refer them to this thread, to aid in your trouble shooting process.

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

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Andy

Further to what I posted above, I’ve been thinking about your issue some more, and what I mentioned was slightly incorrect.

As a 1 lane PCI express card, the Intensity would have the bandwidth to cope with 1080p24 – the bandwidth of the footage is roughly 130 MB/s, and a 1 lane PCI Express connection can handle around 250 MB/s.

However, the Intensity does not currently support the 24p format, as most HDMI, consumer LCD TVs do not support 24p formats, and as a HDMI card, this would mean you cannot use your main source of monitoring for your footage.

Also, our application is called Blackmagic Media Express for the Intensity card, not Deck Control. Deck control comes with the Decklink family of cards on the Mac. My apologies – (It was a long day yesterday, including a lengthy visit to the dentist! :S)

Have you managed to try any other formats with your Intensity card? Please let me know how you get on, as i suspect the supported formats is the main cause of your problem.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

HI Dave

Blackmagic Design currently have full compatibility with Adobe CS3 including Premiere Pro, After Effects and Photoshop.

So you should have a nice stable workflow using Motion JPEG with Premiere CS 3, and the latest Blackmagic Drivers. Please bear in mind that MJPEG as a codec is more CPU intensive than an uncompressed workflow, but much less disk intensive, allowing you to get away with HD Resolution without the need for a hard drive array.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA