[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

The DeckLink 5.7 Windows software is being shown at IBC and I expect it will be released very soon after the engineers return from the show when they’ve had a chance to update the documentation that goes with it. I’ll let you know if I can find out a more definite date.

In regards to XDCAM HD, you can capture and play back to XDCAM HD decks via HD-SDI just as with any other SDI-equipped decks. That means you can use any DeckLink HD-SDI card or Multibridge Extreme & Pro with it right now. If you want to acquire XDCAM HD media via Firewire and then output through DeckLink HD-SDI, then your NLE software will need to provide full XDCAM HD support. We have been in discussion with the manufacturers of video software and expect to see improved support for XDCAM HD in the near future. This will make it easier to play out via uncompressed HD-SDI.

HDMI editing is important as uses uncompressed video but at a much lower cost than traditional SDI-based systems and this means that more people can enjoy the benefits of an uncompressed workflow leading to higher quality video. However compressed formats are also very important and convenient and we are always testing the new formats as they appear including XDCAM HD.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jonathan,

Intensity respects HDCP and does not let you bypass HDCP.

– If you have a DVD which has no copy-protection, your DVD player should output a signal with the HDCP copy bit disabled and you will be able to capture with Intensity.

– If you have a DVD which has copy-protection, your DVD player should output a signal with the HDCP copy bit enabled so you will not be able to capture with Intensity.

– However some DVD players fail to output the HDCP copy bit at all. Where this copy bit is missing, the HDMI standard requires that the signal be treated as one with copy protection enabled which means you won’t be able to capture the signal.

Yes, if someone gave you an SD or HD file captured on another system, you could play it out of the Intensity card to a HDMI display or projector.

I’m not sure about the mixed card use in the one Mac Pro. I think that’s something we’d like to do but I don’t know if the drivers do it yet so it would be best to check with the engineers on the stand at IBC. I will also try to find out but they don’t answer email much during the show 🙂

That’s a nice suggestion for the Mac Book Pro and I’ll pass it on. I’m not sure if the ExpressCard34 slot has enough bandwidth for uncompessed HDTV capture and playback and, even if it did, there would be the question of how to capture that to disk. It’s a nice idea though and if the ExpressCard34 slot did have enough bandwidth, then one could at least capture to a compressed codec such as DVCPRO HD to a single disk. Thanks for the suggestion which I will pass on to the engineers when they return from the show.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

If I’ve understood you correctly, you originally shot on DVCams and then captured the DV via Firewire to the Mac.

When the tape transport broke down, you took the component output of the camera and recorded to a Betacam SP deck. You then used a DeckLink Extreme to capture from the Betacam SP deck to the Mac using a Blackmagic DV NTSC easy setup in Final Cut Pro.

Is that correct?

If so, I would expect the DV movie aquired from the Betacam SP deck to be inferior to the DV captured via Firewire directly from the camera or via Firewire from a DV deck.

This is because you have first recorded to an analog deck which has introduced some analog noise and some quality loss when slightly compressed on the BetacamSP tape. That BetacamSP material has then been captured to a DV timeline in Final Cut Pro and so the usual lossy compression has occurred. The intermediate step of recording to the analog deck will have caused additional quality loss compared with a direct DV capture via Firewire.

An uncompressed 8 or 10 bit capture from the Betacam SP deck would defintely produce superior results. But if you then have to recompress it to DV, I expect the same blockiness will occur as that is the nature of the DV codec.

If you ever had to do this again, it would be preferable to record directly from the camera’s component outputs to the DeckLink Extreme card. That would still introduce some analog noise but would bypass the tape compression in the Betacam SP deck.

Finally the codecs used by the Blackmagic easy setups are the Apple uncompressed and DV codecs. Blackmagic codecs are no longer used.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Just use the Multibridge Extreme to provide component video to the PVM monitor. The SDI board for your monitor is simply an SDI to analog convertor (as all CRT monitors are analog) and Multibridge Extreme already provides that functionality. The quality of the conversion with Multibridge Extreme is surpasses most SDI to analog boards as it uses 14 bit digital to analog conversion for component video.

