[Luke Maslen]

Hi Arwa,

That is good news and thanks for letting us know. I’m not aware of a bug in the older drivers and suspect some component of the DeckLink drivers might have been missing from your system, possibly as a result of updating QuickTime or Final Cut Pro. It is great that all outputs are working again 🙂

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Mason,

This is a good but frustrating question as there are lots of TV’s which can take a 1080i signal and display it as 720p and yet I cannot find an SDI convertor which does this. I had a quick look at the convertors in decks and also couldn’t find a format convertor to do this but maybe I missed something and someone else in this forum will report it. Can you tell me what workflow you have in mind where 1080i to 720p conversion would be helpful?

The best universal QT format is uncompressed 2vuy for 8-bit or uncompressed v210 for 10-bit. Uncompressed is essentially a raw format and should be able to be ready by any QT-savvy application. Final Cut Pro HD includes Apple Uncompressed 4:2:2 codecs and we also have our own, both of which will enable you to open movies in the 2vuy 8-bit and v210 10-bit formats. This is the nice thing about using open standards in that it makes it easy to move files between systems regardless of the software or hardware being used.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dane,

Thank you for your answers to my many questions.

What is your current version of QuickTime? Unless there is a good reason not to do so, please update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.3 and QuickTime 7.0.3. Does this help?

Please create a new project file using the Blackmagic NTSC DV Easy setup. Can you play back clips smoothly after applying any effects to the timeline?

If not, create a new Admin account in Mac OS X, log in and create a fresh project file using the Blackmagic NTSC DV Easy setup. Can you play back clips smoothly after applying any effects to the timeline?

If this still does not work, can you find any project which you know used to play back smoothly? If so, try the older project and see if it still plays back smoothly.

Please let me know the results of your testing as it is a very puzzling problem.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Shane,

Many HDLink users are successfully using HDLink with Plasma displays but we primarily test with LCD displays for a number of reasons. One reason is that there is no plasma display with full resolution HDTV at 1920 x 1080 pixels. The displays might be marked as HD1080 compatible but in reality, they simply accept a HD1080 signal, scale it down to whatever resolution the plasma display supports and then it might be scaled to fill the (comparitively low resolution) plasma screen.

Some plasma screens are really big and if that’s what you want, rather than pixel-for-pixel mapping, then a plasma screen can be very good when used with HDLink.

The color of many plasma displays has been enhanced to appeal to consumers and so if often inappropriate for use with any kind of color correction. The same can also be said of many LCD TV’s. However LCD monitors (not consumer TV’s) can be excellent for color correction.

You might find that your plasma screen is capable of scaling standard definition to fill the entire display even without the x2 scaling feature of HDLink.

If your plasma screen accepts a HD1080 (1920 x 1080) signal, then it should be able to accept NTSC at x2 from HDLink, ie 1440 x 972. However it might not accept PAL at x2 as that would require 1440 x 1152. The 1152 height might be more than the plasma display will accept. In this case, the PAL image would display at x1 even though you had specified x2.

A typical display which would accept this signal would be 1920 x 1200 pixels. The Apple and HP 23″ LCD and the Dell 24″ LCD displays all have a native resolution of 1920 x 1200 and will support both NTSC and PAL at x2 scaling.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Claus-Peter,

Can you tell me if this is PAL or NTSC material? We had seen something like this with 16:9 material but yours looks like 4:3. Can you confirm it is 4:3? We have a pre-release driver which might fix this and so it would be great if you could confirm the details so we can check this bug is fixed. Thanks for the excellent screenshots which told us almost everything we needed to know.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Arwa,

Please open the DeckLink PrefPane in the System Preferences. You should see something that says “Preference Settings for your DeckLink”. Is there anything after the word “DeckLink” or does it just end there? For example does it say “Preference Settings for your DeckLink HD”?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Dane,

How much RAM is in your G5?

Is the G5 you are using now the same as the one you were previously using successfully with a DeckLink card?

I’m a little unclear on your workflow. Are you using NTSC DV files in Final Cut Pro with a DeckLink card?

[Dane Silzle] “I come back to the studio, Upload and (Update) the FCP File and movies”

Are you saying you ran a software update to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.3 or are you referring to some other file such as a project file? How did you go about updating the file and movies?

How were these movies captured, eg via Firewire on the PowerBook?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Carey,

The DVI monitoring of Multibridge Extreme will have some added capabilities over HDLink, partly because it supports both DVI-D and also dual-link DVI-D. At IBC 2005 Multibridge Extreme was being presented with HD1080 material scaled to fill a 30″ display as well as on other displays where pixel for pixel mapping was shown. I know there have been a bunch of ideas for scaling with the Multibridge Extreme but don’t know which ones will be included in the initial software release and which ones will be added in subsequent software updates. So I cannot provide you with a clear answer as to which scaling features may be immediately avaialble when it starts shipping but we will post information in this forum about the initial feature set once it starts shipping.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Christopher,

Thanks for this information. I’m in Melbourne so if you need any help tomorrow during the test, David Spolestra should be able to help you on 317 536 5684. Our LA resellers should also be able to help you if you purchased the DeckLink card from one of them. It’s going to be a short week with Thanksgiving so it’s good you’re doing the test early in the week.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Steve,

The DeckLink Plus card is a standard definition card bundled with the Multibridge SD. Down conversion is automatically enabled when playing out HD material and therefore there is no switch to enable or disable down conversion. The switch is present in the DeckLink HD series cards.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design