Luke Maslen
Forum Replies Created
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Hi Arwa,
What is the source of your HDV material? Specifically, which camera or deck are you using and is the source HD1080 or HD720?
The fact that you are receiving audio but not video via SDI is very strange as video must be present for audio to work. This is because SDI uses video with embedded audio. If there is no video, then there is no signal in to which the audio can embed and so you would hear nothing at the Digibeta.
Can you please try a new Blackmagic PAL project in FCP, and then play out PAL bars & tone. Can you see the video and hear the audio at the deck?
Now create a new Blackmagic HDTV1080i50 HDV project in FCP, and then play out HD1080i50 bars and tone. Can you see the video and hear the audio at the deck?
The DeckLink Plus card is a standard definition card and so down conversion will be enabled automatically. HD1080i50 will automatically downconvert to PAL.
Your answers to the tests above will help to narrow down the problem.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi,
I don’t know if this is going to work but, if you do test with a DeckLink HD Pro card, I suggest you install the drivers and then use the easy setups in Final Cut Pro to select a Blackmagic HDTV 720p/59.94 easy setup. Once you have captured at 59.94 Hz, you should be able to apply frame rate conversion. Hopefully this will work and I’d love to hear how you go.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Margus,
Final Cut Pro automatically adjusts the gamma display of captured clips on your computer monitor to match the gamma of your computer monitor. This can mean that if you use two different computer monitors, the movie clip will appear differently on two different monitors.
What is important is not how the video appears on your computer monitor but how it appears on your broadcast monitor connected to your DeckLink card. If captured analog video appears darker or brighter than it should be on the broadcast monitor, use the Proc Amp control in the DeckLink preferences to adjust the settings and then try capturing again. Once the video appears correctly on your broadcast monitor, continue to use those Proc Amp settings regardless of how the video might appear on your computer monitor.
The 100% color bars included in the DeckLink driver disk image can also be used for calibrating your monitor.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi,
Wow! That sounds slow. We just tried rendering out 2 minutes of DVCPRO HD material to the Blackmagic 4:4:4 RGB codec and it took about 8 minutes on G5/2.7 GHz dual processor machine with 2 GB of RAM on the internal hard disk.
Even on a much older G5, the results should be much better than 4 days! I’m not sure what is causing your slowdown. Restarting seems to be the magical cure for many things and might be a good place to start. It would also be interesting to open a captured clip in to QuickTime Pro and render out of it. Does it take as long?
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Charlie,
That is weird. Can you try a fresh project and see if the problem is limited to the one project or is a more general problem.
Quit out of FCP and set your System Preferences to output audio via DeckLink Audio. Now use iTunes to play out through the Kona SD card via the SDI output. Does the deck receive receive audio on channels 1 and 2?
Alternatively take a movie with audio on channels 1 to 4 and then play it out through Blackmagic Deck Control. Does the deck receive receive audio on channels 1 and 2?
Finally, was the Kona SD previously outputting audio on channel 1 and, if so, can you think of anything that has changed? Perhaps a software update or change in preferences or a new project?
It would also be worth updating to Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.3, QuickTime 7.0.3 and DeckLink 5.1.2 drivers.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Igor,
The delay is almost nothing as the hardware is designed not to delay the signal at any stage. At most there could under a line of delay between input and output and it should be more like a few pixels rather than a line.
The only exception to this would be DVI-D monitoring. If you input video at a frame rate which your LCD monitor does not support natively, then Multibridge Exteme will need to perform pulldown processing to adapt the video for the display and this will cause a delay but no more than about 1 field. Some (more expensive) LCD monitors support more native frame rates and so there is no delay in displaying those formats.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Eric,
[Eric Steinberg] “1. I have heard that Decklink is mostly geared towards Mac users, and that Windows users experience some problems with Decklink. Is this true?”
No. The DeckLink cards started on Mac but have now been on Windows for some years and the drivers are mature. We aim for feature parity between Mac and Windows but there are some fundamental differences between the two platforms and the software available on those platforms. In some areas our Windows drivers are ahead and in others our Mac OS X drivers are ahead.
We began with QuickTime drivers but then added DirectShow so that anyone who wants to can hook in to our DirectShow filters and write their own custom applications. One prominent example is Sony Vegas 6.0c which is specifically written to hook in to the DirectShow support in our drivers. DeckLink cards are the only SDI cards supported by Sony in Vegas.
We’ve also written our own plug-in to Premiere Pro 1.5.1 so you can use DeckLink cards with Premiere Pro and also control the deck via built-in RS-422 deck control without having to purchase any additional software or hardware.
The QuickTime support is useful with applications including After Effects and Combustion.
[Eric Steinberg] “The Matrox AXIO supports native DVCPro HD editing in Premiere, but what about Decklink?”
Aside from our own uncompressed codecs, we support whatever codecs are available with Premiere Pro. Unfortunately Premiere Pro does not currently include a DVCPRO HD codec so you cannot edit in that codec without purchasing an expensive add-on codec. Hopefully that might change in the future in the same way that Apple include the DVCPRO HD and HDV codecs with Final Cut Pro.
