[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

Thank you very much for your suggestions which I will discuss with the engineers. We’ve got proc amps on the analog connections of Intensity Pro and the DeckLink cards as analog video needs these controls unlike digital video connections such as SDI or HDMI. The feedback we’ve previously received is that most people wouldn’t want a blue-only mode or proc amp on all outputs as people generally don’t want to affect (SDI) video itself. They simply want to adjust it on their monitor and that’s why HDLink Pro has these features. However I’ll bring it up again as I can see what you’d like to do and it’s definitely worth discussing.

I haven’t tested an MXO so I can’t say for sure how well it works with Intensity Pro and I’m not quite sure what workflow you have in mind. I can say that Intensity and Intensity Pro use native HDMI and so require a HDMI connection which the MXO does not appear to have. Most video is YUV video and Intensity (Pro) happily works with that. However DVI-based products only work with RGB video and usually only work at one frequency, eg 60 Hz. So if Intensity Pro is outputting 25 or 29.97 Hz video in the YUV color space via HDMI, I’m not sure if the MXO will colorspace convert to RGB and provide pulldown processing to a frequency such as 60 Hz. It would be easier to just output from the Intensity Pro card directly to an HDMI or component analog monitor.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dennis,

That makes sense as there’s not a lot of point in paying more for a card now if you’re going to be upgrading to a Mac Pro in the near future.

Here’s how to tell which PCI slots you have in your G5.

1. G5’s have either 4 or 8 memory slots. If it only has 4 memory slots, then the G5 has 33 MHz PCI slots. The PCI slots in G5’s run slower than the PCI slots in G4’s and DeckLink PCI cards won’t work with them.

2. If there are 8 memory slots in your G5, then you either have PCI-X or PCI Express slots. If there is one ethernet port on the back of the G5, it contains PCI-X slots. If it has two ethernet ports, it contains PCI Express slots.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Ryan,

That’s great news and thanks for letting me know it’s working now.

While the hvx200 might have recorded 24p video, I believe it’s HDMI and component analog video connections will probably output 1080i59.94 and that the camera does the pulldown for you. Try capturing with Final Cut Pro or Blackmagic Media Express using an Intensity 1080i59.94 easy setup and see if that works. If not, try some of the other 1080i formats and see if any of them work. I’m pretty sure that the 1080i59.94 easy setup will allow you to capture 24p material directly from the camera.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bryan,

It would be preferable to have an all-digital, full resolution workflow for maximum quality output to your monitor. You don’t have to break the bank to achieve this. Here’s a workflow which might work for you in SD, HD and 2K.

Your DeckLink HD Extreme 2 card already supports SD, HD and 2K via SDI so you just need to find a suitable monitoring solution for these formats.

The monitor you are considering is not a full resolution HD monitor so you won’t see the full detail of your HD video and you certainly won’t be able to monitor 2K video.

The converter you are considering converts SD/HD-SDI to analog which means the resulting output will include analog noise and be softer than an all-digital workflow. We also have an SDI to Analog Mini Converter at a much lower price but I still would suggest staying with an all-digital workflow if you can.

I would recommend you consider the following workflow. Connect the DeckLink HD Extreme 2 card (that’s the current shipping version of the DeckLink HD Extreme card) to a HDLink Pro. This is an SDI to DVI/HDMI converter which also features 6 channels of analog audio output and includes a power supply. Connect the HDLink Pro to a 30″ DVI display for full resolution, pixel-for-pixel monitoring of SD, HD and 2K video. Current 30″ DVI monitors from companies including Apple, Hewlett Packard, Samsung and Dell have enough pixels to show full resolution 2K (2048 x 1556) video.

The HDLink Pro includes 3D LUT’s so you can fine tune your monitor even if there are no controls on the monitor itself. The HDLink Utility software can be installed on a Mac or Windows PC and then connects and controls the HDLink Pro via a USB connection.

Several companies make fancy LCD or plasma broadcast monitors which have a box of electronics attached to them and then offer a DVI connection. These are generally expensive monitors and may or may not offer full-resolution HD display. The box of electronics seems to inflate the cost of the monitor and can sometimes introduce technicalities when using HDLink Pro to produce an image on the display. It is safer and less expensive to buy a straight forward DVI-based computer display and simply attach it directly to HDLink Pro. We test and use all of the current 30″ displays from Apple, Hewlett Packard, Samsung and Dell and my personal favorites are the Apple and the Samsung displays.

I think if you compare the costs of the hardware you were considering, compared with the HDLink Pro and a 30″ DVI monitor, you will find that digital HD and 2K monitoring is now surprisingly affordable.

