[Luke Maslen]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your post and this is correct 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.

BTW, we recommend Mac OS X 10.3.8 but not Mac OS X 10.3.9 for use with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and DeckLink 4.8 drivers. Hopefully you won’t have any issues but, if you do, consider reverting to Mac OS X 10.3.8.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

This might be 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.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chemix,

We have a short list of Audio Monitoring Options with DeckLink. The Flying Cow convertor is another option which you could use with your existing equipment.

I would advise against a sound card as that would add latency so that your video and audio would be out of sync.

Because you have fast dual-processor G5 with PCI-X, the DeckLink SP will be able to downconvert your HDV material to SD for output to your Betacam SP and DVCAM decks. Just use a Blackmagic HDTV 1080/50i HDV easy setup in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 and play the video. The DeckLink SP is a standard definition card so it will automatically downconvert and output the video as uncompressed PAL video. You can use the DeckLink PrefPane in the System Preferences to choose between letterbox and anamorphic down conversion.

Alternatively if you are wanting to apply RT effects, or mix your HDV material with DV material on the same timeline, you would do well to use the down conversion in your HDV camera to output PAL DV. Capture this directly on to a PAL DV timeline in FCP and then you can mix it with any other PAL DV clips. Edit and apply any effects that you want and then output to tape via the component analog outputs of the DeckLink SP using the Blackmagic PAL DV easy setup.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

This might be 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.

In regards to playing out sound from anything else including iTunes, open your System Preferences and click on Sound and the click the Output tab. Select DeckLink Audio and all sound, including system beeps, will be outputted through the DeckLink card.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bryan,

Thank you for your comprehensive notes and screenshot which I think provides the clue to the weird problem.

Your screenshot shows an interface from a very old set of drivers, possibly DeckLink 4.4. If that is the interface that is showing up when you install the DeckLink 5.0 drivers, then clearly something is going wrong for the old interface to be displayed. My guess is that there is some caching issue which is causing this.

When the DeckLink HD Pro Single Link was first released, we had not advertized composite analog video output support and this feature was added later. The fact that the DeckLink 5.0 drivers are not showing the option to select composite output adds further weight to the idea that some cached information is causing this problem. This is a real possibility as Mac OS X caches driver information, and PrefPane information, to make it quicker to load.

The older DeckLink 4.x drivers are not built for Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 and so that is why video output would fail with in FCP even though you get a desktop output.

So here are a few things to do. Firstly, can you please confirm you are using an Admin account? This should not be necessary but should guarantee that any changes you make will be accepted. By contrast, a “Managed” account with “Some Limits” might not allow you to make changes to preferences.

Secondly, using the latest DeckLink 5.0 disk image, use its uninstaller to remove the DeckLink drivers. Then install the DeckLink 5.0 drivers again. Make sure you do this while logged in to an Admin account. This should help to force various caches in Mac OS X to update so that you no longer see legacy interfaces and options.

Please let me know how you go.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Beak,

Reseating is definitely a good idea although I would think that shouldn’t be necessary unless the Mac was bumped. You might also disconnect the breakout cable and then firmly reattach it.

Given you haven’t done any software updates in some months, I agree that you shouldn’t change the software at all until this problem is overcome.

I think that testing with one of the other cards will quickly provide you with an answer as to whether the current card is malfunctioning. That is my suspicion at the moment so it will be great to hear the results of your testing when you get a chance.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Troy,

The DeckLink Windows driver support is really very good now. We started off on Mac OS X and so the Mac drivers were more tried and tested than the Windows drivers for some while. However we were always aiming for feature parity and stability of both Mac and Windows drivers. There will always be differences between the two platforms but the drivers now provide a very similar experience on both platforms.

In regards to dropped frames, uncompressed video is demanding and many PC users have only been used to DV in the past and tried to avoid having to upgrade their PC’s and disk arrays to match our recommendations as we always specified high end machines. However you really cannot compromise with uncompressed video and so we inevitably hear from people with dropped frames whose systems just are not fast enough. The good news is that we recently added a couple of Dual Core systems to our Windows minimum system requirements. These machines are quite inexpensive and yet are perfectly adequate for standard definition uncompressed video and you can use up to 4 SATA disks internally to form a disk arrray which has a fast benchmark of around 260 MB/sec! So now there is really no reason why price should be an issue with these machines as they are great value for money and perfect for editing standard defintion video on Windows XP.

In regards to problems with fields, the only thing of which I can think is that they were referring to PAL DV field issues.PAL DV field issues. That’s an issue for both Mac and Windows as the PAL DV standard is messed up and you can find information about that in the Premiere Pro caveats technical note. Indeed this note will let you know about any of the odd things you might bump in to with Premiere.

Having said that, there is no DV easy setup in Blackmagic Deck Control so you should not encounter any field issues in PAL. I would like to see some new features added to Blackmagic Deck Control but it has the basic features that you have specified and is a mature utility which just works.

The HP XW8200 is also a great machine and we use it here for SD and HD video. Obviously it costs more than the Dual Core machines but if you are going to work with a DeckLink HD series card, then it is a very good choice and is on our list of supported systems.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bryan,

I just double-checked with my DeckLink HD Pro Single Link card and it definitely offers a choice of composite or component output for SD and I don’t know why you don’t have that option too.

I would like to check a couple of things.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Duncan,

That’s weird.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rupert,

The answer to this is buried in the DeckLink Readme file.

To enable Voice Over Tool, you need to follow a similar procedure to DV, and use the following settings. Use the Displays menu (page 13 of the DeckLink Macintosh v2 manual) to set the DeckLink desktop to the same format as the video source, eg. NTSC 720 x 486. Next in the View menu of Final Cut Pro HD, set External Video to “Off”. When finished with the Voice Over Tool, set External Video to “All Frames” to use the broadcast monitor.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design