[Luke Maslen]

Hi Felix,

Here’s a little information but more will follow after the engineers have returned from IBC.

The DeckLink 5.0 drivers did away with Blackmagic codecs and solely adopted Apple codecs in SD and HD. Unfortunately, gamma issues became apparent.

We contacted Apple about this and worked with them on a solution. They suggested that we reintroduce our codecs in a few specific scenarios to help avoid these gamma issues. This is something that we could do immediately without having to wait for an update to FCP and/or QuickTime. We released DeckLink 5.0.1 but unfortunately it had a bad installer which lead to stability issues so we withdrew it. We quietly re-released it with a “good” installer and gave it the version number 5.0.1r2. The “r2” refers to the second revision of the installer but there were no changes to the software itself otherwise we would have incremented the version number.

We were close to releasing the DeckLink 5.1 drivers and we did not have enough firm information to tell us whether all of the stability issues with the DeckLink 5.0.1 drivers could be attributed to a bad installer or not and so, after discussions with Apple in which they could not identify any immediate reasons for certain kinds of FCP crashes, we took our codecs out of the drivers before releasing the DeckLink 5.1 drivers so we’re back to many of the same gamma issues. This is frustrating but we wanted to ensure stability.

The DeckLink 5.0.1r2 drivers are available from our web site for anyone wanting to test the gamma fixes.

Once the engineers return, we will pursue this again and it would be great if we can ask you further questions if necessary as you clearly have a good understanding of the issues involved and have run some excellent tests to demonstrate the problems.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Mark,

I am amazed by the approach you have taken in your posts and I haven’t seen a thread like this since the last time Ron Lindeboom identified competitors posting under false names on this forum and told them to stop it or be permanently banned from using Creative Cow ever again. It seems odd that a search on your name on multiple Cow forums only found you in this forum and only after our announcements on Friday morning of IBC 2005.

Please see my reply to your original post in this thread. Amongst other points, it addresses the erroneous claim, which you have repeated several times, that the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card has just dropped $1000. I’m sure there are many who wish it had but it has only dropped $500 in the last year since IBC 2004.

There is nothing astounding about the card price falling as a result of lower component costs, investment in manufacturing efficiencies and competitive pricing. Multiple factors make this possible and not one factor alone. It’s hard work but our engineers work long hours to make this happen and it is very rewarding when we see new products released and also prices fall to levels that were never imagined a few years ago in an industry used to high prices.

Unfortunately your posts are quite unpleasant and have distracted me from providing real support to our customers so I’m going to have to leave this thread now and answer some questions from people who have asked nicely for help.

Thanks to everyone else in this thread who contributed on both sides of the debate. It really makes me want to answer more questions when I see the help and consideration provided by contributors to this forum.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Peter,

Yes, the PCIe version of DeckLink Extreme only requires a 1 lane PCIe slot but you can use it in multi-lane slots if you prefer. The DeckLink Extreme PCIe card is a standard definition card as it the original DeckLink Extreme.

[Peter Corbett] “I was thinking of getting a Decklink HD to run on the same 133MHz PCI-X bus as my raid controller. Which would be a better solution?”

That depends on whether you want to do SD or HD? The motherboard you have specified is not in our list of Certified Motherboards for High and Standard Definition or our Certified Motherboards for Standard Definition only so I’m not sure how it will go as we haven’t tested it. It would be good if your reseller would allow you to evaluate it first to make sure it works OK, regardless of which card you choose. My guess is that this motherboard will be fine for either card based on its specs but it is hard to know without testing one.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Thank you John,

I’ll pass that on to the engineers who worked on adding HDMI support.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Mark,

The DeckLink HD card was introduced two years ago at IBC 2003 at $1995 and it is a shame that we have only heard from you in the past few days as I can’t find any of your posts prior to IBC 2005 on this or any other Cow forum.

[mkramden] “So you are saying you changed a part on the DL HD 4:4:4 card and saved $1000?”

No, that’s not what I’m saying as the card only dropped from $1995 to $1495. If you check back, you will find that the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card dropped from $2495 to $1995 last IBC 2004 at the same time that we introduced the Videohub and Multibridge and our competitors did not release any new cards at the show.

It is now a year later and we’ve invested in a new manufacturing plant which has cost millions of dollars. So we now have increased manufacturing efficiecy, thanks to the new plant, and also a change of chip on 3 HD cards which all helps to bring the price down. What this means to any Blackmagic customer today is that the products they purchased yesterday are helping to bring down the price of tomorrows products.

