[Luke Maslen]

Hi Harlan,

DeckLink cards use an industry standard Sony

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

This release is the same as the last one except it includes the fix to eliminate the bright stripe that could appear on the right side of some Motion JPEG captures. Thanks for your great reports so we could fix that one quickly 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for your information and that’s good news that Vegas 7 might run with newer versions of drivers than DeckLink 5.6, and of couse it’s fair enough that Sony Media Software (SMS) only provide technical support for a certain, known configuration of hardware and software.

[Dr. Dropout] “We appreciate that the Decklink folks update their drivers on a constant basis but it is impossible to test with and make changes to an application to accomodate constantly changing drivers.”

Unfortunately that approach would place great restrictions on our ability to support Vegas with our new hardware products and also to add major new features such as the Motion JPEG support that we’ve released in the DeckLink 5.7 drivers.

As I think we’ve mentioned before, we would rather avoid placing any burden on SMS in this regard by simply writing our own plug-ins to Vegas. That way the onus for testing would be on us and we can rapidly add features, bugfixes and support for new hardware in to the drivers and immediately have compatibility with the latest versions of Vegas. Vegas doesn’t have that kind of architecture but that would certainly be my wish for Vegas in the future. It would mean less work for the Vegas team at the same time as providing us with a lot more flexibility to add features and new hardware products to Vegas and ultimately enable mutual Vegas & BMD customers to take advantage of all of the features offered by this powerful combination of products. It would also avoid having to repeat this kind of information every time a DeckLink user understandably asks why we only support Vegas with our old drivers and why we can’t support Vegas with our latest hardware.

[Dr. Dropout] “Other apps typically or at least quite often appear to have officially certified drivers that are out of sync with the most current Decklink drivers version, presumably for similar reasons.”

While I wouldn’t expect that other developers would certify every version of drivers that we release with their software, those other applications do typically either plug in to our drivers via QuickTime or DirectShow or else allow us to plug in to their application. Either way, that does allow us to update drivers and have them work with those applications. That’s why we are big fans of using open and common standards and architectures in everything we do as it makes it so much easier to provide compatibility with the greatest diversity of third party applications. We look forward to future Vegas and DeckLink updates!

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sean,

I’m guessing you’re developing your own applications if you are interested in running 64-bit versions of Windows as mainstream applications will not derive any benefit from running on a 64-bit version of Windows with extra memory. Should I use 32 or 64-bit versions of Windows? discusses the pros and cons of using 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows.

There is no 64-bit version of QuickTime at this stage but that won’t matter for most people as applications such as After Effects are 32-bit anyway so the existing version of QuickTime would be the best one to use with mainstream applications.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Sharon,

That is a known problem with the original DeckLink HD card with DeckLink 5.7 drivers. Support for the DeckLink HD card should be fixed in the DeckLink 5.7.1 drivers which are due out soon. In the meanwhile please revert to the DeckLink 5.6.2 drivers which you can find at software archives. The DeckLink 5.7 drivers have no advantage for the DeckLink HD as they are simply an update to support the Mac Pro. To revert to the previous drivers, restart your G5 while holding down the SHIFT key until you see that your Mac has started in Safe-Boot mode. Run the DeckLink uninstaller and then reinstall DeckLink 5.6.2. Restart normally and your card should now work without problems.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Is that a Quad Core G5 or a Quad Core Intel?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Your message suggests there is some problem running the DeckLink Extreme card (PCI) with Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 but I am not aware of any such issue. Are you encountering a problem and, if so, please provide details.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Sleep support for the Mac Pro will be added in the DeckLink 5.7.1 drivers which are due out soon. Until then, set the Energy Saver settings not to sleep to avoid any wake from sleep issues.

I’m rather intrigued by your comment that you cannot fit the DeckLink HD Extreme card in to slot 4 as Apple provide loads of space above slot 4 and the heat sink on the card doesn’t come close to the four plug-in disk carriers which can hold hard disks. The following screenshot shows a big graphics card in slot 1 and then the empty slots 2, 3 and 4 above it with slot 4 at the top.

When the DeckLink HD Extreme is installed, there is over 2 inches of space between the DeckLink card and the plug-in disk carriers so I’m not sure why you are experiencing a problem fitting the card in slot 4. Can you take a photo to demonstrate the problem?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Martin,

The sample frame you have provided does look soft. So if it is soft, it’s not going to look any better when output via the DeckLink card.

I think your camera has component analog output and you could connect it to your JVC component monitor. If it looks soft on the monitor that way, then it is still going to look soft when output via the DeckLink card. The question would then be to work out why the original footage is soft.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Eli,

You will need to update to the latest Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 in order to obtain the XDCAM HD codec. While Final Cut Pro 5.1.1 allowed you to import XDCAM HD material, it was transcoded to HDV for playback. Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 includes a native implementation of XDCAM HD.

Now that Final Cut Pro 5.1.2 has added the XDCAM HD codecs, I believe it should be relatively easy for us to add easy setups for it in a driver update. We have a driver update due soon to add support for DeckLink HD Studio so hopefully we might add new easy setups in that release.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design