[Don Riemer]

Greetings… I’ve had the same problem, ever since switching from an old Matrox MXO to a Black Magic DeckLink SDI card and HDLink box for external monitoring. And it seems I’ve found a fix.

Like the other posters, I tried many combinations of output resolutions and frame sizes; all seemed to result in an immediate quit of FCP 7, with the error message about the Black Magic software. Always when trying to use a PNG file. And only when using the BlackMagic stuff for external monitoring. (When I turned off External Video in FCP, everything was happy.)

What seemed to make a difference was setting my FCP 7 “Easy Setup” to:
Blackmagic HDTV 720p 29.97 VariCam – 8 bit
With the frame rate to “all rates.”

Curiously, even with these settings under Easy Setup, when you look at the options under A/V Devices, there is no 29.97 option available. So, I set my Playback Output to:
Blackmagic HD 720p 59.94 – 8 bit (1280 by 720)

Sequence settings don’t seem to matter too much. I just tried playing back a PNG file inside a sequence set to 29.97, then to 59.94 fps, and both played fine.

I can only conclude that there is some aspect of the Easy Setup that sets things to 29.97 for the Blackmagic drivers, and that’s what it wants to see for a PNG file. Why? I cannot say. But this is working for me right now. Sorry I didn’t post this sooner, but I just found this thread, and the fix, today.

Cheers,

Don Riemer
driemer@airworthy.com

• • •
D O N R I E M E R / A I R W O R T H Y
concepts, writing, directing and editing for film and video
http://www.airworthy.com

[Don Riemer]

Greetings… Regarding the ATI Radeon X800 XT card… a comment and a question. The comment: I just bought one direct from ATI, and it offers both ADC and DVI connectors (one each). This was the standard retail version. So with any vintage Apple Cinema display, you should be able to plug in without an adapter. Only the 30-inch would be unusable.

The question… In my dual 2-gig G5, the X800 card definitely offers some speed improvements over the stock graphics card, but not as much as I had expected. Can anyone suggest any tweaks to the ATI control panel, or Motion settings, that might yield faster performance? What about that OpenGL Override?

It may be that my expectations were unrealistically high… I was reading so many raves about this card, I figured it would just zip through anything Motion could throw at it. I am still a stumbling newbie with this app, though the Ripple Training tutorials are helping a lot.

Thanks!

Don Riemer

D O N R I E M E R / A I R W O R T H Y
concepts, writing and directing for film and video