Luke Maslen
Forum Replies Created
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Hi,
Thanks for the tip with the 4 Gb/s Apple FC card. We’ll try that.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Glennser,
It turns out that on our booth at NAB, we were mostly using the ATTO Celerity FC-42ES (4 Gb/s dual-channel PCI Express). They were all working fine with our hardware on both Mac Pro and PC’s. In all cases, the Blackmagic card was in the top slot (slot 4) and the ATTO Celerity FC-42ES was in the next slot down, ie slot 3. The PCI Express profile was set to the second option, ie x16 Lane Graphics Slot + Two x4 Lane and One x1 Lane Slots.
If you have followed the ATTO troubleshooting steps for Fibre Channel cards and are still having problems, then I recommend you contact ATTO Technology Support to see if they can help you.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Mike,
No, the DeckLink 6.1.1 drivers will be for Windows to fix a PAL DV playback problem. I’ll post a seperate note when I know more about the 2 GB issue with the DeckLink Extreme PCIe and DeckLink SP PCIe on Mac Pro computers.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Jim,
If you don’t need SDI output, then the most cost-effective solution would be to bypass all the convertor boxes by selling off the G5 and replacing it with a Mac Pro. Even the base model will do. Then install the US$249 Intensity card. This will enable you to capture (and monitor) uncompressed HD and SD video from the Sony HVR-M25E deck. This is a very neat solution which avoids having to buy more expensive HD-SDI hardware when you don’t even have a need to connect via SDI. The Intensity card cannot be used with PowerMac G5’s at this time although we are hopeful that will become possible.
For device control of the deck, just use Firewire. You need to change the device control setting in Final Cut Pro to using Firewire and not “Firewire HDV”. Then on the Sony deck, enable the i.Link HDV->DV downconversion function. This will enable you to capture high definition video from the HDMI output of the deck while controlling the deck via Firewire.
If you do need to output SDI video, then your proposed workflow should work fine although you could substitute the US$995 DeckLink HD Extreme card for the Multibridge Pro as it is essentially the same except that it doesn’t have HDMI output.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Michael,
The only cards affected by the 2 GB limit bug are the DeckLink Extreme PCIe and the DeckLink SP PCIe when used in a Mac Pro. The same cards have no such problem when used in a PowerMac G5.
None of the other DeckLink, Multibridge or Intensity products have this problem. It is confined to the two models mentioned above.
If you need an immediate solution on a Mac Pro and are going to have more than 2 GB of RAM installed (which you would need for HD), then I would suggest the DeckLink HD Extreme as it is only US$100 more than the DeckLink Extreme PCIe but supports any amount of RAM, does HD and SD, has two SD/HD-SDI outputs and also supports S-video in addition to the features present in the DeckLink Extreme.
The engineers intend to fix the bug in the two SD card models as soon as they can. The DeckLink 6.2 driver release is a big one as it contains the support for Final Cut Pro 6 and so I don’t know if this bug will make that release but that’s my hope.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Jack,
Gary is right and the easy setup to use is Blackmagic HDTV 1080i50. We have a support note named Does DeckLink HD support HDTV1080p/25 in Final Cut Pro? which briefly discusses 1080 25p, 25PsF and 50i.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi,
We hope to release a driver update late tomorrow to address that problem. I think the version will be DeckLink 6.1.1. Please give that new version a go and let us know if you have any more problems. It has tested well here so it should resolve this issue.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Glennser,
Have you been through the ATTO troubleshooting steps for Fibre Channel cards?
I don’t think Apple are doing anything funny here and have even seen differences in behaviour between different models of Apple FC cards. For example, we use a 2 Gb/s Apple FC card in a Mac Pro and it connects with no problems to a disk array. However if we replace it with a 4 Gb/s Apple FC card and start up the Mac Pro, a message appears asking if we want to initialize the disk array. For some reason we can’t get the disk array to mount with the 4 Gb/s card even though it works fine with the 2 Gb/s card. Both are Apple branded FC cards. I’m going to test this further before bringing it up with Apple as I’m using a third party disk array and it’s possible that other disk arrays from Apple or third parties might work fine with the 4 Gb/s card.
The point of telling you this is that I don’t think there is any conspiracy and it’s worth following ATTO’s troubleshooting steps and also contacting them to see if they know a solution to your problem. These forums can be very helpful but if you’re specifically having a problem with an ATTO card, I’d recommend you contact them before replacing the card with something else.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Glennser,
It is important to ensure that both the drivers and the firmware of the ATTO cards are up to date. If you don’t have the latest firmware for the ATTO cards, they may not perform correctly even though you may have installed the latest ATTO drivers.
Please get both of these up to date and then see if both cards coexist happily. Also ensure you are running the DeckLink 6.1 drivers.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Roger,
It would be a good idea to install the latest DeckLink 6.1 drivers, partly to ensure compatibility with Final Cut Pro 5.1.4 and partly in case the system upgrade has left behind some critical components of the drivers. Please install the latest drivers and then let us know how it goes.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design