[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

It is always a major body of work to add support for other panels to Resolve, as the original Resolve code was written to interact very closely and only with the DaVinci Resolve control surface. I know that there have been a lot of requests for third party hardware support, including the Tangent Devices CP200, and we haven’t forgotten about it!

At the NAB 2011 show, we displayed the following panels working with Resolve for Mac:
• DaVinci Resolve control surface
• Tangent Devices WAVE
• JL Cooper Eclipse CX
• Avid Euphonix

We’re always working on adding support for more third party hardware and the latest addition is OpenCL which enables Resolve to run on computers that don’t have NVIDIA CUDA GPUs. The current MacBook Pro series exclusively use ATI GPUs for their high performance graphics and Resolve 7.1.1 cannot run on it. That’s why it was essential to spend the last few months adding OpenCL support to Resolve 8.0 so it can work with ATI GPUs even though NVIDIA CUDA GPUs still provide better performance in Resolve. We would love to have added even more support for both Blackmagic and third party hardware but OpenCL was more urgent.

Peter Chamberlain is the product manager for DaVinci Resolve so please do feel free to email him and let him know you would also like support for the CP200. His email is petercATblackmagic-designDOTcom.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

You can use any PC with USB 2.0 to configure and control the ATEM switchers.

However if you wish to use the USB 3.0 video capture or waveform monitoring functions, a supported PC is required. The short version is that a PC with an X58 based motherboard is required for these functions but more details are provided at this support note which was written for our existing USB 3.0 products. This note does not currently refer to the ATEM products with USB 3.0 but is still relevant to them.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rodrigo,

You’re most welcome please just use the DeckLink drivers installed by the Resolve installer and avoid installing separate drivers for your DeckLink card. This should give you the best results.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

I’m sorry but I made a mistake in my last post which I must correct.

The USB connection on ATEM Television Studio is USB 2.0. In addition to allowing a Mac or Windows PC to configure and control it with a software control panel, the USB connection can also be used to capture H.264 encoded video using the Blackmagic Media Express software. There is no DeckLink processor as DeckLink captures uncompressed video whereas the ATEM Television Studio provides H.264 encoded output via USB 2.0 to a computer.

The USB connection on the ATEM 1 M/E Production Switcher and the ATEM 2 M/E Production Switcher is USB 3.0. In addition to allowing a Mac or Windows PC to configure and control it with a software control panel, the USB 3.0 connection can also be used to capture uncompressed video to a supported Windows PC just like our UltraStudio Pro and UltraStudio SDI products. These UltraStudio products are essentially external DeckLink cards in a USB 3.0 enclosure. So from that perspective, I guess you could say that the ATEM Production Switchers contain a DeckLink processor.

Is that what you were asking?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rodrigo,

Currently the list of supported cards in Resolve for Mac are:
• DeckLink HD Extreme 3
• DeckLink HD Extreme 3D
• DeckLink HD Extreme 3D+

The DeckLink 4K and UltraStudio 3D will be added to this list once they start shipping. I’m not aware of any plans to retrospectively add support for other DeckLink cards so the DeckLink SDI won’t be officially supported for the foreseeable future but it’s possible it will work OK.

You can find the full configuration guide here.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Tangier,

I checked with the ATEM product manager and ATEM is just a family name of switcher products. ATEM is based on the name of the Egyptian god, Atum.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Tangier,

The terms switcher and router are often used interchangeably so understanding the differences between our Videohub routers and our ATEM switchers can be confusing. Here is a short version of the differences 🙂

The Videohub routers simply route your SDI inputs to the desired SDI outputs. You can switch which inputs are connected to which outputs and so this kind of device is sometimes called a switching router which just adds to the confusion!

The ATEM switchers allow you to mix and apply effects to the outputs of multiple video inputs and to monitor multiple outputs simultaneously on a single multi view monitor. M/E refers to mix effects. The ATEM switcher could perform a simple task, such as a graphic wipe when switching between two different video inputs, or a more complex task such as applying an animated graphic over the top of existing video from a built-in or external source. While you can route individual inputs to specific outputs of the ATEM switcher, this is not the primary purpose of the switcher.

I hope this helps. Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rodrigo,

The list of capture cards in the DaVinci Resolve Configuration Guide for Mac are supported by the drivers that are installed by the Resolve software installer. These drivers are slightly different from the Desktop Video drivers (previously known as DeckLink drivers) which can be downloaded from our website. The Resolve drivers for DeckLink contain some different firmware to support some functions in Resolve which the regular Desktop Video drivers do not currently support.

For this reason, if you are using Resolve for mission-critical work, then it would be wise to choose one of the supported capture cards. However other cards might work most of the time but are not supported and we won’t easily be able to help if anything goes wrong.

If you do choose to use an unsupported card, please be aware that any upgrade to the Resolve software could potentially lead to that card not working with Resolve as we don’t test with unsupported cards so we won’t be aware if they are working or not. If you are happy to live with that, you may find that your Multibridge is OK for SD and HD video with Resolve but 2K might not work properly.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Richard,

The ATEM Television Studio connects to the computer via USB. There is a software control panel which can be used on Mac or Windows to configure and control the ATEM Television Studio.

If you are using a supported Windows PC with USB 3.0, then you can capture the uncompressed video output of the ATEM Television Studio just as if you were capturing with a DeckLink card. Alternatively you can use the Blackmagic UltraScope software for realtime waveform monitoring of the uncompressed video output of the ATEM Television Studio. The video capture and waveform monitoring functions only work on Windows as isochronous USB 3.0 support only exists on Windows at this time.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rodrigo,

OK, I won’t say anything about color-correcting on a computer display 😉

It is tricky to recommend HDMI computer displays as some of them provide suitable controls for configuring the HDMI input and some don’t. For example, some HDMI computer displays have a 1920 x 1200 resolution and automatically scale the HDMI input to fill the screen. This is bad because your 16:9 video becomes 16:10 and looks a little odd. 4:3 video looks even worse when stretched to fill a 16:10 display.

Many newer 24 and 27 inch computer monitors are 1920×1080 and so high definition video will be presented correctly. However some automatically apply the vivid contrast without any way to turn it off as you have already noted.

Therefore it is important to download the PDF manual for any display you might think of buying and check out the controls it provides for adjusting the HDMI input. As long as there is some way of setting the contrast to something that isn’t vivid, it should be safe to purchase the monitor for your purposes.

Alternatively, you could purchase the HDLink Pro 3D and connect your SDI cable to it and then use a DisplayPort connection to your existing Dell U2311H. You can also use a third party HDMI, DVI or Mini DisplayPort adapter if you want to connect the HDLink Pro to an HDMI, DVI or Mini DisplayPort display. You will still need to check the video input controls, in the associated PDF manuals, to ensure that a vivid contrast is not being applied to the inputs of the monitor.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design