[Luke Maslen]

Hi Eli,

The latest Kona SD drivers are available from our web site. This same link also provides you with the latest information for using the Kona SD under Panther and Tiger and Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and 5.0. It’s a good idea to review the information to ensure that you are running compatible versions of Mac OS X, QuickTime, Final Cut Pro and the latest drivers for the Kona SD.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

Thanks for running the test and reporting your results.

[Dejwy] “In FCP5 10-bits clips freezes after short time (about 5 seconds) playing, 8-bit clips are played sometimes without problem, sometimes they freezes after 20-30 seconds.”

Was this test run while the Blackmagic drivers were still uninstalled? If so, this would help to narrow down the problem a lot and would be very helpful information.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Alvin,

Your deck has component analog video inputs and outputs and might also have an SDI option. If your deck does have SDI in and out, then you should use that as it is digital and will give you the best quality. This is not to be confused with the QSDI ports which you might find on the deck as this is a compressed digital format which we can’t use as DeckLink cards expect uncompressed video from the deck.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Alister,

[Alister Robbie] “Will the Decklink HD board capture from the HD-SDI input to the DVC-PRO HD Codec in realtime?”

Yes, this works fine in real time as does playback of DVCPRO HD. DVCPRO HD supports RT Extreme effects which may be something you will need.

[Alister Robbie] “will the board do real-time down-conversion of the incoming stream?”

Yes, any of our DeckLink HD series of cards will do this assuming you are working with a NTSC, NTSC 23.98 or PAL-compatible frame rate. This would be another option for you although DVCPRO HD will provide you with much more detail and you won’t have to worry about correct aspect ratios when moving between SD and HD.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Your system sounds fine expect for the Matrox graphics card which we do not recommend due to the number of problem reports we have received. Can you try another card such as one of the ones recommended on our web site?

It would also be a good idea to update to Windows XP with SP2.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rory,

I don’t know what’s causing this but it does sound like software given you can make the problem go away. I would suggest that you use one of the two currently recommended systems, ie:

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

Oi to you too 😉

We’re also very keen to release Multibridge Extreme and I’m hopeful we’ll see it within the next month. It’s a very complicated product to make and we’ve learnt a lot so we want to do it right before shipping it.

Both the Mutlbridge Extreme and Multibridge Studio can work just like DeckLink cards and output a stable black signal to enable the deck to lock to the DeckLink card, or in this case, lock to the Multibridge Extreme. The Multibridge Extreme and Studio can be regarded as being an external DeckLink card in a box and so they work just the same way.

Mutlbridge Extreme does not include a sync generator but almost all modern decks can sync with the black output from Blackmagic products so you usually don’t need a seperate blackburst generator.

Multibridge Studio does include a programmable reference sync generator with 4 outputs so you won’t need a seperate blackburst generator for it. You can use the black output feature or alternatively the built-in sync generator.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Ruairi,

The DeckLink HD series cards were designed to be used with a 100 or 133 MHz PCI-X bus and are unlikely to be compatible with a 66 MHz PCI-X bus for HD resolutions as that is just too slow. Furthermore, we don’t test with the 66 MHz PCI-X bus so I don’t know how good it might be for use even with SD video. For guaranteed reliability, I would suggest using a 64-bit PCI slot for SD video as we test with 64-bit PCI slots in addition to 100 and 133 MHz PCI-X slots as specified on the Windows minimum system requirements technical note. The exception to this is that 32-bit slots are fine in the Dual Core systems that we have tested.

This should help to send good video to HDLink. It would be nice if you could verify that everything is working fine with HDLink by hooking it up to another source, eg the SDI output of a HD deck.

Finally, good quality cables are always important and the cable you use for HD-SDI is also extremely important and so we’ve posted some cable recommendations in a technical note.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

Thanks for your praise and hopefully this will work for you but do let us know if you have any further questions about making this feature work.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Alister,

JPEG is a variable rate codec so it’s hard to give you a good number. However a test I have run was around 3.7 MB/sec compared with 14.5 MB/sec for DVCPRO HD. Having said that, DVCPRO HD quality is awesome and it also supports RT Extreme effects compared with JPEG in HD which looks good but not as good and which does not support RT Extreme. You can capture and play back JPEG and DVCPRO HD to a single drive using a dual-processor G5 with PCI-X. My 3G iPod is just fast enough to handle HD1080i/50 capture and playback which is just incredible given the quality. I would never use the iPod for serious DVCPRO HD work as it is only 4200 rpm whereas any decent Firewire drive should be 7200 rpm and be plenty fast enough for use with either JPEG or DVCPRO HD.

BTW, apparently there was a magazine article stating that you could use DeckLink HD series cards to capture HD1080 video to an iPod in the DVCPRO HD format. I’d just like to refute the claim that the iPod in question was loaded with bad quality 70’s rock… It was great rock 😉

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design