Joshua Helling
Forum Replies Created
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The On-Air software will only capture one stream.
It will take one input from each card and allow you to choose which stream you want during capture. So an example would be: You have an input into each intensity (so two) and both inputs will show in the display app. You can then choose to capture and the stream that is selected will be captured. Then during the capture you can toggle to the other stream and record that into the same file.
So at the end of the capture you will have one file and it will contain data from the streams that were selected at the time.
Does that make sense?
If you need something to capture more streams then you will need to find an application that can support multiple Direct Show/Quicktime boards. Or if you know someone they can write the app with our SDK (but that is generally beyond most peoples means).
I hope that helps clarify
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hello Jason,
Give us a yell at our Milpitas Office. 408.954.0500 option 2 will get you through to the support staff. They can handle the RMA directly.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Yup…I completely understand.
I certainly wasn’t speaking poorly of your system…far from it. Just saying that with the current implementation, more power is the key.
Again…we are looking for ways to make this better.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
That sounds about right. Our boards don’t actually accelerate the processing done by After Effects. Faster CPU’s and more RAM can improve this.
This is a limitation in way frames have to be passed back and forth to our board from the app. We are looking into a way to improve this, but nothing is set in stone.
The reason you see realtime in software mode is that the application does not have to send any frame out to hardware and so only needs to generate the preview image. Doing a full framerate full resolution output requires a bit more. In this case it is enough to do SD, but HD is a bit larger and therefore slower.
Probably not the answer you were looking for, but hopefully the knowledge was helpful.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hey guys,
A quick note here. IRE wouldn’t effect this much, but the color sounds definately like the device was in 4:4:4 mode.
There was a bug (just fixed in 6.7) that was causing the boards to become de-synced to the control panel, and that often meant that you had to toggle the control panel settings to get them to realign. But that is fixed now.
So about the “set black ref on video out in capture” setting you toggled, that basically creates a reference to use with your deck while in capture mode. While you probably don’t need to use the setting, there is definately no problem with having it turned on.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Margus,
We would love to support Red. Unfortunately there is no full workflow that we can tap into yet.
Once the codecs are made available for integration into to the editing applications we can absolutely make our boards able to capture and play back the footage.
Currently there is an app that can be used to transcode the file from it’s 2k format into 1k (1024×512) ProRes. And if those files are dropped into one of our 2k Presets they play out, but out of aspect.
We are looking into making those files play, but realistically we would rather wait until the codecs are made available to the app so that it can be supported properly.
So keep the pressure on red to get that working in the apps.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hey Dean,
What is the model of the board you are using and which down convert option did you select in the output processing tab?
If you happen to have a Decklink HD Pro DL (PCI-x) then there is an extra down converting option that only works with 1080i. So using 720p will give odd results.
Also, make sure you have chosen the proper option, anamorphic or letterbox in the down converter. If you do anamorphic the image will look tall.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Scott,
Sorry, I couldn’t tell from your message. From reading your message it would seem it was working one day then not the next. Does that sound right?
Reinstalling the drivers is not a bad idea, but before you do that make sure the settings in the control panel are right.
So click Apple -> System Preferences -> Decklink. Under output make sure the setting is set to component. Here is the trick. There was a bug recently (just fixed in 6.7) that caused the settings in the control panel to become de-synced to the board. So basically the control panel says one thing, but the board is doing another. So to fix this toggle the output setting and change it back. See if that works first.
If not, download the 6.7 drivers from our website. Run the double click on it. Run the uninstaller, then run the installer afterwords.
If it still isn’t working, give us a call here at the office.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
No worries Bruce,
I hope the information helped. My comment was meant more tongue-in-cheek than anything else.
I can completely understand the frustration when you as a customer call no joy and have to call support then feel like you didn’t get the help you needed.
And sometimes it takes a strongly worded post, or letter to get the attention of someone who can help.
That said, please feel free to contact us for anymore help with this. I don’t get to get on the forums as often as I would like, so I may not respond very fast here.
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc. -
Hello Bruce,
Well, definitive is sort of a hard answer to give without having tested this model of camera in this way. We may not always have a yes or no answer to give. But refusal to help, is just not our style.
What I can tell you is that this can work. We have done it in house on our Canon HV-20 as well as our Sony HC-3s. Once we get them configured to work, they work nicely.
Though getting them setup can be a bit problematic. Also, it is important to bear in mind that when set up like this, device control is done purely through FCP and the internal firewire port on the Mac and doesn’t interface at all with the Blackmagic Board. So outside of helping each person try to get this to work, it is out of our hand.
We do our best to help people get setup to do this, but it simply does not work on all cameras. So in that regard, a definitive answer is indeed difficult.
So here are some tips that may help you out. There is some oddness in using the HDV to control the camera in FCP with an external video I/O board. Because of that you have to change the device control preference to DV in FCP. When you open the capture window you can change the device control option from “None” to “generic DV”
So changing the preset is the easy part. Once that is done, you have to make sure the camera is set correctly. To do that you have to access the settings and change the Firewire output to DV (instead of HDV).
Once the camera mode is changed you may (will) have to close Final Cut and restart it. This is where it gets tricky. If the computer connects to the camera as an HDV device it will not work properly (you can confirm by checking the system profiler). If it is connected as HDV, try rebooting the camera, detaching the camera and reconnecting it, and if that still doesn’t work, reboot the computer (you shouldn’t need to though).
Once you can see in system profiler that the camera is connected in DV mode then you can reopen FCP. Now when you open the capture window you will have device control (provided you changed the device control setting as mentioned above).
If all went to plan you should now be able to set up a batch list.
Remember, this works on some cameras, not on all, and we’ve never done it with your particular one. This setup is using functionality that doesn’t involve our boards directly, so we can never guarantee that every camera will work this way (some can’t set firewire output to DV and still do HD out of component/HDMI.
I hope the information about if helpful in getting your camera set up to work the way you want. Not trying to pass the buck, but device control is really controlled by FCP and not us in this case.
As for whether or not we need some help in our support department, I am always willing to accept applications. But a large part of this job requires being able to communicate without being rude. 😉
Sincerely,
Joshua
Director of Support
Blackmagic Design Inc.