Luke Maslen
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Samuel,
That’s a funny way of looking at history because it has always been Blackmagic Design which has brought down the price of products in this market and our competitors are the ones who have had to follow our lead. As I mentioned to Mike Jackson in this thread, we’ve recently had to switch components on three of our DeckLink HD card models and are now able to pass on cost savings to customers, including on the 4:4:4 card which offers top quality but at a fraction of the price of our competitors. Meanwhile we are also working hard on bringing the next generation of Multibridges to market and these should be available soon despite a number of very frustrating delays.
We’ve never “raped” anyone on cost and that really is unfair and unkind. Just take a look at the history of our products and the price points at which they were introduced and what our competitors were charging at the time. You will consistently find that we always came in at a much lower price and then continued to support and add features to these products. We’re still adding features in our software for the original DeckLink cards and even the Kona SD, years after they were released.
In regards to the DeckLink Pro, it is a 10-bit SDI card. It can capture and playback uncompressed 10-bit to a Digibeta and it also includes SDI monitoring so you can use it with an SDI monitor and you will see perfect 10-bit monitoring. The DeckLink Pro also includes analog monitoring and has done so since it was introduced some years ago. The analog monitoring output is 8-bit and the quality is great particularly when you think that this card was first released some years ago when 8 bit was the standard and people often forget that. Our newer cards include the newer technologies and the DeckLink HD Pro 4:2:2 is now only $995 and not only supports 10-bit SDI and HD-SDI but also includes 14 bit analog video monitoring which switches automatically between standard definition and high definition, which is great for CRT monitoring. 14 bit absolutely guarantees that there can be no banding in the analog monitoring output and you can still have banding with 10 bit analog output so there wasn’t much point making a more expensive 10-bit analog output when banding could still appear.
So I hope this explains why we have used the technologies that we have at the time that we have. Time moves on and it is always easy to make a product today that uses the latest technologies that are often cheaper than they used to be. The new Multibridges with PCIe are very complex to develop but if you get a chance to see them at IBC, you will be amazed by their quality and we hope to have these available soon.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Mike,
I understand where you’re coming from and, every time we’ve ever dropped prices on our cards, we’ve heard from happy customers who were just about to buy a card and of course unhappy customers who recently bought a card and wished that they had bought at the new lower price.
Similarly, every time we have ever dropped prices, people make comparisons with other companies and what they do. The software model is often mentioned where customers who have purchased in the past X days would receive a rebate. Then the hardware model is mentioned where computer manufacturers don’t seem to provide rebates to customers who purchased X days ago.
In this case, the manufacturer of the main chip on these models of cards announced that they were discontinuing the chip but that they had a new one to replace it. So we’ve recently switched over to manufacturing the cards with the new component and have subsequently announced the lower prices at IBC. This is something that happens from time to time as suppliers discontinue some components and replace them with newer models. The final result is a card that looks and works the same as before although we have to spend a lot of engineering time programming and testing the new components to work with our cards. The DeckLink HD model uses a different chip and was unaffected by this change.
All electronic hardware depreciates in cost over time and trade shows are well know as times when new products may be released or announced and price reductions might or might not happen. When buying any electronic hardware for work, the question is whether it is suitable for the job you need to do and whether it will pay for itself. If the answers to both questions are Yes, then whatever happens next in a few days, weeks or months will not affect the original purchasing decision. The last time we dropped prices, we had a customer contact us stating that he had purchased a DeckLink HD card 12 months earlier and wanted to know how he could receive a rebate for the new price! Obviously that is an extreme example but the point is that someone will always miss out regardless of whether you choose to have a transition period or not or whether you set it to a week, 3 months or a year.
We’ve always prided ourselves on making great products at affordable prices when released and often we’ve been able to reduce the cost over time. We like to pass on these savings to our customers particularly when component prices have been reduced by our suppliers.
Multibridge with PCIe is close but there have been some extremely frustrating delays. Let me give you an example. We are using a new power supply which plugs in to the Multibridges with a nice, firm connector. We tested a small batch and, having found them to be great, ordered several hundred more. However the new ones, which were the same brand and model number, had a different size of plug which would not fit in to the power socket! We couldn’t believe it and the supplier is telling us that it may be several weeks to correct this problem and send us power supplies which are the same as what we tested. This kind of thing happens all the time with all sorts of components but the power supply example is the easiest one to explain.
You mentioned the PCI-X to PCIe bridge card and stated that it is “not a priority” for us. Nothing could be further from the truth and I am happy to tell you about that because it is another source of frustration. We’ve been developing that card for months but eventually found that the bridge chip contained bugs that could not be worked around. We reported that back to the suppliers of the bridge chip and they have told us that it is a complex matter and could take another 2 months to resolve! That’s the bad news. The slightly good news is that whereas that was the only source of such bridge chips when we started developing the bridge card, there are now some new chips from other suppliers that are about to enter the market. So if the original chip doesn’t work out, we will pursue options with the new chips.
I hope this provides you with some idea of what is going on and sometimes when developing this next generation of products it all seems to hard and it would be easier to just do another variation on an existing card and add a few extra features. However we’ve found that to add the extra features that we want, while conforming to SMPTE standards, there just isn’t enough space inside a computer to add everything we want to do. So we’ll keep on doing simple capture cards as that’s easy but we really think the new Multibridges are important and will release them as soon as we are totally satisfied that they are ready.
[Mike Jackson] “Add to that my constant frustration with the rarely mentioned secret weakness of the single-link card, the software (rather than hardware) downconversion.”
