[Luke Maslen]

Hi Shane,

Thanks for this extra detail which sounds important in replicating the problem. I’ve asked our engineers to check this out and come back either with information or a fix as appropriate. We should have some news next week.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dave,

That is great news and once you receive the replacement card, you should have no problems using it with Mac OS X 10.3.8 and you can even use it with Tiger and the DeckLink 5.0 drivers. The Kona SD card acts just like any other DeckLink standard definition card when you use these drivers and you can find the latest Kona SD information in our support notes. The latest DeckLink drivers should keep your Kona SD working well on your new G5 and you can take advantage of the new features in Tiger, Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 and DeckLink 5.0 drivers when you feel like upgrading in the future.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bryan,

Woohoo! That’s great news 🙂 Thanks for letting me know as that was a weird one. Your excellent problem description plus screenshot were what allowed us to eventually work out the likely cause for your problem. It certainly caused some interesting discussion amongst the engineers here 🙂

Thanks for your great quality information and I guess the lesson to learn from this is that it is a really good idea to run the Uninstaller before installing new drivers. In theory that should not be necessary but it clearly helps avoid some weird caching issues and so is worth doing as it is only one extra step and there is no downside 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Kevin,

I don’t know but Matt will be back next week and hopefully he will have some answers for you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Nikei,

It’s always great to hear when someone is enjoying using the DeckLink products so thanks for letting us know.

DeckLink works great with Tiger and we’ve posted a technical note specifically about Tiger and also a list of minimum system requirements.

In summary we recommend the following software versions be used together: Mac OS X 10.4.2, Final Cut Pro HD v5.0.2, QuickTime 7.0.1 and DeckLink v5.0 drivers.

Have fun with Tiger 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Michael,

[Michael] “I

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Mark,

Yes, all DeckLink cards support HDV down conversion on a supported system. Further details regarding down conversion capabilities are available from the technical note Software and hardware down conversion with DeckLink cards.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Claus-Peter,

Matt’s the man with the information about the next update to the DeckLink Windows drivers and he will return to the office next week so we should know more then.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Yves,

I don’t have a direct answer to your question but Matt has more information on this and previously made the comment that he wants to improve the PAL DV behavior in Premiere Pro in the next update. Matt will be back next week and will be looking in to it then so an update should not be far away.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Patrick,

[Patrick McLoad] “VERY Interesting, and many thanks for the reply!!!! That actually fixed the problem and I can now hear the audio while in log and capture in FCP (as well as see the video in the monitor). You are a genius!! I would have never ever ever ever found that!”

This is normal behavior if you are using the DeckLink card to generate a sync signal for the deck during capture. Please check the technical note How to sync a deck with a DeckLink card and specifically note the section named “Audio monitoring issues”. You will note further down in the technical note, it mentions the following.

If you wish to monitor audio while capturing video from a deck, then you will need to use a blackburst generator to keep your video in sync. Disable the option “Black Video Output to Deck in Capture” and make sure you choose the “auto” or “external” reference setting on your deck.

The DeckLink PDF manual also briefly covers this point but the technical note is more informative.

[Patrick McLoad] “I still need to find a solution to the output. Seems my only two output choices is SD 16:9 letterbox and 16:9 anamorphic. Sure wish there was a 3rd choice for 4:3.”

HDTV uses square pixels for display as does your computer monitor. SDTV uses rectangular pixels for display which is different to your computer monitor.

HDLink is primarily designed for display of HDTV. It uses square pixels and maps them perfectly, pixel for pixel, on to the screen.

HDLink can also be used for SDTV monitoring but there are some technicalities related to the fact that HDLink is displaying square pixels whereas standard definition uses rectangular pixels and that is why your circles may display egg-shaped.

Here’s some more in-depth information. HDLink is doing what it is supposed to do, ie displaying pixel for pixel on screen as LCD monitors use square pixels. The NTSC frame size of 720 x 486, and the PAL frame size of 720 x 576, are not in the 4:3 format and so the image appears to be somewhat squashed when displayed on screen, particularly with NTSC material. Accordingly, there are two things we are doing to help standard definition users:
1. The latest HDLink Utility posted on the Support page of our web site includes stretching to display a 16:9 anamorphic standard definition correctly. The use of stretching means that pixel for pixel mapping is no longer possible, as that is the nature of LCD displays, but the result still looks very good.
2. We are currently investigating the possibility of adding a 4:3 mode to force standard definition to be displayed in the 4:3 aspect ratio as this would solve your problem. As with 16:9, this involves the use of stretching and so cannot be true pixel for pixel mapping. I cannot guarantee this feature will be added to the HDLink but it is something we would like to do if we can.

Different kinds of technology are designed for different purposes. LCD monitors provide perfect pixel for pixel display of HDTV but stretching and scaling is required to display SDTV at either 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratios. We’ve received a lot of requests for 16:9 SD and that is now implemented in the driver update on our web site. We’ve received very few requests for 4:3 mode in HDLink and this probably means that most HDLink owners are using it for HDTV. There are a number of new features we would like to add to HDLink and we will investigate adding 4:3 SD over the coming few months as part of any feature upgrade.

If you want to do some testing, open any bitmap paint program, other than Photoshop CS, and then draw a circle. Now drag it out on to the LCD monitor attached to HDLink and it will remain circular as both the computer monitor, and your LCD monitor, are displaying square pixels. However, if you have a conventional SDI monitor, or a card or adapter which provides analog monitoring, you will find the circle becomes an ellipse when you drag it on to the broadcast monitor.

For this very reason, Photoshop CS gives you some extra options when creating a new document. Specifically, it enables you to choose between square pixels and pixels appropriate for NTSC or PAL.

By selecting options for NTSC or PAL, you can guarantee that a circle drawn in Photoshop CS will indeed appear as a circle on your broadcast monitor. Launch Photoshop CS and choose to create a new document. Select a NTSC or PAL preset. As you can see from the following screenshot, the Pixel Aspect Ration is set to something other than “square”.

When you are working in Photoshop CS, the circle on your monitor will output as a circle on your broadcast monitor. However if you go to the View menu and disable the “Photoshop Pixel Aspect Ratio Correction” option, the circle will appear on your computer monitor as an ellipse.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design