[Luke Maslen]

Hi Lars,

So did you reboot or did you just reinstall the drivers without rebooting? After uninstalling the drivers, you should be prompted to reboot and please do so. Then install the new drivers. Please give that a try and let me know how you go.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

I would generally agree that broadcast or professional CRT’s are still best for color correction work and, especially for correct display of black. However I do not see how a HDMI input is of any benefit with CRT monitors. I can only guess that it might increase the price of the CRT monitor but for no particularly good reason. I suspect that people are just becoming so used to HDMI inputs that manufacturers may be adding them because people expect them.

There are many CRT’s available which are being marketed with video inputs but which do not advertise conformance with any SMPTE standards and I would lean towards using a high quality LCD monitor over a CRT of unknown quality.

We still use plenty of CRT’s in our testing and they are great but they do meet relevant SMPTE specifications. We also use LCD monitors with HDLink. Each technology has its pros and cons but watch out for cheap CRT’s which don’t mention whether they conform to common video SMPTE standards.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Blackmagic RT effects were a big deal before Apple introduced RT Extreme. However we now just adopt Apple’s RT Extreme effects as they’re great and they can add many more effects. I once asked why we bother to leave the Blackmagic effects in the drivers and the answer was to support legacy projects which included the Blackmagic effects. If you need to work with Blackmagic effects in real time, you will need to set effect handling to Blackmagic otherwise you will have to render the sequence. However unless you have a particularly good reason to use the Blackmagic effects, I would recommend you simply use Apple’s RT Extreme effects.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Please update to the latest of everything and this should work, ie Shake 4.0 with QuickTime 7.0.3 and DeckLink 5.1.2 drivers. Update to at least Mac OS X 10.4.2. Mac OS X 10.4.3 is generally OK but will cause Motion 2.0 to crash when using DeckLink cards with the extended desktop enabled. So its up to you whether you want to use Mac OS X 10.4.2 or 10.4.3. Shake 4 is now working fine here whereas there were problems using earlier versions of software with Shake 4. Please let me know how you go.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jamie,

To output from the DeckLink Extreme to the deck, you should not need to have the output of the deck connected to the input of the DeckLink Extreme. However if you don’t, then you will continue to see “No video input” when in the Edit to Tape window. This is because that window should show you the video frame on the current tape in the deck. If those cables are not connected, then you have no way to monitor the video from the deck in the ETT window.

Please quit out of FCP and launch Blackmagic Deck Control. Is it able to output to the deck? Just open your movie in to Deck Control and then choose to Put Clip.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jamie,

Voice Over Tool is supported in Final Cut Pro HD. To enable Voice Over Tool, you need to follow a similar procedure to DV, and use the following settings. Use the Displays menu (page 13 of the DeckLink Macintosh v2 manual) to set the DeckLink desktop to the same format as the video source, eg. NTSC 720 x 486. Next in the View menu of Final Cut Pro HD, set External Video to “Off”. When finished with the Voice Over Tool, set External Video to “All Frames” to use the broadcast monitor.

In regards to your problem outputting to the Betacam SP, can you please ensure that you have both inputs and outputs, for video and audio, connected between the deck and the DeckLink Extreme card?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Ralph,

You’re not the first person to ask a question in this forum about CRT monitors which include an HDMI input. Can you tell me why you would want to use an HDMI input with a CRT as I just don’t understand the benefit. My perspective is as follows.

All CRT monitors are analog monitors, even the ones that are categorized as SDI monitors. The reason I say this is that a digital to analog conversion is performed in the CRT monitor and the result is analog video. It is usually a very good conversion but the result is still analog so you cannot see individual pixels of video.

This contrasts to an all-digital workflow involving the HDLink and an LCD monitor. Video can be displayed with pixel-for-pixel accuracy in full 1920 x 1080 resolution. There is no introduction of analog noise and you can see every pixel on the display.

A HDMI input on a CRT display ultimately leads to analog monitoring and I don’t see how that is going to help you compared with monitoring via component analog input in a display which would presuambly be at lower cost.

The component analog output of the DeckLink HD Pro cards (4:2:2 and 4:4:4) is the result of a digital-to-analog conversion in the DeckLink card. It is extremely high quality and will look at least as good as a digital-to-analog conversion performed in a CRT monitor. Furthermore, many CRT monitors will automatically switch between standards when receiving component analog video but will need to be manually changed if digital video input is received and the format is changed.

So not only can you usually create a monitoring solution at lower cost using the DeckLink card to convert your digital video to analog, but it may be far more convenient.

If you want to output HD1080 and SD at the same time, then the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card is the model you will need as it performs split hardware down conversion of HD1080 material. When working in this mode:

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chuck,

Yes, we’ve got some seed units out in the field and have been running intensive tests for the past few weeks so we are very close to shipping. I thought the website had said “soon” for a long time! I’m not aware of any change there.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Can you please tell me if you have 4 or 8 memory slots in your G5? If you are unsure, open Apple System Profile and click on the Memory heading in the Hardware category. It will show if you have 4 or 8 memory slots. If you have 8 memory slots, then your G5 is capable of running DeckLink cards. If it only has 4 memory slots, then unfortunately your Mac is an entry level G5 with PCI slots which have a known bug which prevents the use of DeckLink cards. The bug is documented here.

If your G5 has 8 memory slots, can you output video from the desktop of your Mac and also from applications such as Final Cut Pro and Blackmagic Deck Control?

The option to output video from any QuickTime applications is currently unavailable. This is because the DeckLink 5.x drivers now use Apple codecs in SD and HD and they cannot be used for this function. However we think we might no a way to reintroduce this feature and we intend to get back to that shortly as it would be nice to have this feature. We can’t promise it but we would like to do it again.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Claus-Peter,

Andrew has checked this in the pre-release DeckLink 5.2.3 drivers and the good news is it appears to be fixed. If you are desperate for the fix we could seed you the pre-release version but there are some other bugs in the pre-release version so you might want to wait for the release version.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design