[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

In regards to Photoshop, we used to suggest that DeckLink users just drag the Photoshop window over on to the broadcast monitor and make it go full screen. Unfortunately the Windows version of Photoshop continued to display a title bar at the top of the monitor and this was undesirable. So instead we now include Blackmagic import and export plugs to Photoshop. You can grab a frame of video from the deck straight in to Photoshop work on it and then export to your broadcast monitor and/or to the deck. This is nice as you don’t have to worry about codecs and Photoshop just uses the video data straight from the deck.

We’ve got RAM Preview with After Effects and you can monitor that live. The RAM Preview function of After Effects does not always run in real time due to the nature of RAM Preview. Generally once you have previewed some video, it will probably display it is real time if you play it again but this is dependant upon several factors including how much RAM you have installed. You can definitely work on your video in After Effects and immediately preview it on the broadcast monitor but I wouldn’t suggest outputting to deck from After Effects as the preview is just that and you really should render the material and output with an NLE if you are going to output to deck.

I don’t think Lightwave has any direct way of outputting via SDI to DeckLink cards. The DeckLink drivers include a utility named FrameLink which enables you to mount an AVI movie as if it were a disk of DPX frames. So what you could do is create an empty FrameLink volume and then output a sequence of DPX files from Lightwave to the FrameLink volume. You should then be able to output the resulting AVI movie to your broadcast monitor and/or deck using an NLE such as Premiere Pro or Vegas. You could even use After Effects to output the video via RAM Preview.

An alternative would be to drag the Lightwave window over on to the DeckLink desktop but I think this would be particularly slow but you might still want to test it on your system.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi David,

If your system is running fine, then that’s great and you can keep using it. We’ve performed testing on Mac OS X 10.3.9 and it basically worked OK. However we have received a lot of feedback from customers regarding a range of inconsistent problems with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and so we suggest using either a Panther, FCP 4.5 and DeckLink 4.8.1 combination or else Tiger with FCP5 and DeckLink 5.1.1. Hopefully your system will continue to perform well.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Thank you, that would be very helpful. Please send the pictures to
pcsupport@blackmagic-design.com

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Paul,

If the main chip on the PCI-X to PCIe bridge card is working well, then there should be enough speed for use with the Multibridge PCIe models. The last chips we tested were not working as well as expected and the supplier of those chips is working on the issues now which should help with any speed issues.

PCI-X is really very fast and there are several speeds of PCIe, ie 1 lane, 4 lane, 8 lane and 16 lane. We only need to use a 4 lane slot in HD or a 1 lane slot for SD. The DeckLink Extreme PCIe card is an example of a 1 lane card which is perfectly capable of uncompressed, 10-bit SD video.

I’m not a hardware engineer and don’t know if there would be any performance drop bridging from PCIe to PCI-X. However we’re only bridging to 4 lane PCIe so the PCI-X slots of current G5’s should be plenty fast enough for this purpose.

PCIe is not necessarily faster than PCI-X. The main reason why motherboard manufacturers have moved to PCIe is that PCIe motherboards have a lower cost of manufacture which in turn means that the price of computers can be made lower and therefore more competitive. Every technology has its pros and cons but the reason we are using PCIe is because the PCIe standard allows for an external connector. This contrasts with PCI and PCI-X where a card must be installed inside the computer and this is a problem if we want to add a lot of connectors on to the output of a card. With PCIe, we have an adapter card which is analogous to an extension lead which takes the PCIe slot outside of the computer. That means that the Multibridge Extreme can effectively plug straight in to the PCIe bus on the motherboard which is great for high speed work with video.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Jason,

If you have installed the latest firmware and drivers for the ATTO UL4D, then it should be working fine as we use it here and it works perfectly. Medea are pretty responsive to disk array problems and they might have a firmware update or some other solution to your problem.

In regards to SATA disk arrays, there are a bunch of posts in this forum about successful configurations and a lot of people seem happy with the Sonnet SATA card. It’s got 4 internal and 4 external ports. A 4-disk SATA array is plenty for SD and you could even use a 2-disk array if you’re not using a lot of RT effects.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Based upon other reports, that will very likely help but it is possible you would still experience a problem. I’ve received about 4 reports of this and 2 or 3 of the reports indicated that 8-bit still worked OK.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

While Tiger would be preferable, it won’t fix this problem. However Tiger is a better system for running FCP5.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

You can use the HDLink with the SDI output of your Kona 2 and this will work fine and provide you with low cost digital monitoring via an LCD display.

In regards to slot 2 being obscured by the size of the AGP graphics card, you could try another model of graphics card which does not obscure slot 2. I know some of the newer PCIe cards from both NVIDIA and ATI only take up one slot and maybe there is a newer AGP card which would fit one slot. Unforutnately I found this difficult to establish by looking at the two web sites but I suspect there is a thinner card now for AGP slots.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

Firstly, we recommend the use of Mac OS X 10.4 with Final Cut Pro HD 5.0 and we specifically advise against using Mac OS X 10.3.9. Having said that, I see you are using the Kona SD and I’ve previously received a few reports of problems playing back 10-bit material with Final Cut Pro 5.0 using the Kona SD whereas this problem did not occur with Final Cut Pro HD 4.5. Given past reports and some of our own tests, I believe this problem is more likely related to QuickTime 7 than FCP itself although I’m not sure. You’re using Panther so that eliminates Tiger as a possible factor in the problem. Accordingly we’ll run some more tests and see if we can work out what is going wrong. Different Kona SD cards have different firmware versions and I suspect ours are more up to date that some and that might make it more difficult for us to replicate the problem. However we’ll give it a try and let you know how we go.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Massimo,

This is a bug in Final Cut Pro HD 5.0.2 and we have previously logged it in Apple’s Radar bug tracking system with Radar bug number 4196111. Apple are aware of the problem and are investigating a solution so hopefully one will be found soon. The only workaround, of which I am aware, it to use SDI video with embedded audio.

Keeping audio seperate from video is an old workflow which used to be the standard. Once Apple fix this bug, you should be able to continue doing that if you like as that’s what Avid systems still do and you would be familiar with that workflow.

However I would encourage you to consider using SDI video with embedded audio. The movies that you capture will contain both the video and audio and keeping them together eliminates potential technicalities. It’s also nice to be able to capture everything in one cable and output via one cable. It makes it so much easier to connect to decks and cameras and other gear if you can just use embedded audio at all stages.

Do you have a particular workflow where you need to capture to seperate audio and video files or is this just a preference from your familiarity with Avid systems?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design