Many “SDI monitors” will not automatically switch video formats when you change between NTSC and PAL and also different HD formats. However if you connect to the component inputs of these same monitors, they will automatically detect a change in video formats and accept the new signal. So it makes a lot of sense to let Multibridge Extreme provide the component analog signal to your PVM monitor as the quality will be excellent, it will save you money and the monitor will auto-detect any change in video formats 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chris,

What is the workflow of connections? Are both the composite video and analog audio input and ouput of the DeckLink SP connected to the Beta deck? If so, how are you monitoring video and how are you monitoring audio? Do you have your broadcast monitor and speakers connected to a spare output of the deck?

Please try connecting a composite display directly to the composite output of the DeckLink SP. Does that allow you to see video?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dave,

You mentioned the DeckLink 5.6.2 drivers are indicating that you have the extended desktop in the Display Prefs but nothing shows on your monitor. Was this setup working before you tried to upgrade to DeckLink 5.7 drivers? If so, please uninstall whatever drivers you are running now and revert to the version you were running previously that worked. You can find archived drivers at Software Archives.

If you had not previously run the DeckLink HD card in your G5, or with your JVC monitor, then please check through the following possibilities:
1. If there is “snow” on your monitor, then it would appear that you have connected the SDI output of DeckLink HD in to an analog input on the JVC monitor. Can you confirm that the JVC monitor will accept a digital SDI input?

2. Go to the Dock, open the System Preferences and select Displays. Ensure that Show displays in menu bar is enabled.

Click on the Displays menu (near the top right of your computer monitor) and set Number of recent items to 10.

Now click on the Displays menu again and you should see all the resolutions of your DeckLink HD series card. Set the appropriate resolution and Hz rate for your broadcast monitor, eg 720 x 486 and 29 Hz for NTSC, or 720 x 576 and 25 Hz for PAL. Try these settings and any of the HD settings and see if any of them work. Please let me know if some do and some don’t and also let me know the model of monitor so I can check it’s specifications.

3. If nothing seems to work, please launch Blackmagic Deck Control and ensure no cables are connected to the DeckLink HD card. The right side of Blackmagic Deck Control should show “No video input”. Now connect the monitoring output to the input of the card using a single SDI cable. Does the “No video input” message get replaced with a black image with no text? If so, then the card is definitely outputting a signal and it is more likely that the problem is with your monitor.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

What do you mean by the 20 second lag? Do you mean that the time taken from when you attempt to start recording, to the time when it really starts recording, is 20 seconds? What speed does Blackmagic Disk Speed Test report for your local hard drive and also for your external RAID?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Brooks,

Please try placing the DeckLink HD Extreme in the top slot of the Mac Pro and then start up the computer. Does the Expansion Slot Utility now appear? If not, open System Profiler and look under hardware at the PCI slots. Does it detect any card in the top slot?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Kristian mentioned to me that you were probably thinking if running the DeckLink card under Windows XP on the Mac Pro itself. I expect that this will be a good solution and I know we tried testing that on a prototype of the Mac Pro and had some success a while ago. However we’ll want to do more testing on the release version of the Mac Pro before we would certify the Mac Pro for use with running our cards under Windows XP. The Mac Pro is beautifully engineered so I have every expectation that you will be able to use them this way. However we would only support the DeckLink cards with Windows on the Mac Pro when we add them to the list of DeckLink certified computer systems for Windows. I’m not promising that this will happen but we would like to do that so we’ll see how it goes.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Yes, you can move a DeckLink HD Extreme or DeckLink Extreme PCIe between a Mac Pro and a PC. The one card runs on both Mac OS X and Windows so you just need a PC with PCI Express slots. Please check the DeckLink Minimum System Requirements for Windows.

We expect to release the Universal Binary drivers for the Mac Pro is a week or so.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design