[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

In Log & Capture, click on the Clip Settings tab and then look at the audio channels. Click on the green speaker icons next to the audio channels you wish to disable. They should change from bright green to dull green to indicate they have been disabled. This setting should remain when performing future captures.

Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and older did not support multi-channel audio capture and so you did not need to do this in the past. Multi-channel audio capture is a new feature of FCP5 and is fully supported with the DeckLink 5.0 drivers.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

The 23″ display would be the way to go with HDLink and you can find this information in the technical note Does HDLink support the 30-inch Apple display? at https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=100.

In summary it says that you should use an Apple 23″ display for use with HD1080 video. HDLink is not designed to work with dual-link DVI-D displays such as the Apple 30″ display.

However the forthcoming Multibridge Extreme and Multibridge Studio includes both single-link and dual-link DVI-D support so you could use an Apple 30″ display with those new units. These new Multibridges plug in to a PCI Express slot whereas G5’s have PCI-X. Hopefully G5’s will have PCI Express soon but we’ve also been working on a PCI Express Bridge which plugs into any PCI-X 133 MHZ slot and adds a PCI Express connecter on the rear of the computer to connect to Multibridge.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Yes, I have a seemingly identical system to yours and the Kona SD is working fine here. In addition to the update to Mac OS X 10.4.2, please ensure you have also updated to QuickTime 7.0.1, Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 as well as the release version of the DeckLink 5.0 drivers from the support page of our web site.

Also ensure that the firmware and drivers for your SCSI card and disk array are up to date as this is often critical for use with new versions of Mac OS X.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

Firstly, I’m still not sure if you’ve updated to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 yet and this is very important. We were seeing some issues with dropped frames in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.0 which have been resolved with the update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2. Admittedly this behavior was in relation to HD video but for all I know, it might help with SD too.

Secondly, given your problem is weird, I would suggest that you don’t dismiss the possibility that something about your disk array and SCSI card could be a factor under Tiger and FCP5 even though it works fine in Panther with FCP 4.5. I’m running an ATTO UL4D with a U320 SCSI disk array but maybe ours is a different U320 disk array or maybe you need a firmware update to your disk array. Some of these issues only arise when working with newer versions of Mac OS X and it so it is best to set up a test to prove either way whether it might be a factor in your problem. The disk benchmark is an indication of performance but the test utility might not show up a problem which occurs when doing real work.

Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 requires Mac OS X 10.3.9 as a minimum. Unfortunately we’ve received many customer reports of problems with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and we recommend that it not be used with our drivers. It is an unsupported configuration and we have some notes about that at https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=86

My best guess at this point is that you might be running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.0 or 5.0.1 and need to update to 5.0.2. Alternatively your disk storage system might be playing up under Tiger and the tests mentioned in my previous post would still be worth considering.

Good luck 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

This is a strange problem. Can you please run Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and use it to test your Ultra 320 RAID. It does seem as though there is some problem with disk speeds and the particular UL4D card you are using.

Here’s one thing that might be happening to you. I remember failing to install the UL4D drivers and yet the U320 disk array still worked but slowly. It turns out that there is some level of native SCSI support in Mac OS X and because the disk array mounts, it is easy to overlook installing the UL4D drivers. I found a huge increase in performance after installing the latest UL4D drivers.

If you’ve done all that and it still doesn’t help, then would it be possible to use the Xserve RAID with the G5, at least as a test? The Xserve RAID is not as fast as a U320 RAID. If your problem goes away when using the Xserve RAID, then it would appear that something to do with the UL4D card and/or the disk array is causing your problem. If the problem still remains, then there is some more general problem which we will need to track down.

Please let me know how you go.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jarrod,

This is puzzling as I tested the combination of dual G5/2.0, Mac OS X 10.4.2, QuickTime 7.0.1, Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 and DeckLink 5.0 drivers with the Kona SD and it worked fine in both NTSC and PAL for 10-bit uncompressed. If you are only running Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 or 5.0.1, please update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 and try again.

Another thing to check is in Final Cut Pro HD’s menu, select View > External Video and make sure that “All Frames” is selected. If you are switching between Apple’s easy setups which use Firewire and Blackmagic easy setups which use SDI, then the external video may have switched off.

Finally, AJA recommend placing both the Kona SD and the UL4D (or UL3D-66) on the shared 100 MHz PCI-X bus of your G5. They suggest placing the Kona SD in slot 3 and ATTO SCSI card in slot 2. You can find this in their downloadable PDF configuration guide. It is also very important for the firmware and drivers for the ATTO card to be up to date. Old versions definitely cause problems with the G5’s and newer versions of Mac OS X, but the current ATTO firmware/driver versions are running fine.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chris,

Yes it is a problem but is not caused by DeckLink cards or software. Take a Tiger system without any Blackmagic software on it. Install Final Cut Pro HD v5.0 so that you’ve got the Apple uncompressed 422 codecs installed. Now try opening any Apple uncompressed 10-bit file and you will find various problems with full or partially black frames as well as other video anomalies. This purely appears to be a compatibility issue between Combustion and Tiger and/or QuickTime 7. That’s why other card manufacturers are finding the same problem.

The Combustion v3.0.4 Readme states that it has been tested with systems up to Mac OS X 10.3.5 and I can find no claims of Tiger compatibility on the Autodesk website. ftp://ftp1.discreet.com/web/support/combustion/ReadMe_mac_c3_0_4.htm

Combustion 4 for Mac has been announced and I would guess that it would add Tiger compatibility but I haven’t seen that stated anywhere.

We’ve updated the technical note on our web site as a result of this thread.
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=15

We will update it again when we receive a response to our bug report from Autodesk.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chris and Nick,

I eventually worked out how to get Combustion authorized (by setting the country to Singapore) and was then able to reproduce your problem.

The problem appears to occur with files previously captured to or rendered with the Blackmagic uncompressed codecs. The DeckLink v5.0 drivers no longer install our codecs and simply rely upon the Apple uncompressed codecs which are capable of reading Blackmagic 8 and 10 bit files. However Combustion appears to be looking for the Blackmagic codec and hence the problem. The problem appears to be confined to Combustion and does not affect other applications including After Effects.

While we were able to overcome your immediate problem by manually tweaking some information in the QuickTime movie header but this should not be necessary. Replacing the Apple codec with the Blackmagic codec also allowed the files to be opened. However we then found another problem where previews and renders of 10 bit movies (Apple or Blackmagic) would become corrupted when run on Tiger. We have now found other card manufacturers are experiencing the same problems.

Accordingly we have reported the problems to Autodesk and hope that they may be able to suggest a solution. In the meanwhile it appears to be necessary to use a Panther system with DeckLink v4.8 drivers in order to use Combustion 3.0.4 with 8 or 10-bit movies.

I will update this post when we know more.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Mike,

I am glad you have overcome your problem. That looks like an old technical note as any of the DeckLink v4.8 and 5.0 drivers have the uninstaller prominently located on the root level of the CD or disk image. While repairing permissions in Panther is frequently helpful, it should not be necessary in Tiger.

Chances are that the process of uninstalling and reinstalling drivers solved your problem by deleting the Final Cut Pro preferences file. Deletion of this file has historically been a cure for odd problems in Final Cut Pro.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Shane,

Yes, you can be using various formats of NTSC, PAL, HDTV720 and HDTV1080 simultaneously.

All DeckLink cards can handle NTSC and PAL and we supply easy setups or presets to make this easy in Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro and Blackmagic Deck Control. The DeckLink HD series of cards can also switch to HDTV 720 and HDTV 1080.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design