[Lauri Ahonen]

We are using Blackmagic Intensity PCI-Express cards for Studio purposes with TBC capable JVC VHS Deck.

We also have several of these – https://www.trustedreviews.com/Panasonic-DMR-EX83-HDD-DVD-Recorder_TV-recorder—set-top-box_review – top quality conversion and also supports RGB input.

M.D. Lauri Ahonen
Electronics and video processing enthusiast

[Lauri Ahonen]

https://support.apple.com/kb/TS1846

Usually deleting the preferences file (make a copy just to make sure) helps.

M.D. Lauri Ahonen
Electronics and video processing enthusiast

[Lauri Ahonen]

Same conclusion here. Definitely does not fit the bill, especially with analog (VHS) sources. Bad publicity for Blackmagic.

M.D. Lauri Ahonen
Electronics and video processing enthusiast

[Lauri Ahonen]

I’m using external firewire audio controller (Saffire) for the conversion. I have one in hand and it works well.

We returned the units. No matter what I do, I could not keep the video in sync (vertical sync) and audio sync drops after 1-2 hours – even though we use TBC. We reverted back to Blackmagic Intensity Pro cards and external encoding server. The server implementation is cheaper and faster anyways. X264 also produces better stream as you have total control of the H.264 options.

I would not recommend the unit for any SD material. Works pretty well with HD though and I think that the unit is mostly meant for users that need to get a lot of small clips online and fast. For archiving this is not robust enough.

M.D. Lauri Ahonen
Electronics and video processing enthusiast

[Lauri Ahonen]

I’m not having the problem with my other capture hardware. The problem must by with the H.264 encoder.

M.D. Lauri Ahonen
Electronics and video processing enthusiast

[Lauri Ahonen]

I understand that you are not very familiar with video tech. Performing the task would however need some knowledge is the workflow in processing. Export the video with Compressor as PAL 25 fps progressive video with resolution of 720×576 High Bitrate H.264 codec mp4 and uncompressed audio (44k1 or 48k).

Then you could use ffmpeg command line to convert the file as xvid (with pc or mac) with following settings:

ffmpeg -i “video.mp4” -vcodec libxvid -b 2000k -acodec libmp3lame -ac 2 -ar 48000 -ab 192k -y -f avi output.avi

M.D. Lauri Ahonen
Electronics and video processing enthusiast

[Lauri Ahonen]

We currently purchased several “Blackmagic Design H.264 Pro Recorders” for our archieving project within university. We were previously using Intensity Pro cards and encoding the material to H264 with software and aquired the Pro Recorders to simplify the workflow. We were really, really surprised that the product does not implement any kind of support for encoding interlaced material. We need to archive old PAL/NTSC tapes and the quality of the progressive encoding is really sub-standard (deinterlacing artefacts are prominent) with the embedded deinterlacer.

All in all the quality of the unit and hardware is excellent. The color balancing is great of the box and the unit does really good when capturing VHS signal – even with weak sync. The unit fits most users just perfectly and the only real concern is the bad quality of the deinterlacer and lack of support for interlaced encoding. The other problem is the included software which lacks the support for MP4 cutting. 1080i->1080p capturing is of stunning quality.

It is clear that the product is a bit work-in-progress. The package did not contain any installation cd or manual but a small piece of paper that. We intend to keep the products in hand and wait for an software/firmware upgrade for interlaced encoding. I think that this feature is _obligatory_ for this kind of professional unit.

I hope that Blackmagic adresses this matter promptly. I’m a longstanding customer and highly appreciate your products. I trust that this will be resolved. Thank you for your time.

M.D. Lauri Ahonen