[mkramden] “Please give me an example of when BM has lowered the price of one of their products NOT in response to competative pressure.”

This is a silly question because all pricing is strategic in a competitive market. Think of the first card Blackmagic Design ever made. It was the original DeckLink card at $995. I wasn’t here at Blackmagic at that time but my understanding is that the nearest competitor was over $10,000 at that time. I was also told that lots of people were unhappy about the DeckLink card being a tenth of the price of other cards and overnight, other cards dropped by several thousands dollars but never matched the DeckLink card. Looking back, it is difficult to understand why some people were very vocal about the drop in prices being a bad thing. Doubtless some of these people were competitors and others were those who had sunk huge sums of money in to hardware only to have it obsoleted overnight. That was a $9000 price drop and it’s intriguing that several years later we see the same reactions over a $500 price decrease, even though we’ve done this before.

We subsequently introduced a series of SD cards and dropped the price of the earlier cards as we went. Meanwhile the rest of the industry was scurrying to catch up with us. Does that have an impact on what we do? Of course it does. We have to remain competitive on all aspects including features, quality and price.

However the example I just gave to you is fairly recent, ie there were no competing cards (that I recall) released at IBC 2004 and yet we not only introduced new products but lowered our prices as well. The Kona 2 card was not released until December 2004/January 2005 as I recall.

In March 2004, we dropped the DeckLink card to $295 after updating the manufacturing plant and finding we could make them more quickly. I don’t recall any other new cards coming out around then. They usually come out at NAB or IBC. There was no compelling pressure to drop the price on the card but, from out point of view, there was no point leaving it at the higher price when we knew we now had the ability to make it at a lower price. Amazingly some people even complained about that price drop too from either $595 or $695 (I can’t remember which) to $295.

[mkramden] “So even if prices dropped some in that frame time, and you are still able to make money at $599, then you were gouging at $1999. You can’t have it both ways.”

And nor can you. As I have already pointed out, the price drop was $500 and it has taken another year to drop that far. Your facts are wrong and your tone is harsh.

In summary, our pricing has been strategic since we first introduced the original DeckLink card at a tenth of the price of our closest competitor at the time. When we introduced the first PCI-X card for HD capture, it was only $1995 whereas the nearest competitor was again over $10,000. We always want to be competitive and it is never more than 6 months to the next NAB or IBC show and we often like to hold announcements of new products, software updates and price reductions until these shows. To do otherwise would not make any sense.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi TK,

We tested cross conversion with a 720p/23.98 Varicam easy setup to output from one Mac and used a 1080i/59.94 easy setup to capture on another Mac and that worked fine (on a G5/2.7 GHz DP), even though it is not officially supported.

In the readme file, it states that the new drivers support “HD cross conversion from 720p/59.94 and 720p/60 to 1080i rates, on playback, with all DeckLink HD cards.” So the source must be 720p and the destination must be 1080i.

We only officially support 720p/59.94 and 720p/60 to 1080i rates because this works well in FCP without manual intervention. Many other rates also work but FCP sometimes needs some manual coaxing and so we don’t claim to support any rate.

HD 720p/59.94 to NTSC down conversion is what we’ve implemented at this time and that’s what we’ve documented in the DeckLink 5.1 Readme file and (as of yesterday) in the support note Down conversion with DeckLink cards.

In other words we don’t officially support 720p/23.98 to NTSC but it might be possible in an update and I’ll request that as it seems like a good idea.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Kristian tested cross converting 720P 23.98 DVCPRO HD to 1080P 23.98 and it worked fine 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi TK,

I’ll see if we can test this tomorrow. In theory it could work however part of it comes down to how FCP will handle the conversion. We know that we can cross-convert many more formats than are listed in the DeckLink Readme file. However FCP does not always handle it gracefully without some manual help so we have only mentioned the formats that work without manual intervention.

Out of interest, what would be the source of 720p/23.98?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Felix,

I’m not at work at the moment and so can’t test this but will check it out on Monday and get back to you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi John

Thanks for your kind words and your last comment about decks points out the irony of this thread. Traditionally all broadcast equipment was very expensive. If we kept our prices up, I’m sure that many people would complain. However every time we reduce prices, people also complain. Sometimes it’s tough to know how to keep everyone happy but if we’re going to receive complaints about something, it might as well be because we’ve dropped our prices again 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design