[Carey Dissmore]

Well thank goodness on the fan speed control news. I’m just installing a brand new G5 Quad/Multibridge Extreme system today. Thankfully, I’ve been able to avoid the buggy 5.4 debacle, but this 100% fan noise is pretty annoying! I think while cooling is necessary it’s generally a much better idea to use larger/slower fans to move the required amount of air then the tiny one this thing has. Slowing it down will help some though.

BTW, going to post separately about this but I can’t get an image on my DVI-connected Sceptre X37 monitor. The spec on this monitor is 1920×1080, so you’d think that rez would certainly be one that is supported, being a very common HD standard. I just can’t get any image at all on it and have played with all the settings.

Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

Hi, I am just installing a Multibridge Extreme on a Quad G5 today and am trying to feed my Sceptre X37 from the DVI output. This is a 1920 x 1080 37 inch LCD monitor. I can’t seem to get any picture at all. The monitor just says ‘No Signal’, but I’ve tweeked all the settings in the software (I’m running 5.2.3 as the 5.4 was pulled back off the decklink.com site while they fix a problem with it. Still, I didn’t see anything about 5.2.3 not being able to display DVI output so this should work. Surely a monitor that does a normal, standard HDTV resolution like 1920×1080 should be supported? And right now, while just wanting to get any image to work at themoment, will want to run anamorphic SD content more often than not, scaled up to this HD monitor as I still do a lot more SD work than HD.

Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

[Luke Maslen] “We’re looking forward to releasing the Multibridge Extreme as its DVI-D monitoring capabilities will allow the 30″ monitor to be used either for pixel-for-pixel monitoring or with some kinds of scaled monitoring. It looks great but we’re doing a lot of testing as there are so many modes to check that we want to make sure it works well in all modes.”

That’s great Luke:

For the record, here’s what my specific requirements would be (which I think are pretty typical)

*capture/output/display of Beta SP over component with RS422 deck control
*capture/output/display of DVCPro50 over firewire or SDI
*capture/output/display of DVCProHD over firewire or SDI (firewire capture is necessary to get native 24P files, right?) (BTW this applies to both 720P and 1080i modes)
*capture/output/display of HDCAM over SDI (1080i and/or 1080P)

Monitoring: Best case is to feed an SD CRT (Sony 800 line PVM) with component for accurate color representation, while also feeding an HD LCD (1920×1080, in my case) for true HD monitoring up to the full 1080P spec. I still prefer not to make critical color decisions on an LCD though (even though CLUT’s and calibrations are getting better), hence the dual-monitor situation.

As you can see, I, and most users, I think need the flexibility to work in both 4:3 and 16:9 SD formats, as well as 720P and 1080i/p HD formats, and have them scaled to fill our DVI-driven HD display.

a sample photo of my setup https://www.dissmore.com/avs/imug.html

I think that sums up what I’m looking for best.

Right now, there’s not really a good product on the market that combines good scaling on the DVI output with good CLUT color calibration/control while also feeding other sources both SD and HD. That’s why I’m so excited about the Multibridge Extreme.

All the best,
Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

Thanks Luke for the response. Although the details aren’t for sure yet, it’s encouraging that you guys are at least grappling with these issues. By 30″ display I assume you mean the Apple 30″ display.

One issue you are going to have to deal with is scaling *QUALITY*. As shown by the somewhat lacking quality of HD downconvert, there are limits to the quality that can be achieved with software-only on-the-fly scaling. Whereas, high quality, anti-aliased hardware accellerated/enhanced scaling such as that provided by a good graphics card (or dedicated hardware you could include in the design) can be quite good and elegant.

This, IMHO is what is required in the multi-format world of editing. We are pretty much all moving to multi-SD and HD format editing and we are pretty much ALL moving to some sort of flat panel/fixed pixel display device of various native resolutions. The answer of course is to provide 1:1 pixel mapping for the times we WANT that, but also to include high-quality scaling so we can fill the monitor with our content, whatever the source/target resolution.

Make THAT happen and you’ll help us all and have a winning product!

