[Luke Maslen]

Hi Thomas,

There is really only one choice for your needs. I would recommend you capture with the DVCPRO HD codec. It will capture and playback to a single 7200rpm disk without problems and this Apple codec also supports RT Extreme effects.

You could down convert to DV but I would recommend you try using DVCPRO HD as the quality of this compressed codec is stunning and it is nice to be able to work with a HD workflow without having to offline in SD and recapture the media in HD.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Argot,

[Argotmedia] “i always find that upon Printing To Tape from the timeline, the video result (using PAL AVI format) is lipsync after 9 minutes.”

Please review the technial note named Video increasingly lags behind audio in Premiere Pro and let me know if you think this might be the answer to your problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Uwe,

I haven’t had a Dell monitor to test but, given that several people here have posted that it works fine with the HDLink, it should work fine with the Multibridge Extreme and Multibridge Studio.

It sounds as though you have opened a topic which invokes stong opinions from owners of the different monitors 🙂 It also sounds as though you have received some great information from this thread. Thanks to all who have contributed.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for all your help too.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Francois,

Can you please try running the Uninstaller first and then reinstall the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers?

The fact that the Blackmagic Easy Setups did not appear in the Final Cut Pro HD menu after installation suggests one of two possibilities:

1. You are running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.x. The DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers are designed for use with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and the Blackmagic easy setups will not appear in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.x. If you are running Final Cut Pro HD 5, download the latest DeckLink 5.0 installer and then run its Uninstaller before installing the latest drivers.

2. There may be some problem with the Final Cut Pro preferences file which caches the information about which easy setups are present. Running the Uninstall Blackmagic DeckLink utility and then installing the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers should help to avoid such a problem. If this still doesn’t work, run a permissions repair with Disk Utility and then run the Uninstall Blackmagic DeckLink utility and then reinstall the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers again.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

I’m a big fan of “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it!” If your system is working fine, then that’s great and I would suggest that you keep using it as is unless you encounter problems.

We have received numerous customer reports of problems with Mac OS X 10.3.9 whereas Mac OS X 10.3.8 seems very stable. The reports regarding Mac OS X 10.3.9 seem eratic in nature but many of them relate to audio problems which do not occur with Mac OS X 10.3.8 and Mac OS X 10.4.x. There are also other more general problems unrelated to DeckLink such as the inability to log in to managed user accounts in Mac OS X 10.3.9.

If all is working fine for you, stick with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and only consider downgrading to Mac OS X 10.3.8 if you are encountering problems.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Roddy,

FCP calculates the required free disk space based upon whether capture is using photo JPEG or DV. JPEG size is variable whereas DV is fixed. That being the case, FCP makes a conservative estimate for JPEG based upon the largest frame size and there is currently no workaround for avoiding this. We have previously talked with Apple about this and believe the bug should be fixed in the future but I will remind them about that.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

[David Healy] “I’ve been referred here, seems I won’t be able to monitor in RT what I’m doing on a external monitor.”

DeckLink cards will enable you to monitor in RT what you are doing on an external monitor. The one exception to this is that you cannot monitor HDV video that you are capturing via Firewire and we have documented that in a support note named HDV capture preview missing in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0

[David Healy] “Evidently Blackmagic has what I need, a video card and another piece of hardware to interface between the card (the card goes in the G5) and the Sony LMD171WS monitor. Have I got that right?”

This sounds as though someone is suggesting that you use the DeckLink capture card along with the external HDLink convertor which you can find at the HDLink product page. The HDLink will take the uncompressed SDI video signal from the DeckLink card and convert it to DVI-D which you can then connect to the Sony LMD171WS.

The Sony LMD171WS monitor has a resolution of 1280 X 768 pixels. Unless you are working in HDTV720p (1280 x 720), this display will not be big enough for your needs. If you are working in HDTV1080 (1920 x 180), you will need a different display to support the higher resolution.

As a general rule, you will need a 23″ display as many 23″ displays support 1920 x 1200 which is big enough to display every pixel in a 1920 x 1080 image. I know Sony have had such screens in the past but I can’t find one that supports 1920 x 1080 on their site at the moment. Sony, HP and Apple all make 1920 x 1200 LCD displays with DVI-D input which would be suitable for this work.

Good luck 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Paul,

Gary’s response is probably the answer to your question. Regardless of whether that helps or not, you might like to update to the latest drivers for use with Panther and Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. They are the DeckLink 4.8.1 drivers which we released yesterday and you can download them from the software downloads page. Installing this software will delete your Final Cut Preferences file. Deleting this file is a common remedy for miscellaneous odd occurences in Final Cut Pro so if Gary’s suggestion doesn’t work out, installing the new drivers would be a good next step.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sean,

I’m glad to see you are looking at DeckLink cards. The DeckLink SP will enable you to connect to analog hardware via either component or composite analog video (not S-video). It also includes XLR analog audio connections. In addition, DeckLink SP provides an SDI monitoring output (video + audio) which you could use with an SDI monitor or for output to an SDI-equippped deck.

If you need to connect to some SDI (digital) and some analog decks, then the DeckLink Extreme would be worth considering as it includes both kinds of connections.

Having said that, all your work appears to be via Firewire and I’m not sure that you even need a capture card. Presumably you were using the Matrox card for previewing on a broadcast monitor after capturing material via Firewire and you could certainly do that with the DeckLink card. DeckLink cards do not use Firewire but Firewire PCI cards cost as little as US$30 (eg LaCie 3 Port FireWire PCI Card) and you can use one of those for DV capture and playback.

You should also be able to capture and output to the DSR-20 deck via uncompressed composite analog video but I don’t think that would be worthwhile as you would lose quality with the compression/decompression cycles between uncompressed and DV as well as going from DV to composite analog and back again.

The current Multibridge SD includes a DeckLink Plus card so you don’t have to buy a DeckLink card. The Multibridge does the conversion between analog-digital and digital-analog and should connect to your DVD and VHS VCR. The DeckLink Plus allows you to capture and playback the digitized material from these analog devices. The Multibridge SD will enable you to connect to a whole range of SDI and analog hardware. It has more inputs and outputs than any one DeckLink card and is a great solution when making the transition from analog workflows to digital and back again.

The new Multibridge units with PCI Express have many addtional features and will not use a DeckLink card. They will instead plug straight in to the PCI Express slot of a computer which keeps the price down. They might be more than you need for now unless you are moving to HD and a DeckLink SP or DeckLink Extreme might be perfectly adequate for your needs.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design