[Geir Ove thorsveen]

With the EX1 and green screening, the route to paramount image quality would be to use the HD-SDI output on the camera. For this you would need a MacPro with some kind of HD-SDI capture card (Decklink, Kona), and raided hard drives.

This would allow you to get the uncompressed HD-SDI signal straight out of the camera block of the EX1. The quality of this image is surprisingly good, even compared to cameras like Pana 2100 or Sony PDW-700. With fast enough drives, you could capture this as uncompressed HD, or maybe ProRes or DVCPro HD.

Of course there is a practicality issue in this, having to haul a 30 lbs. editing system with monitors and everything around isn’t always an option. But if your green screen studio is just down the hall from the editing rooms, you wouldn’t have to move anything, just run a cable.

I just did a green screen test with the EX1 this way, and I very nearly peed my pants. If it is practically feasible, this is the way to go.

Geir Ove Thorsveen
Head of Technology
Lillehammer University College

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

I was a fan of Blackmagic products, until I bought 10 Multibridge Pro’s (last generation). Only days within purchase, fans started breaking apart and causing unbearable noise, power supplies started failing, and some of the interesting features disappeared with firmware updates. One of the ten boxes came without any components actually secured to the print card, everything was rattling around inside like a Lego-set.

It was (and still is) a struggle to get replacement parts for the boxes, and the once we received were of the same poor quality as the once we replaced. In one case, we replaced the fan in one of the Multibridges, only to have the replacement fan fail within one week of operation.

Out of 10 MBPs we’ve had two power supply failures and 6-7 fan replacements. Last message we got from reseller, was that they are no longer providing replacement parts for the older MBPs, so we are now spending a lot of time researching cooling alternatives.

I don’t know if they’ve improved the production chain and quality control on their later production models. I would definitely have gone for the simplicity of the Decklink card, unless you really need the Multibridge’s stand-alone converter capabilities.

cheers,

Geir Ove Thorsveen
Head of Technology
Lillehammer University College

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

For those technically inclined;

There is more to the difference between DVCPro HD and AVCIntra than the latter being full-raster and 10-bit. The DVCPro HD is a DCT-based (discrete cosine transform) codec, like Apple ProRes. While the DCT is a well-proven and sturdy compression technique, it is lossy and relatively ineffective compared to some newer methods of compression.

The AVCIntra is a h.264 variant, which uses smarter and more efficient compression methods (CAVLC or CABAC entropy coding) to reduce loss and still keep the bit rates down. I’ve heard people argue that the AVCIntra is more than twice as efficient as traditional codecs, and thus AVCIntra 50 is equivalent to, or better than, DVCPro HD in quality. AVCIntra 100 should outperform DVCPro HD significantly. I haven’t been able to test this myself (yet), but the theory seems to suggest that this is a correct assumption.

Geir Ove Thorsveen
Head of Technology
Lillehammer University College

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

Try installing the plug-in found at https://dummy1.hil.no/ as described.

Trash preferences in Final Cut after you are done.

Also make sure to check the Blackmagic Device Control settings and make sure it’s set to RS-422 Panasonic, not Sony,

I suspect this is due to a problem with Final Cut misenterpreting the RS-422, and thinking it get’s an error message from the deck. I’ve had similar problems with panasonic decks for some years now. The plug-in above will disable this deck polling function in the RS-422 protocol.

Hope this is the source of your problems.

Best,

Geir

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

Before their last hardware upgrade of their multibridge line, the Multibridge Pro had some restrictions to what formats it could handle, whereas the Multibridge Extreme could do up to 10-bit 4:4:4 (if memory serves me right). Both these models have been replaced by the new Multibridge Pro and Multibridge Eclipse models, which both have dual-link and 3 Gb/s capacity.

The older hardware editions also don’t come with HDMI inputs. But have HDMI (Pro) and DVI (Extreme) monitor outputs.

This is from memory, so it should be taken with a grain of salt, but I don’t think there are any reason for buying an old Extreme model over a new Pro.

Geir.

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

If you are using RS-422 machine control, try the fix found here:

https://dummy1.hil.no/

You might need to delete preferences after install for it to start working.

Geir.

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

I don’t know your particular VTR, but on all my Panasonics menu item 108 let’s you chose between DV/DVCAM/DVCPRO playback, however, you’d still get a garbled image through even if this was in the wrong setting. It might be worthwhile to check anyway.

If you are having the same problem over Firewire and BMD hardware, it’s probably safe to assume that your BMD card isn’t the problem (although I still recommend downloading the driver specifically recommended for 5.1.x. With BMD drivers, newest isn’t always the best.)

If you are certain all your settings in the BMD driver and Final Cut are correct, try hooking the deck up with FW, open Log and Capture, start the tape and go View->Refresh A/V devices while the tape is running (had a problem like this with a Pana AJ-D93 that solved itself with this simple procedure.)

If it still doesn’t work, and you’ve trashed preferences, repaired permissions and chased the gremlins away, then I’d start looking suspiciously at the VTR. My money is still on your Mac though.

Geir.

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

First you should probably roll back to decklink 6.1 drivers, I think those are the ones recommended for Final Cut 5.1.x.

Also check your Apple menu->System settings->Decklink settings. Make sure Input is set to SDI.

If you still are having problems, try deleting preferences, repair disk permissions and restart Final Cut.

We’ve captured 100s of hours of DVCPRO material this way, with both Declink Extreme and Multibridge Pro on Final Cut Pro 5.1.4, and it shouldn’t be a problem. When you say that miniDV works, is that also over SDI, or are you capturing that over Firewire?

Geir.

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

For those interested to know, although it’s probably pretty redundant information, consumer grade LCD-TVs do not seem suitable for any level of SD video monitoring. I guess I knew this one in advance, but thought I’d give it a shot and do some measurements on a Sony Bravia 20″, using the component and composit inputs, hooking it up to my BMD Extreme card.

Comparing it to a Tamuz 14″ LCD SDI monitor, the subjective viewing quality at 4H viewing distance was very poor, with really bad scaling artefacts and color banding. Viewing a colorbar was practically like watching a gradient in composite PAL, but a bit better on the component inputs. When trying to find a suitable viewing distance, I found it best to leave the room and close the door.

More dissapointment came when I started doing some measurements. Even in it’s warmest setting, I got 7200K color temperature at 96% White with 120 Cd/m3. Pushing the screen to 140 Cd/m3 brought this down to about 7100K. This could be somewhat acceptable in a non-critical editing environment, but looking at the grey tones, the color temerature rose gradually to a staggering 9600K at a video level of 5%.

My Tamuz “reference” performed remarkably well in this respect, maintaining a color temperature of 6500K +/- 3% throughout the greyscale. I guess that’s why it’s five times more expensive.

Watching the same test material using Digital Desktop Preview – Full Screen on an Apple 20″ Cinema Display, the Sony was beat hands down on subjective viewing quality. I’m going to try to get my hands on an HD Link and an Eizo now, to see what kind of quality that might offer for SD material.

Disclaimer: This was not done as a clinical test. The test subjects consisted of only me and a couple of my co-workers (all experienced in color correction and/or color management research). The three monitors were not tested on the same signal chain, but rather on their relevant practical signal chains (Tamuz on BMD SDI out, Sony on BMD analog outs, and the Apple display on DVI out from the G5).

[Geir Ove thorsveen]

I think you might need a stable video signal on your Decklink video inputs to get audio working. The card won’t accept audio on it’s own, at least it was that way a while back, I haven’t used the Extreme cards in a while.

Just hook up a black reference or any video source, like a deck or camera, to the video inputs, de-select video in your clip settings in log&capture, and I think you’ll be fine.