[Luke Maslen]

Hi Paul,

Can you tell me more about your problem? Blackmagic effect handling should almost never be used now because we use the Apple codecs and RT Extreme effects for almost everything. The Blackmagic effects are really only included now for legacy projects which used them in the past.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Which DeckLink card are you using and which Blackmagic easy setup are you using? I’m particularly interested to know if you’re working in SD or HD.

Are you capturing to a disk array or to an internal hard disk? If you are using a disk array, please describe it, eg an eight disk U320 SCSI disk array or an Apple Xserve RAID with 14 disks and 512 MB of RAM cache on each controller. Please run Blackmagic Disk Speed Test on the disk or RAID to which you are capturing your movies. What read and write speeds does it report?

It would also be a good idea to update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.3 and QuickTime 7.0.3.

Make sure your effect handling is set to Final Cut Pro HD despite Paul’s comments 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

This is a complex topic and the answers vary over time due to changes in the Apple codecs.

The current situation is that Apple codecs automatically gamma-correct for the display you are using. Every display is different and so the same movie will appear differently on different displays which can be confusing. We never liked that idea and so the Blackmagic codecs output consistant gamma regardless of the display you use. Hence the fact that you may see a difference when switching between Apple and Blackmagic encoded files, and ours will often look darker.

However the important thing is that, no matter how the image may appear on your computer screen, it must be consistant on the broadcast monitor attached to your DeckLink card. So the real test is to open Apple and Blackmagic encoded movies and output them to your broadcast monitor and compare them only on that monitor.

The good news is that we’ve been working with Apple to overcome these issues. Apple have encouraged us to adopt their codecs in place of our own to avoid gamma shift issues. We’ve done that wherever possible but there are still a few places where our codecs are required. While Apple have added a HD color space to their uncompressed 8 and 10-bit 4:2:2 codecs in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0, they have not yet added a RGB color space. Accordingly when working with both Final Cut Pro (YUV) and After Effects (RGB), we still need to invoke our codec so that a correct color space conversion is performed. When you go to export from After Effects, we hide the Apple Uncompressed codecs to ensure the Blackmagic codecs are used. However when working in Final Cut Pro, we always invoke the Apple codecs with any Blackmagic easy setup. The only exception to this is that we use our codec for use in 4:4:4 high definition work as Apple do not yet include a HD codec with RGB color space.

In regards to the Blackmagic 8-bit 2Vuy codec, this is the same as the Blackmagic 8-bit codec except it has a different header and is compatible with legacy Cinewave files. Please adopt the Blackmagic 8-bit or the Apple 8-bit codecs as they are both compatible with the 2vuy standard rather than the older 2Vuy standard. There is a support note about this named Why are there multiple 8-bit codecs?. If you really need to work with the Blackmagic 8-bit 2Vuy codec for some reason, then please refer to the support note How do I work with Cinewave files without rendering? NTSC.

I hope this helps clarify some of these mysteries and please let me know if further clarification is required.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Tangier,

What versions of Final Cut Pro, Mac OS X, QuickTime and DeckLink drivers were you using when the downconverted output looked fine and what versions are you now using?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jordan,

I haven’t heard of this before. Are the HighPoint folks stating this or does the report come from somewhere else? Is this report related to PCI-X Macs or PCIe? I’d love to receive some solid information about this in case there is a problem but I don’t believe there is as this is the only report we have received and even you aren’t seeing a problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

In regards to the 12 channels of audio, please refer to the support note 2 channel stereo capture in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0. This will solve that problem.

Then see if the Log & Capture windows takes a long time to open. If so, quit out of FCP and launch Blackmagic Deck Control. Can it capture without problems?

Please update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.3, QuickTime 7.0.3 and DeckLink 5.1.2 drivers and see if the problem goes away. Use Mac OS X 10.4.2 or newer. Does this help?

If not, please test with some other formats. For example, if you have chosen a Blackmagic NTSC 10-bit timeline, try a Blackmagic NTSC DV timeline and let me know if the delay still occurs in Log & Capture.

What model of G4 or G5 are you using and how much RAM is installed?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Peter,

This question comes up semi-regularly so we’ve answered it in the support note Does DeckLink HD support HDTV1080p/25 in Final Cut Pro?.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Carey,

Yes, I was referring to the Apple Cinema HD 30″ display.

We’ve been doing a lot of testing on the Multibridge Extreme and there are so many combinations of ways it can be used unlike any product we’ve made before. The testing has gone well because it has picked up issues that needed to be addressed and is a reason why it hasn’t been released yet, but it is tanalisingly close. We take your comments on board and want to be sure that the quality will meet and exceed your expectations.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Bob,

The Apple 30″ display requires dual-link DVI-D input for proper display. If you connect the current HDLink to it, you will find that it’s single-link DVI-D input becomes double-scaled on the 30″ monitor regardless of the settings in the HDLink Utility. This means that HDTV becomes bigger than the 30″ display and much of the image is lost where it is cropped by the border of the display.

We’re looking forward to releasing the Multibridge Extreme as its DVI-D monitoring capabilities will allow the 30″ monitor to be used either for pixel-for-pixel monitoring or with some kinds of scaled monitoring. It looks great but we’re doing a lot of testing as there are so many modes to check that we want to make sure it works well in all modes.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Ralph,

I’m glad those comments made sense. I also agree that a CRT is best for finding field flicker issues in SD and HD. The component/composite output of the DeckLink HD Pro would be fine for this.

With the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card you can simultaneously output: