[Callum Mclay]

Hi George

What specification is your G5 currently at? Are you on the latest mac OS x? Also, which version of the decklink drivers do you have installed? You can see the optimal configuration for your g5 in the minimum specs in our support library.

Www. Blackmagic-design.com/support

If you go to system preferences::decklink, you will see the version number across the top. Also, are the options here greyed out?

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Luke

What type of footage are you using with your intensity card? Also, do you connect your hdmi tv to the card and turn the tv on before powering up your system?

Another good test is to load some footage into blackmagic deck control , which does not require any setup for playback. This is a good way to eliminate the possibility of final cut causing any problems.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Faris

I’m glad your back on track with everything! Premiere Pro can sometimes miss the installation of a capture card, however a trust re-install is always a good first step to fixing this.

In regard to your interlace issues you are spot on. It is quite common to see interlacing on video previews, even in Quicktime/Windows media player. Remember this is desktop preview and you are not viewing the full, uncompressed video stream that you see on your HDMI output, which is exactly why you get perfect quality on video output, as the video stream has been fully decoded.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Andy

When you say you are working with HDV 24 footage, do you mean that you are working with a frame rate of 24 frames per second?

For HD formats, the Intensity family of cards only support HD 1080i50, 59.94 and 720p50 and 59.94. Currently there is no support for 24 frame progressive formats, as the Intensity is only a x1 lane PCIe card, and does not have the bandwidth to cope with the high data rate of progressive formats.

Do you shoot in any other formats other than 1080p24?

So when you connect your camera via HDMI, your capture software will not be able to see an input signal at 24fps, it needs to be a compatible resolution. In Final Cut Pro, you need to please make sure that you use one of the Intensity Easy Setups, which will automtically configure your capture settings for use with your Blackmagic card.

You can also use Blackmagic Deck Control to capture your footage, only this time you choose your easy setup from the Deck Control>>Preferences menu.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Terrence

Broadcast converter is going to be a straight signal converter, allowing you to go from analogue to digital, and digital to analogue simultaneously, or do a digital to digital conversion for SDI to HDMI.

So which ever resolution signal you put into the Broadcast converter, you will get the same resolution signal out, only in a different format.

Effectively, you will be getting all the functions of the mini converters in one unit. Currently none of the mini converters or Broadcast converter do a standards conversion.

Hope this helps.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Nathan

What might be happening here is that you are actually selecting the wrong output option in the export menu. To see your Photoshop file on screen via your Intensity, you need to select File>>Export>>Blackmagic image export and this will send your still frame to the screen. When you hit this option, you will have to select a resolution and output channel that matches your image, to display correctly.

To update your output each time you make a change to your image, just use the Export>>blackmagic option again. It may be worth binding this action to a hot key using the actions pallete.

If you use the send video preview option, you will get a device not found error. Hope this helps!

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Martin

Depending on what you want to do with your footage will affect which is the better capture method for you to use.

If you have already recorded your footage to HDV tape in the camera, then your footage has already been colour subsampled, and much of the information lost. If you only wish to work with HDV footage, you may as well use Firewire as a quick and easy capture method.

If, on the other hand, you want to capture to a more intermediate format for editing, then you can use HDMI to re-capture your HDV footage into an uncompressed of MJPEG etc format.

Your footage will still have a HDV quality to it, as the information has already been lost in the original recording. However with Fire Wire capture, you do not have the option to re-capture to another format, for easier editing.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

HI Dave

For editing purposes, you should have an easier time editing with the MJPEG codec rather than HDV. The MJPEG codec is intra-frame coded only, whereas HDV is MPEG 2 based, and has temporal redundancy encoding, making it more difficult to edit.

With that said, modern editing machines can handle HDV editing reasonably well, but you will still experience problems for frame accurate cutting, due to the long GOP format of HDV. The MJPEG codec does not have the ability to be scaled, and will stay at the target data rate of around 12 to 15 MB per second.

And as correctly stated above, HDV is still DV encoding, and so has 4:2:0 colour subsampling, whereas MJPEG has 4:2:2, and so you will retain more colour information for your chroma key work.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Bob

Thank you very much! Its always really nice to hear such an enthusiastic reception of our products, especially for those that are yet to be released! (But are on the way very soon!)

I think the real challenge will be to use EVERY single input and output on the Broadcast Videohub, it’s potential for expansion is just phenomenal. The Broadcast Videohub is really easy to use and setup too, especially with the ability to control it over the network, via one machine with a USB connection, just like the Workgroup Videohub. (And the utility updates instantly to reflect changes made over the network.)

I think you’ll also be pleasantly suprised with the packaging and accessories too, it really is a fantastic product!

Thanks again Bob.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA

[Callum Mclay]

Hi Alena

As mentioned in the previous post by Pentti, it may be something as simple as your motherboard settings that are causing trouble. Which HP machine do you have?

Please follow the advice in tech note 172 as mentioned. These BIOS settings can identify our card as having sent an error message (it hasn’t), and therefore interrupt the boot process.

Please also check the Decklink minimum specifications for Windows as mentioned here:

https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=47

You may well have to remove your Decklink card in order to complete some of these changes, as it will allow your machine to boot properly.

Callum McLay
Technical Support Consultant
Blackmagic Design EMEA