[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bryan,

Thanks for letting me know about why your client needed to work with OfflineRT material. It would be nice if the engineers enabled preview for OfflineRT but I just can’t see it happening as there are so many other popular features that they want to add as well as keeping up with new versions of software including Final Cut Pro and Leopard. I wouldn’t rule it out as I agree that it shouldn’t be hard to add but it’s just a matter of time and and the number of people requesting each feature.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Hamdemir,

When Intensity is set to capture from the DVI output of a MacBook Pro, the Intensity shows up as a second monitor in the Displays preferences of the MacBook Pro and it was not necessary to use a third party utility to make this work. Assuming that we can get DeckLink HD Studio to capture in a similar manner to the Intensity, then I would expect the process to work as you have described. However we won’t know if this is possible until the engineers have a had a chance to make it work.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Can you repeat the test using DVCPRO HD and just check that you’re not experiencing some other issue? In other words, capture to DVCPRO HD, then add some disolves and render them. Play back and see if FCP happily plays through the rendered resolves.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Oli,

Thank you for your report. We’ve replicated the problem so we should have it fixed in the DeckLink 6.2 drivers which are due very soon. In the meanwhile, reverting to DeckLink 6.1 or earlier drivers appears to avoid the problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jaromir,

I haven’t heard of this problem before. If you have access to a deck, would you please capture color bars from the deck to an uncompressed timeline and then to an MJPEG timeline. Then export a frame from both test clips and email it to support@ blackmagic-design.com so we can see the difference that you have observed?

If the problem only occurs when rendering from After Effects, please provide all necessary steps to replicate the problem so we can check it out for you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

[makkystyle] “Is there any other downside to this codec?”

None 🙂

[makkystyle] “Will I have any problems when I want to Online back to uncompressed 10-bit HD?”

It is easy to online back to uncompressed 10-bit HD after using the PhotoJPEG codec. You should encounter no problems as this is a common workflow.

In regards to the RT effects hack for PhotoJPEG, it does seem to work pretty well but Apple warn that the hack could break any time there is an update to Final Cut Pro. In other words, it’s totally unsupported and so if something goes wrong, I guess the worse case is that you’ll just need to render the effects anyway.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

We don’t have a 1080 to 720 down conversion feature. However as you’re simply trying to save disk space, have you considered capturing with the Blackmagic 1080p23.98 JPEG easy setup? By default the presets are set to low quality and it should capture HD1080 video at around 3.5 to 5 MB/sec. It’s a full resolution codec unlike DVCPRO HD so you capture every pixel. In Multibridge 6.0 and newer drivers, you can increase the JPEG quality to High without dropping frames on an Intel-based Mac Pro. I would recommend you test this setting as it will save mucking around with switching from 1080 to 720 and back again so you can capture, edit, monitor and output at full HDTV1080 resolution. The only downside to using the Apple’s PhotoJPEG codec is that Apple have not implemented RT Extreme effects for it so you’ll need to render any effects.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dean,

If StuffIt appears to be a source of problems, then I would suggest removing it, possibly by rewinding your system. Zip has been the standard on Macs ever since Mac OS X added built-in Zipping in the operating system. Prior to that, Mac users mostly used StuffIt archives. Even old Macs can open Zip files using StuffIt Expander or other utilities. That means you shouldn’t need to install StuffIt on your PC. Just stick with Zip files as you already have that facility on your PC.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Brett,

Thank you for this information. We’re looking in to it.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Thomas,

We’ve added support for the HDR-FX7 to the Intensity drivers but not yet to the DeckLink HD Studio drivers. We’re going to be looking at that over the next couple of weeks and so hopefully we’ll be able to add support within the coming month. We’ll know more soon.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design