If you don’t need 2K monitoring, then consider obtaining a display with HDMI input. You can use the HDMI output of the DeckLink HD Extreme 2 card for full-resolution HD1920 x 1080 monitoring. This is uncompressed, digital monitoring so the quality is fantastic and, as always, it’s best to use a full-resolution 1920×1080 or 1920×1200 display.

I hope this helps!

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Kurt,

Thank you for letting me know that the EDID override settings help with the HDLink. That is good news.

I’m surprised that the HDLink Pro is not automatically working with that model of monitor so we’ll buy that model and test it. I don’t believe that adjusting the 3D LUTs would help so we’ll need to obtain this monitor.

All DVI-based monitors expect RGB video and that is what HDLink and HDLink Pro would send to the Viewsonic VP2650wb monitor. I think that the correct colorspace is being sent to the monitor otherwise you would not have been able to make HDLink work with it using the EDID override settings. We’ll check it out and get back to you. Hopefully we can support this monitor with a simple HDLink software update. It will take a few days to obtain the monitor, verify your observations and then give it to the engineers for a solution. It will then take a little longer to release a solution as the engineers are flat out on allocated tasks but I’ll try to squeeze in this item as soon as possible.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

HI Marcel,

This sounds like a graphics card driver issue. Have you recently changed the version of graphics card driver on your PC? If so, I would recommend reverting to whichever version you were previously using before you encountered the Premiere crashes. If you have not recently changed the version of your graphics card drivers, then I would suggest updating to the latest drivers for your graphics card and then see if the problem goes away. I’ve heard of a few issues like this which have been resolved by either upgrading or reverting to a previous version of graphics card driver.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Margus,

Multibridge and DeckLink cards require that you capture video with audio because they are fundamentally SDI products where audio is embedded in the video signal. If there is no video, there is nothing to carry the audio. SoundTrack Pro does not capture video so you can’t use it to capture audio with a Multibridge. You can play back audio with SoundTrack Pro and your Multibridge and we have an old support note about that on our website named Can I use SoundTrack Pro™ with DeckLink cards?.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Ryan,

Almost all DVD players with HDMI output have HDCP encryption enabled all of the time, no matter whether you are using a commercial DVD or your own home movies which you have burnt to DVD. This will prevent you from capturing from a DVD player unless you have a rare model which does not permanently enable HDCP on output. All of the well-known brands appear to permanently enable HDCP. We found one DVD player with an obscure name which did not enable HDCP when playing back your own DVD’s. However this DVD player is now a few years old and no longer seems to be available.

You should be able to capture from the component output of the DVD player if you are playing a non-protected DVD. Many DVD players will enable Macrovision copy protection on the analog outputs of a DVD player if you are playing a copy-protected DVD.

Assuming your DVD is not copy-protected, open the Intensity PrefPane or Control panel and set the video input to Y, R-Y, B-Y to capture from the component analog video connections from your DVD player. By default this is set to HDMI input so you need to switch it to component input. Once you have done that, use Blackmagic Media Express to attempt to capture video. Try the different capture presets in case the video you are capturing is in a slightly different format to the one you thought it should be.

It would also be good to try a capture from one of your video cameras as there won’t be any copy-protection so you should be able to capture without problems.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dennis,

If your G5 has PCI slots, then they run too slow for DeckLink cards and it might be that the Kona LS would be a solution for you. If you have a G5 with PCI-X slots, then you could certainly use the DeckLink Extreme card. It is a 10-bit SDI card which also has analog input and output. It’s one of our older PCI cards and so doesn’t have higher bit DA converters but it can be used in both Macs and PCs unlike other cards.

All of our DeckLink and Multibridge PCI Express hardware have a newer design with 14-bit analog DA conversion. The DeckLink HD Extreme 2 is the price of an SD card but includes full-resolution, real time SD, HD and 2K support.

So your choice will be partly dictated by which kind of PCI slots are in your Dual G5 and you should check that carefully as there are dual G5’s with PCI, PCI-X and PCI Express slots.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Marco,

You can use 10-bit video with Intensity Pro but it is an 8-bit card. You can capture from 10-bit sources and you can play back 10-bit video but it will capture as 8-bit and play back as 8-bit. Most of the sources from which you might capture video with Intensity Pro use 8-bit compressed codecs, eg DV and HDV cameras, so there is little point in capturing as 10-bit from these devices.

If you are working with 10-bit sources, you’re probably working with broadcast equipment such as a Digibeta or HDCAM deck so you’ll need a broadcast-oriented card like the DeckLink HD Extreme 2 (US$995) card. It has 14 bit digital to analog converters for incredibly clean HD analog video.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design