[Luke Maslen]

Hi Ed,

Absolutely. You can connect the SDI inputs and outputs of the DeckLink HD Pro card (or indeed any other DeckLink SDI card) to the Multibridge. What is it that you are hoping to achieve? For example, are you hoping to capture the component analog HD output of a HD camera? I might be able to suggest a workflow that would help you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jerry,

Wow! I was definitely unaware of that TV and it’s exciting that there is finally a Plasma TV which supports full 1920 x 1080 screen resolution. I’ve never seen one before so this may be a first.

Thanks for posting the links. Are you aware of any others or is this the first Plasma TV with full screen resolution 1920 x 1080 support of which you are aware?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bob,

Would you like that just so as to scale up HDTV to a big 30″ screen? If so, why use the 30″ screen when you could plug in to an even bigger HDMI display?

I’m interested in your thoughts as to why you’d like a version of HDLink to support the 30″ screen when we’ve already got that covered with Multibridge Extreme for output of 2K and you can use large HDMI TV’s with HDLink if you simply want a very large screen.

Your comments would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Michael,

No, the HDLink is designed to connect to single-link DVI-D displays such as many 23″ and 24″ displays.

The Apple Cinema HD 30″ display requires a dual-link DVI-D connection which is included in the Multibridge Extreme and allows for the display of 2K film material, pixel for pixel.

We have a support note regarding this question named Does HDLink support the 30-inch Apple display?.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Rafael,

I believe that the people who made the PAL DV standard simply made a mistake when they set the field order the opposite way to all other PAL video. I haven’t found this documented anywhere and I don’t think it was deliberate. Mistakes happen and I think this was one of them and it just happens to be a very painful one.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

I don’t think the initial release of the codec will allow for any variation in quality as the data rate is already very low. Maybe that might change in the future if there is a need but currently we intend to keep it at a fixed quality so that captured movies look great. Offline codecs used to be important but these days they aren’t used much as storage is cheap compared with the past.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Margus,

Both of those Panasonic monitors will happily accept a HD1080 signal on their inputs but, as with most HDMI TV’s, are not full resolution displays. They scale the HD1080 signal to fit the screen resolution which I believe is 1366 x 768. Most flat screen TV’s are not full resolution 1920 x 1080. Plasma is never full resolution and but there are some models of LCD TV’s which are full resolution.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

You are a wise person 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Steve,

The cheapest solution is free! If you are working with compressed material, such as DVCPRO HD, you can take advantage of the Digital Cinema Desktop feature in Final Cut Pro 5. Just attach a DVI monitor to the second DVI output of your G5 or Mac Pro and then enable this function in Final Cut Pro. You cannot use it for uncompressed video but it’s not bad for compressed video. The Digital Cinema Desktop solution won’t provide you with the same depth of color and image detail as the HDLink and Intensity solutions but it is free and it works.

If you are not already performing capture and output with an SDI card (such as the DeckLink HD Extreme), then the Intensity should be fine for you. It will transparently decompress your (presumably DVCPRO HD) video on output and play it out to a HDMI display. Intensity outputs your video at the same frequency as the video and all HDMI TV’s should handle that. Note that many HDMI TV’s are not full resolution 1920 x 1080 displays although they will happily accept a full resolution signal from Intensity and then scale to fit the lower resolution of the display. There are some more expensive LCD TV’s that are full resolution.

If you alread have a HD-SDI capture card which you are using for your work, then I would recommend the HDLink partnered with a high quality DVI display such as the Apple 23″ display. This will enable you to monitor your video during both capture and playback via SDI. DVI-based computer displays typically operate at 60 Hz which means they cannot display NTSC and PAL video frame rates by themselves. They also expect an RGB signal whereas you are probably capturing YUV video from your camera. The HDLink takes care of the colorspace conversion from YUV to RGB and also performs pulldown processsing to adapt your NTSC, PAL or HDTV video to match the frequency of your LCD monitor. The quality is excellent. LCD computer monitors are progressive whereas much video is interlaced. HDLink includes and interlace adjustment to help improve the quality of the interlaced video display on different kinds of monitors.

I get the impression that you don’t have (and don’t currently need) an SDI card. If that is the case, one of the first two options should work well for you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

NTSC is lower field both for DV and uncompressed. You can read more about the field differences of NTSC vs PAL in the support note DV clips in PAL format look weird.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design