[Luke Maslen]

Hi Alex,

The current RT effects are for standard definition and hopefully we’ll be able to add high definition RT effects support in the future. We have RT effects in both DV and uncompressed timlines.

The DV-based real time effects in Premiere Pro 1.5 are built into the application itself, so when editing in this mode, RealTime Effects supported by the Adobe render engine are supported via the Blackmagic outputs.

The following dual-stream transitions are supported for uncompressed SD realtime playback in Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5; Cross dissolve, Additive dissolve and Dip-to-Black dissolve.

See Achieving realtime transitions with uncompressed clips for more information.

You can also perform hardware down conversion with the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card in Windows XP and you can find information about that in the support note Software and hardware down conversion with DeckLink cards.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Wrangler,

I’m not sure why you are having this problem. If you have Photoshop 7 or CS installed, please try using the Blackmagic Photoshop plug-in and you can find the details in the support note Capturing Still Images in Adobe Photoshop. Does this work or does it encounter the same problem?

It sounds as though there might be a reference problem and it would be worth reviewing the support note How to sync a deck with a DeckLink card as I think this might solve your problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

I’m glad you figured it out. Just for the record in case any one is searching for the answer in future, we can do framebuffer support in Combustion, and you get full speed RAM playback. It

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Adam,

DeckLink cards support 24psf in HDTV1080 but not SD so I would recommend that you use HDTV1080, ie 1920 x 1080. We do also support HDTV720p/24 but that is a Varicam frame rate in Final Cut Pro and probably is not what you want to use.

In regards to codecs, the DeckLink 5.0 drivers use the Apple codecs in Final Cut Pro 5.0. We no longer install the Blackmagic codecs as Apple now have HD support in their 4:2:2 codecs. Accordingly you could capture your files to 8 or 10-bit uncompressed codecs and the quality will be fantastic but it will use up a lot of disk space.

You could use one of the Blackmagic HDTV1080/24psf JPEG easy setup for your captures and the files will be very small the the quality surprisingly good. However Apple’s PhotoJPEG codec does not support Apple’s RT Extreme effects at full resolution and so this codec might or might not be suitable for you.

You should definitely check out the DVCPRO HD codec and you can use a Blackmagic HDTV1080/24psf DVCPRO HD easy setup for your captures. The quality is fantastic and DVCPRO HD does support RT Extreme effects. Of course, as with any compressed codec, it will suffer generational loss if you perform renders and use it with effects. However there is a good chance this will be the codec for you. The files are bigger than JPEG but are still very efficient and much smaller than uncompressed video.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi George,

Yes, as far as I can tell, the MultiBridge Studio does everything and more than the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 can do. Was there any specific feature in particular that you want me to check out?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

The DeckLink drivers use the Apple 8-bit codec in standard definition in both DeckLink 4.x and 5.0 drivers. The easy setup in Final Cut Pro HD will mention Blackmagic but we invoke Apple’s codecs for capture and playback.

All DeckLink cards use the Television standard sample rate of 48 kHz and 24 bit. However QuickTime only supports 16 bit so any movie that you capture via DeckLink on a Mac will have audio set to 48 kHz and 16 bit. The difference between 16-bit and 24-bit is related to the quality of the audio sampling but has no relation to audio levels. You should not need to change your audio levels between the Avid and Apple systems. I’m not sure why you are seeing an audio difference. How are you transferring the movies from the Avid system to the Apple system? For example, are you rendering the Avid movies to an Apple or Blackmagic codec or are you outputting via SDI and recapturing via the DeckLink card?

The DeckLink 5.0 drivers support up to 12 channels of audio capture and playback via HD-SDI. Standard definition cards support up to 8 channels of audio capture and playback via SD-SDI. If you want to reduce the number of captured audio channels, please refer to the support note 2 channel stereo capture in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Wynn,

[Wynn Winberg] “when I go to 1080i it won’t go any faster then 30HZ. I need it to go 60HZ – yes? What do you suppose is preventing that from happening?”

Please provide some details of what you are doing on the Mac to output a frame rate higher than 30 Hz and what you see that leads you to believe that it won’t go any faster then 30Hz.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Michael,

Yes, there are several advantages with the PCI Express (PCIe) solution. The Multibridge with PCIe will include DVI-D monitoring output so you can just use an LCD display, such as an Apple Cinema HD display, to monitor your output. It is a dual-link DVI-D output so it will work even with the 30″ displays which require dual-link DVI-D as well as smaller 23″ displays which only require single-link DVI-D. You will even be able to monitor 2K output! Another benefit is that the PCIe units will have a PCIe connection to your motherboard so you won’t need a seperate DeckLink card. This will free up 2 or 4 of the SDI connections on your Multibridge which you could use with other equipment such as a HDCAM SR in 4:4:4 mode. There are a bunch of other new features in the new units but these are a couple of the ones that immediately spring to mind. It’s nice that monitoring is built-in as standard.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

Thank you for your comprehensive reply. Are you able to borrow any model of DeckLink card and try it in place of the one you are using now? Even a replacement DeckLink SP would do. It doesn’t matter if the card is a base model DeckLink which only has SDI output as you just need to test the SDI playback of the card. If another card shows the same problems, the the problem is not with the DeckLink SP card. If the other card does not show problems, then it seems likely that the problem is with the SDI output of the DeckLink SP. However I would be surprised if such a problem only occurred on playback. I would expect it to happen during both capture and playback so I am puzzled.

You mentioned that your only PCI cards are the ATI graphics card and the DeckLink SP card. Presumably that means you are not using a SCSI or Fibre Channel card for a disk array? If so, maybe your problem is related to using uncompressed 8 or 10 bit files on the internal hard disk of your G4. If that is your only option for storage, please try capturing using a Blackmagic NTSC or PAL JPEG easy setup and then play back the video. Does it suffer from the same problem? If not, then the issue is most likely related to the lack of a disk array. However if the problem continues, then disks are not the source of your problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Grant,

Sorry no one got back to you at the time but thank you for posting the solution to your problem as that might help someone else with a “late night panic”. It’s great when answers to problems are posted here by people who have worked it out themselves. It’s really valuable to be able to search this forum for similar problems and even more valuable to find the solutions!

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design