[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

While I would previously have provided the same advice myself, the need to run a permissions repair in between software installations has not been a requirement for quite a while. It certainly isn’t necessary with Panther and Tiger but was important with some early versions of Mac OS X. I’m not quite clear when it no longer became necessary but it certainly wasn’t necessary with Panther. In any case, thanks for helping out because all the responses in this forum are a big help in solving problems as no one person has all the answers. Fortunately no one person has all the problems either 😉

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Henning,

The DeckLink HD series cards were the first cards to support DVCPRO HD in Final Cut Pro HD 4.5 and I think you’ll find they’ve got fantastic performance on your Mac Pro as we use the right combination of hardware and software processing for different tasks without blowing out the cost of the card. I would suggest that you test this on your existing cards rather than just listening to marketing hype as we’ve been working with DVCPRO HD for years including RT effects.

Yes you can mix 8 and 10 bit uncompressed material on an SD timeline without needing to render, using Final Cut Pro 5.x.
I would recommend the current Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 which is a Universal Binary, along with Mac OS X 10.4.8, QuickTime 7.1.3 and DeckLink 5.1.2 drivers.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sean,

Yes, the updated x64 drivers exist and are being tested now so hopefully they’ll be released in about a week.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Tim,

I have a bunch of questions for you.

1. Do you have your broadcast monitor connected directly to the SDI monitoring output of the DeckLink card or is there some hardware in between, eg a deck, video router, or SDI-to-analog convertor?
2. What make and model of monitor are you using? You appear to be in the UK. Is your monitor a PAL-only monitor or does it also support NTSC?
3. You mentioned that the DeckLink card is in slot 3 which is one of two slots on the shared 100 MHz bus. Is there any are in slot 2 and, if so, what make and model card is it? If possible, it would be good to test the DeckLink card with slot 2 empty to ensure that the DeckLink card is not encountering interference from the card in slot 2.
4. Please review the support note Final Cut Pro 5 may fail to open with 64 or more QuickTime components installed in case this is related to your problem with Final Cut Pro crashing when launched.
5. Is your other software up to date, ie Mac OS X 10.4.8 and QuickTime 7.1.3?

My guess is that you may have some bad RAM in your Mac. Can you please carefully experiment by removing some of your RAM and see if that makes the problem go away? Bad RAM can definitely cause Final Cut Pro and other video applications to crash and it can also cause black lines and other artefacts on your monitor.

If that doesn’t help, then it could also be worth testing the DeckLink card in a different slot in case there is a bent pin in slot 3 of your G5.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bill,

My understanding is that Windows XP (32-bit) does not allow for more than 3 GB of RAM. The switch to which you have referred seems to provide access up to 3 GB of RAM of which some would be used by the system and some to Premiere Pro. One of the selling points of the 64-bit editions of Windows is provide access to more than 3 GB of RAM. Premiere Pro 2.0 is a 32-bt application and would not benefit from being run on an x64 edition of Windows.

I do not believe there is any harm in your having 4 GB of RAM in your PC but I also believe that at least 1 GB of the RAM is being ignored by Windows XP (32-bit).

That means that we need to look at your Premiere Pro problems as a more normal problem rather than anything to do with 3 GB limitations. Our drivers cannot remove a 3 GB limitation imposed by the operating system.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Bonjour Robin,

It is OK to use either slot 4 or slot 3.

The DeckLink HD Extreme card requires 4 lanes of PCI Express bandwidth. If you prefer to use slot 3, go to /System/Library/CoreServices/ and open the Expansion Slot Utility.

Select the second profile from the list of Autres profils PCI Express, ie:

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bill,

I believe that the next update to our DeckLink drivers for Windows x64 should include the firmware to allow more than 3 GB of RAM with x64 editions of Windows. It is currently in testing so I’m hopeful we’ll see it releaesed within a week and you can then test if this makes your various problems go away. Are you using an x64 edition of Windows?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Steven,

Are you seeing the problem on Mac or PC? PhotoJPEG is available on both platforms.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sean, Bob and Charlie,

Thanks for your words of encouragement and we don’t believe that driver support for a card should stop just because it’s only 4 years old. The computer industry moves fast but 4 years is not a long time and hardware was more expensive then so we shall continue to do what we can to support the Kona SD. Final Cut Pro still supports G4’s and G5’s so you should be able to continue to use your cards for a good while to come 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

If you’re wanting to build an inexpensive system, then you could use one of the certified motherboards listed in the DeckLink Minimum System Requirements for Windows. If the Apple is much cheaper then that speaks for itself and would be worth considering. That might even become more interesting once Mac OS X Leopard is released and Apple’s support for Windows reaches release status unlike the current Bootcamp beta software.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design