[Luke Maslen]

Hi Adrian,

It’s great to hear what you like about PC-based decklink systems. FCP does not currently have the ability to mix DV with uncompressed clips on the same timeline and play in real time without rendering. However it can mix a number of other formats but this is largely and undocumented feature and capabilities seem to vary depending on the power of the machine being used.

We’ve got more features planned for the DeckLink Windows drivers and I hope you’ll enjoy what comes next 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your great information and also your comments regarding the picture quality of DeckLink SD cards. It’s always great to hear when people are happy with the quality 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Given you have PCI-X in your G5, it will be fine. You can capture to a range of compressed formats including DV, DV50 and PhotoJPEG for offline work in addition to uncompressed 8 and 10-bit formats. One of the quickest ways of transcoding your Avid files would be to play them out of your Avid system and capture them with the DeckLink Extreme. If your Avid system is also SDI, then the quality should be perfect as it will be a digital to digital connection without the introduction of any analog noise.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Steve,

We’ve received a few requests to make the ports switchable and, given a spare moment, we will see if we can implement that as it would be a nice feature to include. At the moment the Multibridge engineers are working on the next generation of firmware and software to add support for the new Multibridge models. However once they are shipping there should be a common software platform running on all Multibridges and we will see if they can make the ports switchable. We won’t know until we try but I remain optimistic that it can be done in the existing Multibridge.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robb,

I’m a little confused and need to clarify some points before I can provide any suggestions.

[Robb Stan] “All the system would have to do is capture DVC Pro footage via firewire at 8 bit SD uncompressed resolution”

This confuses me. If you capture DVC Pro footage via firewire, Final Cut Pro HD will capture it in the compressed DVC Pro format using one of Apple’s easy setups. If you use a DeckLink Extreme to capture from the SDI or analog outputs of your DVC Pro deck, then you can choose to capture it in various formats including 8 or 10-bit uncompressed, DV, DV50 (DVCPRO 50) and PhotoJPEG. However there would be little point in capturing via the analog or SDI outputs only to save to a DV50 timeline as this would involve decompression and recompression of the video leading to unnecessary degradation of the video. If you want to work in the DV50 format, then capture it via Firewire from the deck. If you then want to output to output to a Digibeta or Betacam SP, you can then use a Blackmagic DV50 easy setup to output to deck via the SDI or component analog outputs.

[Robb Stan] “(1) Is the Apple uncompressed 8 bit SD codec compatible with the Black Magic 8 bit codec?”

We have a detailed technical note regarding the various 8 bit codecs. The short version is that the Blackmagic and Apple 8-bit codecs are written to the same standard and therefore are compatible, ie files captured with one codec can be used with the other codec.

Beginning with the DeckLink 5.0 drivers which we use on Tiger with Final Cut Pro HD 5, we no longer include our own codecs and have standardized on Apple’s codecs for simplicity. So we simply use the Apple 8-bit uncompressed codec in all cases in Final Cut Pro HD 5 and you don’t even have to consider compatibility issues.

[Robb Stan] “(2) If the media is captured on a G-Raid will the project and captured media files be compatible with the G5, FCP 5, and Tiger.”

Yes.

[Robb Stan] “(3) What operating system should I install on the G4?”

The G4/1 GHz DP is a little under our recommended specifications for Final Cut Pro 5 with Tiger but may be fine as we did not have such a machine to test when compiling our recommendations. recommended specifications. It is definitely fast enough for use with Mac OS X 10.3.8, Final Cut Pro 4.5 and the DeckLink 4.8 drivers. If you plenty of RAM in your G4, it would be worth trying with Tiger and Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Norman,

Please perform a capture in Blackmagic Deck Control rather than Premiere Pro. Use the Preferences in Deck Control to select an 8-bit NTSC or PAL easy setup. Then perform your capture. Do any errors or error messages occur using Deck Control or does the problem appear to be confined to Premiere Pro? This test will help verify that your machine is capable of capturing uncompressed video.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your praise regarding the web site. Which “normal” DeckLink card were you using which couldn’t play out HDV? Which model of HD card are you now using which works? You shouldn’t need a HD card to play out HDV but I’m glad it works for you 🙂

While a faster machine will always perform better, we have been tracking comments regarding RT performance in FCP5 and have been running some tests ourselves to provide Apple with some definitive information. It may be that performance can be improved with some software updates.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Baz,

Thank you for posting your problem and solution. That is very useful information for anyone running a 2 disk SATA array. If more disks had been RAID’ed together, you would not have noticed this problem but your solution is equally valid and clearly overcame the problem. Thanks for posting the solution and I have created a technical note including your solution named Video increasingly lags behind audio in Premiere Pro 🙂

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Arne,

Technically this should be possible but I’m not aware of any software which performs this function at this time. I haven’t had a chance to play with Motion 2.0 much but it wouldn’t surprise me if it could help with this. Other readers of this forum might have some more concrete ideas for you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

If you’ve only had the card for 2 weeks, and now realize that it doesn’t suit your purposes, your reseller might consider taking it back and selling the DeckLink HD Pro for the price difference. There hasn’t been any change in the cost of cards so this could be easier now than at a time when there has been a price change. Resellers don’t have to take cards back but often they will within a week or two of the sale if you realize that the card is not appropriate.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design