[Luke Maslen]

Hi Michelle,

Is your 720p24 material Varicam or native 720p24?

From which make and model of camera or deck have you acquired this material, and through what kind of connection, eg Firewire or HD-SDI? Once I know the answers to these questions, I should be able to answer your questions.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sean,

We might be able to help. At what speed is your Varicam material shot, eg 720p23.98?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Thanks for letting me know that you intend to deliver on DVD and I’m assuming that is a standard definition DVD at this stage so you’ll need to keep an eye on the colour space conversion if you are colour grading in HDV and then down converting to SD.

While I can’t promise you 720p25 support, I can tell you that it’s still in a queue of requested features and no one here has decided to dismiss support of this format so I’m intrigued by the email you received.

Thanks again and hopefully this format will be added to our existing range of supported formats.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

The DeckLink card is not a graphics cards and is not designed to output to normal computer displays such as VGA displays.

The DeckLink card is a video capture and playback card and is designed to support video frame rates and resolutions via SDI or analog connections. VGA displays do not work at video frame rates such as 25 Hz and 29.97 Hz.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for posting the results of your testing. You mentioned you have a “Varicam” and I’m hoping that means you have a Varicam deck rather than a camera. Assuming you have the deck, would you please conduct the following tests?

Test 1a
Use Final Cut Pro to output 720p59.94 via the Channel A HD-SDI output of Multibridge Extreme to the HD-SDI input of your Varicam deck.
Please monitor the audio at both stages, ie:

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

I’d still love to know what you do with your video once you’ve captured it via Firewire. It’s only by knowing how people use different formats of video that we know why there is a need for those formats. In the case of 720p25, I’m still puzzled about what you intend to do with it after it has been captured, eg broadcast or DVD’s?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Thanks Rob.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

That’s strange. In what format are you working? Which Blackmagic Easy Setup had you chosen?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

I’m glad to hear you worked out the problem and found a solution. The DeckLink HD card is a PCI-X card that needs to run at 100 or 133 MHz. Slots 2 & 3 in the G5 share a 100 MHz PCI-X bus and it will only run as fast as the speed of the slower of the two cards. In this case, the MOTU card was slowing down the bus to PCI speeds and then prevented the DeckLink HD from working in HD.

It may be that the ATTO UL4D and the DeckLink HD would work adequately together as they are both PCI-X cards. However installing the DeckLink HD in slot 4 would guarantee it had enough speed for working in HD as well as SD.

Thanks for posting the problem and the solution which will help others.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Don,

While converting from HDV to DVCPRO HD will make it easier to edit, there will be significant generational quality loss caused by the compression and decompression cycles.

As you would know, HDV is a very tightly compressed MPEG format. Converting from HDV to uncompressed, and then uncompressed to DVCPRO HD is adding to the number of generations of data loss caused by the use of lossy compression. If you add effects or text to the DVCPRO HD video, you are likely to see further generational loss.

If you can shoot and record live, then I would suggest that you use the component outputs of the Z1 camera and record directly to your Mac Pro using the DeckLink HD Extreme or the Mac Pro. In this case you could choose to record in an uncompressed format or to the DVCPRO HD codec. This method would bypass the need to compress in the HDV format on tape and so would maintain maxium quality.

If you have already recorded to HDV tape, then your options are to either use your proposed solution or else try just playing back the HDV tape and capture via the component outputs of the camera using the DeckLink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro. While would be using the analog outputs of the camera rather that the digital Firewire connection, you may not notice any or much difference in quality in the final result due to the HDV compression and the DVCPRO HD compression.

Either workflow should work and I’d be interested to hear what you think of the results when you give it a try.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design