[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Good news! You don’t need to worry about the different codecs as they are both written to the same standards and are compatible with each other. Clips captured or rendered in one codec can be opened by the other. I doubt the Apple uncompressed codecs would be released for Windows.

For 8-bit uncompressed clips, the Apple and Blackmagic codecs are written to the same 2vuy standard.

For 10-bit uncompressed clips, the Apple and Blackmagic codecs are written to the same v210 standard.

So you can move clips between Mac and Windows systems and will be able to work with the same files on both platforms.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Keith,

It sounds as though you’ve had a bumpy start but hopefully your reseller can quickly diagnose the problem. Please let us know if you have more questions once they return it to you.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

PCIe slots require PCIe cards and do not provide backward compatibility for PCI and PCI-X cards. Apple has switched to the PCIe bus in the new G5’s and it’s a logical progression but also a technological leap. In other words your existing DeckLink Pro will not work in the new PCIe Macs. In fact the slots are completely different so you cannot make the mistake of inserting a PCI card in a PCIe slot. Apple are continuing to make the G5/2.7 DP with PCI-X available for anyone who wants a very fast G5 but wants to use existing PCI and PCI-X cards.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Kaspar,

Yes, there is hope 🙂 Previous shipping dates have been passed so I’m not going to promise anything but I am optimistic that Multibridge Extreme will be shipping in that timeframe.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

I’m not 100% sure about this but it is my belief that the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview is designed to work with Apple’s compressed codecs but not with uncompressed material. I don’t want to mislead you so hopefully someone else can jump in here and correct me if I’m wrong. I think that the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview will work OK with DV or DVCPRO HD material and maybe some other compressed formats too.

Presumably you already have a LCD display capable of displaying 1920 x 1080 pixels for use with the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview. If that is the case, you might consider the HDLink as it will take the HD-SDI output of your DeckLink card and convert it to DVI-D so you can use it with a supported LCD display such as an Apple Cinema HD 23″ display. My guess is that is the display you already have and so all you would need to add is the HDLink. This is an inexpensive way of performing digital HD monitoring and the results will be much higher quality that using the Digital Cinema Desktop Preview mode.

Alternatively if you have an SD monitor, and you are working in HD and a NTSC or PAL frame rate, you could just enable hardware down conversion in the DeckLink PrefPane. This will continue to output HD to your deck but will also output SD on the spare SDI monitoring port as well as on the analog outputs. So you can monitor your HD material via a SD monitor and this won’t cost you anything.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jonas,

The PCIe (PCI Express) slots in the new G5’s require PCIe cards. PCIe is not backward-compatible with PCI and PCI-X and so the DeckLink HD card will not physically fit in the new PCIe slot.

We recently released the DeckLink Extreme PCIe card and we’ve been testing it with the new PCIe Macs.

The DeckLink 5.1.1 software on our web site supports the DeckLink Extreme PCIe card in the new PCIe G5’s.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Bonjour Francois,

[Francois X] “Luke, does that mean that it will be only composit out to the DigiBeta OR can I assume that if I have composite out I will have SDI out too”

Sorry, my statement was ambiguous. I should have expressed it the same way you have, ie if you can see the composite (or component) output, you will also have SDI output.

[Francois X] “I wonder, would the HdLink allow me to capture HDV tapes”

HDLink does not capture anything. HDLink enables you to monitor SDI output using a low-cost LCD monitor.

My guess is that your question relates to one of the DeckLink HD range of cards? Using Final Cut Pro HD and any of the DeckLink HD series of cards, you can capture HD material via HD-SDI to the DVCPRO HD codec in one pass.

However if Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 is capturing your HDV material via FireWire, then it will be captured to your disk in the HDV format.

Perhaps I have misunderstood you so it would be helpful if you could explain the source of your HDV video, eg a particular camera or deck. I should then be able to provide you with a more accurate answer to your question.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Wow! That’s impressive.

Are you running Mac OS X or Windows XP?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Steve,

I’ll forward your problem to the engineers and see if they can suggest the signifiance of the QuickTime error you have observed.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Argot,

Can you tell me why you are using a DV timeline? You mentioned that you capture in an 8 or 10 bit timeline but later you use a DV timeline. Uncompressed 8 or 10 bit clips are captured in the 4:2:2 format and their quality is excellent. DV is a useful codec if you want to save disk space or if your disk array is not fast enough to cope with uncompressed files. However it uses “lossy compression” and quality will be lost every time you apply an effect or render it. Furthermore, DV is only 4:1:1 so it doesn’t look as good.

My guess is that the grainy image you are seeing on your monitor might result from your use of the DV format. Accordingly, can you try capturing some 8 or 10 bit clips from your deck and then play them out to your monitor? My guess is they will look excellent. Capture the same clips from the deck to a Blackmagic DV timeline and then play them out to the monitor? Is the quality the same or does the video look a little grainy? My guess is that this will explain the grainy image you are seeing but I will be interested to learn the results of your tests.

—

I am not clear about your print to tape problem. Are you saying that sometimes you encounter an audio/video sync problem after 9 minutes? When this problem occurs, what is the format of your PAL AVI file, eg 8-bit uncompressed, 10-bit uncompressed or DV?

If you are working in an uncompressed format and you find that audio lags behind video after about 9 minutes, then this sounds similar to a support note we have documented named “Video increasingly lags behind audio in Premiere Pro“. While your disk array should be fast enough for uncompressed standard definition video, it might be that it is running slower than expected, possibly due to file fragmentation. Can you please run Blackmagic Disk Speed Test and let me know what Read and Write speeds it reports for your disk array? If your disk array is the cause of the problem, then the Read and Write speeds should confirm this.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design