Thanks in advance and keep up the good work…

Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

Hi Luke,

Hey, I think we have a little confusion going here over my use of the term DV100. Sorry about that. DV100 is not HDV, it’s the codec used by the high-end Panasonic Varicam DVCProHD. The camera always shoots progressive, 720P Hi-Definition. Frame rate is variable from 4 to 60 progressive frames per second. I’m working with material at the rather common 24 frame per second rate.

The footage was actually captured by someone else but it was captured over firewire with a Panasonic AJ-HD-1200A deck. The redundant frames have already been removed during capture from the clips and it is just plain 23.98 progressive material, 720PHD in the DVCProHD (i.e. DV100) codec.

So, it has nothing to do with HDV, Sony, or the much-maligned cineframe mode of the Sony HDV cams.

Now that we’ve cleared that up…do you support 23.98 SD downconvert of 720P material? (you mentioned you support 1080 at 23.98 so I would think 720P wouldn’t be that hard).

Please advise…

Thanks!

Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

[Luke Maslen] “[Carey Dissmore] “The Decklink SP can give me SD down-converted pass-through timeline imagery only when the FCP playhead is parked, not when playing. Is it possible to get full motion play-through of DV100 sequences on my SD monitor via Decklink SP?”

This should work fine assuming your HD frame rate is at a NTSC or PAL-compatible frame rate. Can you check View>External and ensure it is set to show All Frames?”

Hey Luke, it’s not. The High-Def DV100 material is 24p. I have experimented with different Decklink SP video out settings and can’t get it to play back the downconverted signal in real time, but if I pause playback by hitting the space bar, or step through hitting the arrow keys, I see the frames just fine. In playback, the previous freeze frame is held while audio continues and of course I can see the video on my computer monitor in the preview window, but not on the NTSC display. I have tried numerous Video output settings in the NTSC realm (8-bit 29.97, 10-bit 29.97, 23.98 of the same things, HDTV of the same things…all exhibit the same problem. Of course, video output is set to ‘all frames. Help?

Interestingly, I work with Standard-dDef DV50 material in a native 23.98 sequence in FCP all the time, viewing it via Decklink SP at the 8 bit NTSC setting and playback is fine. (I have tried NTSC 23.98 but see no difference)

BTW thanks for your other answers above. I now have component looping through on digitize (I have a blackburst generator), but did not find a way to get DV50-over-firewire to loop through the Decklink SP on digitize (never did have high hopes for that one).

Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

Just wanted to confirm this is similar to how I worked a project recently.

I do a lot of work where my partner shoots with the Panasonic SDX-900 in 16:9 24Pa (advanced mode). I digitize from an AJ-SD93 deck over firewire with advanced pulldown removal.

I edit in a FCP 23.98 timeline while previewing via my Decklink SP board to an 800-line Sony NTSC monitor. I set the video output to Blackmagic NTSC 8-bit for this.

Recently, some spots I shot and cut at 23.98 needed to be mastered to Betacam SP for some broadcasters who didn’t want DVCPro50. I usually always master my tapes using the ‘Edit to Tape’ feature with an Assemble edit so I can get exact timecode match on my masters and my timelines. Of course I have to pre-stripe a few seconds of ‘roll-back’ room at the head of each tape though.

Anyway, I tried this with my 23.98 master timeline feeding to my NTSC UVW-1800 Betacam SP deck. It worked initially but about 2 minutes into the master it would stop mastering with an error. I think it was finally noticing the codes didn’t match.

Nesting my sequence into a 29.97 timeline and rendering it before mastering solved this problem.

I always wanted to go back and check to see if FCP did the fielded 3:2 pulldown or if it just duplicated whole frames when doing this. I forgot to check.

I know, if FCP can’t do this, that AE could generate the 3:2 pulldown from the 23.98 progressive source…if you wanted to go that route and it was imporant to you.

Carey

[Carey Dissmore]

I haven’t been doing 4:4:4 work, but I have been using a Swift Data 200 since over a year ago in a dual 2.0ghz G5 with a Decklink SP. I do 10-bit uncompressed…lots and lots of streams. My system benchmarks well into the 220+MB/sec category using Blackmagic Disk Speed Test. I have four 250GB Hitachi drives in a RAID-0 on the Sonnet card.

Carey