Luke Maslen
Forum Replies Created
-
Hi Dan,
Yes, they work fine with Final Cut Pro HD 5.1.2 and in fact I would recommend the update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.1.2. We’ve been testing with all the pre-release versions of Final Cut Pro HD 5.1.2 and so can recommend this version.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi,
If you are capturing HD material, then all of the Blackmagic HDTV easy setups will configure your project so that it is captured in the anamorphic 16:9 aspect ratiio.
If you are capturing anamorphic standard definition material, use the Blackmagic NTSC or Blackmagic PAL easy setups to configure your project. Then right-click or Control-click on the Sequence. From the pop-up menu, select Item Properties>Item Properties. When the Item Properties window for your sequence appears, look down under the Format tab and you will see various categories including Anamorphic. Move your mouse to the right of the vertical divider line and click next to Anamorphic. A check mark should appear and this will set the sequence to anamorphic.
Any anamorphic clips that you capture will now be correctly displayed when dropped in to this sequence.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Charlie,
The odd numbers you are seeing are related to the Conform aperture settings introduced with QuickTime 7.1. Switch the conform aperture setting to “Classic” to make these numbers appear as you would expect.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi,
Can you please try moving the DeckLink card to slot 4, which is the top slot, and see if there is any difference? Please also ensure you have applied the Mac Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.0. Does moving the card to slot 4 make a difference?
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Oscar,
Yes, we should probably be able to add variable data rate but first we just want to see how the codec is going before making any changes. Thanks for letting us know it’s going well at the moment 🙂
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
That’s right,
And this means you can even use the codecs on a notebook PC 🙂
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi,
Can you try the capture again? We’ve been capturing from Betacam SP UVW1800 with no problems and an external beta tester has also been doing this for weeks with no problems. I can’t understand how the codec would be involved and suspect it might be some other technicality.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Daniel,
Before I get in to some technicalities, I would say that if you have the choice of using Final Cut Pro or Premiere Pro as your NLE on a Mac Pro, it really makes sense to use Final Cut Pro which has features designed to take advantage of the Mac hardware, eg Digital Cinema Desktop, and includes some very useful codecs such as DVCPRO HD and HDV which are available system-wide with your other Mac video applications. However if there is some reason why you must use the Mac Pro as a Windows PC, then the following notes might help.
Official version: Bootcamp is beta software and The Mac Pro is not currently listed as a supported configuration on the support notes on our web site:
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=47
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=152
We are continuing to test the new builds of Bootcamp as they are released and are interested in Windows compatibility for our hardware on the Mac Pro.
We do not recommend the use of the Windows environment on the Mac Pro with our hardware for production purposes at this time.Unofficial version: When the Mac Pro was released, there were a lot of issues that prevented our products working with it on Windows XP. There have now been updates to both Bootcamp and our drivers and most of the problems have been overcome. We do know of power users using Multibridge Extreme and After Effects every day on the Windows platform and it is working just fine. However our other hardware has not been tested on the most recent updates and so I don’t know how well it will work. The users of which I am aware were switching back to Mac OS X to use Final Cut Pro rather than using Premiere Pro.
I don’t know what slot configuration is set in the Windows environment and therefore which slot(s) would be best for DeckLink and Multibridge hardware. The PCIe slot profiles can be configured on the Mac platform but we don’t know what is assumed in the Windows environment. I’m trying to find that out now but it might take a little while.
If you do try this, I would certainly recommend the latest Bootcamp, Windows XPSP2 and Mac OS X updates along with our latest DeckLink Windows 5.7 drivers. I would also recommend the “Mac Pro (mid 2006) EFI Firmware Update 1.0” which can be downloaded from:
https://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macpromid2006efifirmwareupdate10.html
This Apple update helps with Bootcamp.
In Mac OS X, we have 64-bit support and so can use as much RAM as you like in the Mac Pro.
However Bootcamp requires that you run Windows XPSP2 which is 32-bit and so you cannot run more that 3 GB of RAM in the Mac Pro when working in this environment. 2 GB of RAM is the mininum that we would recommend for Windows.I have heard a report from a DeckLink HD Pro PCIe user who found it worked fine in the Mac environment but encountered problems capturing stable video in the Windows environment on a Mac Pro. The Multibridge Pro shares a similar architecture to the DeckLink HD Pro PCIe and so it is possible you will encounter problems too. Testing would be well-advised and we will also be looking at this soon.
I would also be interested to hear from other DeckLink and Multibridge users who have tested the Windows environment on a Mac Pro, and to learn what’s working and what is not working so far. That should help us focus our testing and support in this area.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Margus,
That’s a good question and I guess you are wondering which codec should you use if you’ve got the choice of a couple of different compressed codecs on Windows?
There are lots of ways to answer this question but the most common answer will be to use Motion JPEG as it is a superior codec in so many ways.
-
Hi Francis,
Thank you for your suggestion which I will definitely pass on although it is strange that the driver installation would cause any interference without the Multibridge hardware installed in your PC. We’ll look in to that.
Please let me know when you get a chance to run your tests. While they might reveal something, the best test would be an independant source of standard defintion HDMI output to feed in to your plasma screen. That could be from a DVD player or a Sony HDR-HC3 camera or similar. Perhaps you have a colleague or friend who could lend you one for a brief test?
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design