Joshua Helling
Forum Replies Created
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Currently you cannot set the component analog to be down converted. But it is a feature that we hope to add via software update.
Superior? Okay..how to answer this one cleanly. Personally I feel the hardware down conversion on this board is better than the software. But hardware isn’t inherently better. It does reduce the CPU overhead. But suffice to say, the hardware down converting on these board (and the HDExtreme 3) is phenominal.
The Intensity and our older Decklink boards feature a software down converter.
I hope that helps.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
You are correct. Currently only the SDI is downconverted. However it is a feature we hope to add. I don’t have any sort of info on it, but it has bee requested quite a bit.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
You can do programatically using the SDK that is available for free download on our website. It should have what you need to get started.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hey Guys,
First off, I’m sorry you’ve had hard time getting ahold of us. I checked our email box and I do see your email from Friday. We are a little backogged at the moment and it is actually one of the next to be answered.
But let me address this issue here for you instead.
In your email you said you are having inconsistant sucess with using 720p30 out from our Intensity. Normally my first course of action is to ask if you are using one of our preformated easy setups. But since you are using 720p30 (a format we do not support) I am assuming you are setting up a basic preset then changing the output to be 720p59.94.
Unfortunately that is not likely to work well at all. My suggestion would be to use the native Intensity Easy Setup and drop your 720p30 footage in that timeline. That will allow FCP to do the conversion and send a 720p59.94 (and supported) to our board. That should work out much better for you.
Again, I do apologize for the delay in response. We also offer phone support, so if you are in a hurry you can give us a ring (we don’t charge) and generally the wait time is less than 5 minutes (though sometimes it can be more). So if you need help or suggestions in a hurry then give us a call. We also have offices in Europe, Singapore and Japan that can take calls as well.
I hope this helps clear that up a bit.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hey Guys,
Let me see if I can answer some of those questions for you.
1> Generally this is the case, though there are some specific exceptions. One of those is the issue of 24p. While our boards will not yet natively capture this format, they can play it back. The playback of this will be over 59.95i, so our driver will add the 3:2 pull down on output. This allows you to edit in the native format while still being able to monitor in one of our supported formats. We of course would like to add other formats as time permits us.
2> Well, in fact for uncompressed we use the Apple codec. So if you select our Intensity HDTV 1080i 59.94 preset you will be using the apple uncompressed codec. You can also choose the ProRes, DV, PhotoJPEG codecs as well. As for using other formats and getting output, generally it is actually possible. You simply need to put the codec in one of our preset timelines and FCP will generally decode this and send it to our card (though performance may be somewhat reduced). But it should work.
3> Down converting is a little bit different on those two boards. On the Intensity Series if you enable the down converter everything that comes out of the board will be down converted. So say from 1080i to 480i. On the Decklink Studio it works a bit different as it has a hardware downconverter. So there is actually a dedicated (always on) downconverted SDI port. Essentially if you were working with HD one SDI port would output HD and the other would be SD. So you get the best of both worlds in that case.
I hope that helps with some of those questions…please let me know if you have any more.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Bob has some excellent points there. Truth is, that firewire is good enough for a lot of things. But it is not the best. And people are always pushing for the best. The best leads to the best being “good enough” when something better comes along. It’s a cycle
***Sent from my Ferrari***
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hey Guys,
I’m sorry about all the confusion here. I will try to clear this up for everyone. There is no public beta for the CS4 drivers/plug-ins. So emailing support will not get you a BETA release.
Also if you are one of the private individuals that were given a copy of the BETA software, please remember that these were given under NDA (or should have been) and more importantly a gentleman’s agreement not to release them or tell anyone you had them.
The good news is, that I have it on good authority that we are getting close to a solid release for CS4, so just hang in there.
At this point we intend to not respond to emails for requests for BETA drivers.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hello, sorry to hear you are having problems with your unit. Normally policy on RMA products is for the customer to pay in and for BMD to pay to get the replacement back out. The exception is countries out of our normal selling region. BMD USA services north and south America. To purchase products in Europe we try to recommend that the distributors in those countries be used.
Obviously there are always reasons and exceptions, and we are always willing to help where we can, but if the product was purchased out of our area, then in this case, yes, the customer is required to pay all shipping.
As for your email, when did you send it? Support can take a day or so to respond, though generally we are really speedy (same day or next).
As for your HDMI output problems I think we might need more details to properly assist you. You can put them here, but one on one would probably be more efficient for this type of issue.
Outside of that, you have my assurances that there are no manufacturing problems at BMD. One thing to keep in mind is the condition in which you received the product…was the box damaged? Sometimes the couriers can be hell on the products.
Anyways, get in touch with us and of course we will do our best to help you out.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Thanks for that Bob. I was thinking it was gonna be something along those lines based off what I’ve read about it.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Yup…sounds like the same issue. From what I have seen the camera only gets forced to down convert when connected to our card. Generally going to a monitor is fine. Thanks for letting me know the model number. I will see if anyone else has seen this with that camera.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.