However if your camera has HD-SDI output, then you can use DeckLink to capture to an uncompressed 8 or 10 bit timeline for maximum quality. You can add effects, text, transitions and render without any degradation in quality as it is uncompressed video.
[Eric Steinberg] “Someone told me that with a Decklink card, the DVCPro HD footage would be re-compressed, so I would in effect lose a generation. Is this true?”
I would need more context to understand what they were saying. DVCPRO HD is a compressed format. It looks great but if you compress and recompress it, it will soon degrade in quality as will any compressed codec.
When you capture via SDI to the DeckLink card, you will capture to an uncompressed 8 or 10-bit timeline. You can render as much as you like and it will not degrade in quality. When you are finished editing, you can then output to deck. If you output to a Panasonic D5 deck, your video should remain at very high quality as it uses little compression. However if you were to output to a DVCPRO HD deck, it would recompress in to the tight DVCPRO HD format and this would lead to some degradation in quality. That is the nature of the codec.
In fact if you were working in Premiere Pro using a DVCPRO HD codec, then you would find that any effects and renders you applied would cause generational loss.
When working with DVCPRO HD material, the choice is either to capture in natively (no loss) and then edit it (with generational loss) or else capture to an uncompressed timeline. If you capture to an uncompressed timeline, the DVCPRO HD material will decompress once (loss) but then there will be no further loss unless you output back to a DVCPRO HD deck in which case it will be compressed again.
Both workflows have their merits in different situations.
If you want to work in DVCPRO HD format with a DeckLink card, then currently the solution would be to use Final Cut Pro HD on a PowerMac G5.
[Eric Steinberg] “If I choose Decklink, which card should I buy? I want to be able to capture just about anything, both SD and HD, since clients bring all kinds of formats (From analog VHS to Digibeta). I want the quality to be as good as possible, and I want to be able to edit the captured material in Premiere (real-time) and After Effects.”
I would suggest any DeckLink HD series card, including the entry model $595 DeckLink HD, combined with the $1995 Multibridge. The DeckLink HD card is all digital and has SD/HD-SDI input and two outputs. The Multibridge is a birdirectional digital-analog convertor which can be used to support older analog decks. It will convert the analog video and audio in to SD-SDI and HD-SDI which can then be captured with the DeckLink HD. The DeckLink HD can then output through the Multibridge to analog decks such as Betacam SP.
You can even use the Multibridge to convert the uncompressed component analog outputs of a HDV camera in to HD-SDI so you can work in an uncompressed format rather than the tricky HDV format.
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We support realtime capture and playback of uncompressed SD and HD video in Premiere Pro as well as realtime capture and playback of DV video. AVI files captured in Premiere Pro can be moved to and from After Effects and we also support RAM preview out of After Effects to the DeckLink display on your broadcast monitor.
If you work in uncompressed formats, there will be no degradation of quality of your source material. That is why DeckLink cards and Multibridge are designed to work as uncompressed 10-bit SDI cards to retain maximum quality through all stages of a workflow.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Matthew,
[Matthew Beall] “is there any reason to wait for the Multibridge Express, or can i get the Multibridge + HDLink and basically do the same thing now?”
You can really go either way. The Multibridge Extreme has a built-in version of HDLink but will also support dual-link DVI-D displays, such as the Apple 30″ monitor, as well as normal DVI-D displays. HDLink supports DVI-D displays but not the large dual-link DVI-D displays. The Multibridge Extreme will also support 2K output via dual-link DVI-D but that might or might not be of interest to you.
Given you already own a DeckLink HD card, the current Multibridge and HDLink will do what you need to do. You can use them in conjunction with your DeckLink HD card or else independantly without a DeckLink workstation. A notebook would be perfect for controlling the Multibridge and HDLink via USB. Please note that down conversion has not yet been added to Multibridge but we want to get back to that as soon as Multibridge Extreme has been released.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Chris,
It looks as though After Effects just displays whatever video output components in finds regardless of whether they are YUV or RGB. After Effects works in RGB mode and then DeckLink performs a color space conversion before the video is output as YUV from the DeckLink card. So RGB is the correct setting to choose and is what we mention on page 19 of the PDF manual.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Hi Shane,
I spoke with the engineers here and they directed me to a paragraph in the support note Premiere Pro 1.5.1 caveats with DeckLink v5.1.2 which is still applicable with the latest drivers.
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Avoid mixed-format clips with NTSC sequences and DeckLink HD Pro 4:2:2 & 4:4:4 cards.
Due to an issue in NTSC sequences with mixed-format clips and the DeckLink HD Pro 4:2:2 & 4:4:4 cards, we recommend using either 8 bit clips or 10 bit clips exclusively in any one sequence.
—Subsequent to this support note, the problem has been partially resolved in the 4:4:4 card. You can add DV to an 8-bit timeline but any effects will still require rendering.
A full solution is in the works. I hope this explains the current problem and we should have a full solution shortly.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design