Huh? This is no weakness and we’ve never pretended that the single-link had hardware down conversion. That has only ever been advertised as a feature of the dual-link card. Aside from the fact that this is covered in the specifications page for DeckLink HD cards on our web site, it is also covered in great detail in the support note Software and hardware down conversion with DeckLink cards. On Monday I intend to update this technical note with the new information about what you can do with 720p down conversion and 720p to 1080i cross conversion and you can use both of these features with your DeckLink HD Pro 4:2:2 card.
What does concern me is that you say your card is choking on down conversion and that shouldn’t be happening. Can you please let us know what software versions you are trying and a little more about what equipment you are connecting to. Also are you trying to downconvert on capture or playback. This should definitely be resolvable as we’ve tested it on the same model of dual G5/2.7 as well as other models of G5’s including the dual G5/2.0 and it works fine for us. We should be able to help you resolve this problem so that you are happy with your DeckLink card.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for your feedback and we’ll check out the letterbox down conversion on Monday.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Jonathan,
Thanks for answering G
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Hi,
Apple do not support RT Extreme effects in PhotoJPEG at full TV-size resolutions. The hack described some days ago has the real potential to cause problems when updating Final Cut Pro HD and I would advise against it even though these effects are highly desirable. We continue to raise the question of RT Extreme effects in JPEG with Apple and hopefully it might happen one day, perhaps as processors become faster.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Steve,
I’m not familiar with the Wavecenter card but looked it up on the web and it appears to be a conventional PCI card and not PCI-X. Therefore you will want to keep it on an independant bus from the Decklink HD Pro 4:2:2 card which is PCI-X to avoid disabling the HD functionality of the DeckLink card.
If you are also using a SCSI, SATA or Fiber Channel HBA (host bus adapter) which is PCI-X, then place the WaveCenter in slot 4 and the HBA and DeckLink cards in slots 2 and 3. If you are not using a HBA card, or it is a conventional PCI card, then place Decklink HD Pro 4:2:2 in slot 4 and the WaveCenter and HBA cards in slots 2 and 3.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Skip,
I’m glad to hear you’ve purchased a DeckLink HD Pro card and would just encourage you to give it a try. We’re very happy that this forum is so active and would be alarmed if it was quiet. We regularly release new versions of drivers with new features or compatibility updates and that is one thing that generates more questions on this forum. We’ve also got a couple of new products that are due for release very shortly and they are also generating a lot of interest in this forum. We sell a large volume of both SD and HD DeckLink cards and naturally this leads to questions. We’re always happy to try to answer any questions you may have here. DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 has supported 4:4:4 for well over a year now so we have a mature technology which works well and I think you will be very happy with the quality.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Whit,
In relation to your HDLink audio noise problem, we’ve had a couple of reports of that but have not been able to replicate it in house. We would very much like to get hold of your unit for testing as it clearly exhibits the problem. Would you please either email or phone David Spoelstra on support-use@ blackmagic-design.com or 317-536-5684 to organize an RMA and a replacement unit.
It will also be useful to learn if the replacment unit resolves your peachy pixels issue.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Kevin,
We’re not immediately able to test this but hopefully will be able to by tomorrow. In the meanwhile, do you have an application such as Premiere Pro 1.5.1 or Vegas 6 with which you could test this. This would provide a useful comparison test.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Kurt and Drazen,
I wish you could see a day in the life of the development of Multibridge Extreme. It’s the most complex product we’ve ever developed and it is close as you will see if you happen to visit IBC.
Our engineers have been working flat out on the new Multibridges for months. The lead times for ordering some of the components are several months! However we’re used to this and do order components several months in advance but where things become difficult is if we find a problem with a component and a fix or alternative component has to be found and tested. This takes time.
You mentioned that it would be great if there could be time tables making transparent what/when will happen. However the timetables we receive from component suppliers change on a day to day basis and that is one of the big factors which makes it difficult to provide an accurate release date. While these potential sources of delay have always been a factor in the past, Multibridge is far more complex than any basic capture card as it includes the electronics for all kinds of conversions and the new models also provide capture/playback facilities. This degree of complexity does make it harder to accurately predict when the product will be released. We would like to have released it during the summer but that didn’t happen and we’re going to release it as soon as we can. However we want to do it right and ensure that the finished product works as expected and that there is no compromise on quality.
[Kurt Hennrich] “to come close to this, one has to add the best DecklinkHD card with existing Multibridge + HDLink”
The base model DeckLink HD is all that is required in conjunction with an exisiting Multibridge or HDLink.
[Kurt Hennrich] “the other bad news is that the PCIe bridge is not ready for delivery which will also add to the time a working system is available for current Mac users.”
Anyone on Mac or PC who is already working with SDI will simply be able to connect the SDI connections on the Multibridge to their existing capture card and take advantage of everything except for 2K playback as you cannot play 2K via HD-SDI in real time. That is where the fast bandwidth of PCIe helps as you can play 2K in real time via PCIe. At such a time as PCIe connectivity becomes available, and assuming your Mac or PC is fast enough, you should be able to play out 2K via the PCIe connection to Multibridge. In the meanwhile, you can use an existing HD-SDI card to capture and play out HDTV 1920 x 1080 video to the DVI-D output of the Multibridge Extreme and display on an LCD monitor.
[Kurt Hennrich] “it might be kind of disaster in financial and strategic business planing for users”
It is always wise to plan with existing shipping systems in mind. I would never rely upon any form of strategic planning based upon announced but unreleased products.
I hope this provides you with some of the clarity you would like to see. I realise it doesn’t give you a date but it does provide you with some of the variables in bringing the new Multibridges to market and why it is tricky to provide an exact date. I hope this helps and I hope you have a change to drop by the booth at IBC where more of your questions may be answered.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design