[Carl Schuurbiers]

…and the external monitor still lags behind 5-6 frames compared to the program monitor 🙁

Everything happens constantly 5-6 frames later compared to the program monitor, not only during playback, but also when scrubbing, or advancing frames, the external monitor always lags behind.

Carl.

Mac Pro 5,1
8-core, 24GB RAM
OS 10.7.4
NVidia Quadro 4000
BMD Decklink SDI
BMD driver 9.5.2
Pr 6.0.1

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Hi Chris,

What hardware/software are you talking about?

I’m on a Mac Pro with Quadro4000 and Decklink SDI. In my situation everything just happens about 5-6 frames later on the external monitor. Always. It’s funny, I can quickly scrub back and forth on the timeline and see the same thing happening first on the program monitor and then again a bit later on the external monitor. Well, not that funny actually, it screws up my audio sync completely for the external monitor. Program monitor and external monitor should be sync!

Also had the same problem in 5.5, but there it was “only” 1-2 frames.

BTW: I filed a bug report with Adobe, but where does one report bugs to BMD?

Are people with higher-end cards also experiencing these problems?

Cheers,

Carl.

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Maybe there are other options?

I switched from FCP to Premiere, about the same time as I was getting HD footage instead of SD. I was shocked at the poor quality of the SD output that one gets from HD footage. (moire, aliasing, jaggies..)

If I do some “pre-processing” of the HD material myself before scaling, I get slightly better results, but I find the result still disappointing. Going the avisynth way I don’t really find an acceptable workflow, but it shows that one should be able to get better results with software in general.

At the moment I am using one of the cheaper Blackmagic cards (Decklink SDI) so I can’t really test hardware downconversion.

I would like to ask people with Kona 3G cards: Is the hardware downconversion in the card much better than any software? Have you compared it to what comes out of Adobe Media Encoder for instance?

Has anybody had a chance to try the Teranex processor in the version as it is sold now by Blackmagic? Better than the Kona, similar?

Last question: Have the software makers forgotten about SD? Why is the quality mediocre? Why are there no third-party solutions that do a good quality down-conversion in SOFTWARE?

If buying the Kona will get me a good quality conversion I would seriously think about getting one, but I would much rather have a software solution. It feels a bit funny to have to play something out in realtime and capture the file on another device and then transfer it back again, just for the downconversion?

I would be very grateful for some opinions about this subject.

Thanks,
Carl.

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Hi Gerry,

So we meet again on another forum 😉

I’m also (still) having issues here with external monitoring. Blackmagic Decklink SDI, Mac Pro 2010, 8-core, 24GB RAM, Quadro 4000.

External monitor is 5 frames behind program monitor window.
Audio is sync though with the external monitor, when I set Preferences->Playback AudioDevice: to “Blackmagic Playback”

I filed a bug report, and a feature request for a preference to trim/offset the external monitor timing.

Mac OS 10.7.4
Blackmagic Desktop Video 9.5.2
Pr 6.0.1

[Carl Schuurbiers]

[Ann Bens] “You could set the keyframes just infront of the dissolve, see how that looks. then move them into the dissolve”

This seems indeed the best way for me to do what I wanted.

Thanks Ann!

Carl.

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Jay,
Try this tutorial:

https://tv.adobe.com/watch/no-stupid-questions-with-colin-smith/dynamic-slide-shows/

Carl.

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Dear Ann,

Thanks for this tip, it is much easier to get to keyframes this way. However my biggest problem is not being able to see what I am doing. Let’s go back to my example with the two photos with Ken Burns effect, and the cross dissolve between them. Let’s say I want to change the framing of the beginning of the second photo. I click the clip, it opens in the source monitor effect controls tab, and I move the play cursor to the keyframe to the left of the clip. By doing so, I move past the dissolve, and in the program monitor I only see the previous photo, not the one that I want to alter. I can change the values, but I don’t see what I am doing, until I play past the dissolve. I can get it right in a few attempts by guessing how much to change parameters, but that’s not very efficient.

Do you see my problem? Is it solvable?

Carl.

[Carl Schuurbiers]

Dear Scott,

Allow me to ask a more technical question about the technique you just described. It applies to this technique and to keyframing in general.

Let’s imagine an animation with two still photos. The first photo fades in, and we start panning to the right for a few seconds, at which point we cross dissolve to another photo that continues the movement to the right for a few seconds, stops, then fades out.

At the dissolve, to keep movement continuous, we want to keep panning until the end of the crossfade, and we want to start moving the next photo already at the beginning of the crossfade. I can make this work when I put it together by key framing the start end end of the pan, applying the crossfade, and then moving the keyframes to the outer points of the clip.

But as soon as I want to change something, things get difficult. When I select the clip, I can move through the crossfade to get to the keyframe I want to adjust, but then I can’t see what I am doing because I am at the very beginning of a dissolve where the part which I am adjusting is not yet visible.

I have to move the cut out of the way, or move the keyframe so that I can see what I am doing, and then move it back again.

I find this hard to explain, hope it makes sense. Do you understand what I mean?

Is there a better/easier/quicker way to do this?

Thanks,

Carl.