[Martin Kay]

Albeit In case of the P55 there wasn’t mention that it must only be with USB 3.0 card in an available second x16 slot.

I think what they imply is that it must be a “full speed” PCIe v2 slot, which is not the case with many P55 boards which claim to have a v2 1-lane slot, but only run it at v1 speed. Having tried the Asus P7P55D-E Pro, which does have a “full speed” x1 PCIe slot, I can confirm that the Shuttle works with a generic NEC-chipset USB3 card in the top v2 1-lane slot. Also, the Shuttle works off the USB3 port from the NEC chip on that motherboard, which appears to be an built-in version of Asus’s U3S6 card with the same x4 PCIe Bridge chip configuration, so therefore gets sufficient bandwidth.

That said, I have found the BM FAQs and release notes somewhat lacking, as a result of which I’ve bought and swapped over to a new motherboard and USB3 card, which I probably needn’t have done. It’s taken me about two working days to get to the bottom of what works and what doesn’t, and (sometimes) the reason why, given that there’s something of a triangle between the PC hardware (and USB3 drivers), Adobe’s CS5 application (with its GPU acceleration), and the Blackmagic drivers & plug-ins. I suspect there are currently limitations (at best) and bugs (at worst) in all of them, which conspire together to make the current combination sometimes behave in unpredictable ways. Equally, it will probably get better as the software evolves, so there is some hope! 🙂

Martin Kay – ZEN Computer Services, UK

[Martin Kay]

could it be that they`ve made the drivers `test` the connection stas/type before even lanching any control panel etc, and simply refuse to launch the device on anything OTHER-THAN –`MAX-POTENTIAL` ??

I think this may well be what they do, more or less. When I first put an ASUS U3S6 into a P7P55D-Evo M/B the BM Shuttle drivers installed but the device wasn’t accessible in the BM Control Panel. Once I updated the main M/B BIOS the Shuttle became accessible, but I still wasn’t very happy with the overall performance.

Since then I’ve spent some time on the phone to BM in the UK and the impression I got was that if the Shuttle connects and is accessible, then the USB3 card is in the right sort of slot and has sufficient available bandwidth, or else the Shuttle won’t show as available in the BM Control Panel. They also said they’d used the Asus U3S6 (in an X58 motherboard).

Just in case it was anything to do with the U3S6, I’ve now tried an Asus P7P55D-E Pro which has v2 5Gb/s 1x PCIe slots (as opposed to the 2.5Gb/s 1x slots on the P7P55D Evo) with a 1x NEC USB3 card. I also tried the NEC chip that’s built onto the P55 motherboard (which BM’s web notes say you shouldn’t use). In my tests they all seemed to work much the same, and the issues with the Shuttle & Adobe CS5 seemed pretty much the same whichever USB3 connection I used out of those three options (in various permutations of single/multiple active USB3 ports).

Martin Kay – ZEN Computer Services, UK

[Martin Kay]

Something I’ve discovered using the Intensity Shuttle drivers/plugins in Premiere CS5, is that all attempts to render a Blackmagic AVI using the MJPEG codec (at 1080 or 720) result in an uncompressed file (at up to ~200MB/s).

I had a multi-layer section of a HD sequence which wouldn’t play out via the Shuttle, so I assumed the answer would be to render it down (into a BM MJPEG file) but it still wouldn’t play. Several days later, when trying a dedicated export to BM MJPEG, I discovered the problem, went back to look at the rendered files, and found they were uncompressed as well. In theory this may not affect users of non-USB3 products with different drivers, etc, but who knows?

Martin Kay – ZEN Computer Services, UK

[Martin Kay]

To quote what it says in the USB3 FAQs on the BM site:-

Can I use a USB 3.0 PCIe card with my Windows PC for UltraStudio Pro, Intensity Shuttle or Pocket UltraScope?

Yes! On the Windows platform, you can use Blackmagic Design’s USB 3.0 products with a P55 or X58 series motherboard which has been fitted with a USB 3.0 PCI Express card.

Since you have a motherboard with a P35 chipset, rather than a P55 or X58, that may be why it’s not working.

However, I’ve tried it on both P55 and X58 motherboards, and have been less than happy with the results.

In particular, on the P55 M/B (an Asus P7P55D Evo with Asus U3S6 card in an 8x PCIe slot) I had a similar problem with the Shuttle being recognised in the Windows Device Manager, but not by the Blackmagic control panel (or Premiere). After I updated the motherboard BIOS it was properly recognised, but it’s still virtually unusable in Premiere CS5 because it keeps dropping frames, even with SD video.

I would love to know what setup Blackmagic used in which the Shuttle “fully supported Premiere CS5” on a P55 chipset motherboard. For me, CS5 works just fine on its own, and I can get a good preview o/p over HDMI from a graphics card. What I was hoping (and expecting) is that I would be able to get the same sort of preview out of the Shuttle (and from the analogue outputs), but so far that is far from the case.

Martin Kay – ZEN Computer Services, UK

[Martin Kay]

If you want to reframe your shots for better (artistic) effect, and if you want to keep the end product as a normal PAL-sized video, then you should “crop” by zooming in on them slightly (or as much as is required), and then re-position (ie move) them in the x-y plane to get the best framing. You can do this with the standard “Motion” effect which is there by default on every video clip.

If the content to be cropped is generally top or bottom of frame, and you want to convert everything from 4:3 to 16:9, then start a 16:9 project, import your 4:3 footage and make sure “Interpret Footage” for each clip is set to D1/DV PAL (ie 4:3). The clips will appear full height but with black bands down either side. You can then use the motion effect to reposition and zoom in on them. Just click on the preview/monitor window and you will see a fram with handles around the video clip. Use the handles to zoom, and click anywhere inside the frame to drag the clip position to re-frame it.

If you’re not making a DVD or exporting to tape as the end product, but making a multimedia file for a web site or to play on a PC, there is another simple approach. Just use a standard 4:3 project, edit as normal and then make up a title with black boxes covering the areas that you want to crop (eg top and bottom). Place it on the highest numbered video track and stretch it to the length of the project. Then go through all the video clips and and reposition them behind the mask to improve the framing where necessary. Finally, export via the Media Encoder and use the cropping in the encoder settings to export just the video, and not the mask.

Hope that covers most of the options…

Martin
http://www.zenvideo.co.uk

[Martin Kay]

David,

Is there any reason why your (PAL?) widescreen DV project is not set to 720×576, which is what would be recorded by a PAL DV camera set to true widescreen (16:9 anamorphic) mode? All PAL SD DV recording is done at 720×576, and it’s only the effective pixel aspect ratio that changes.

Martin

[Martin Kay]

[mihail angelov] “I installed 5.4 version driver yesterday on my Premiere Pro 1.5 and there was a roblem with DV clips, when I’m playing the clip everything is going well, but while STOP the frame is distort ot my TV monitor (in the PP monitor the frame is OK).
This thing is happening only with the DV Blackmagic comression clips.”

Yes, I can see this too on a newly built system with PremPro v1.51 and a first-time-install of BMD 5.4. In PAL DV mode (I’ve not tested NTSC), DV clips play fine but pause with the picture sheered to the left and a diagional black blanking line from bottom right to top mid left.

If I had to guess the cause of the bug, I’d say that on pause plus or minus one pixel/line is being shifted into the frame buffer so that each line is getting progressively further out of horizontal sync, since it’s roughly 576 pixels out by the end of the 720×576 PAL frame.

I don’t think it will be difficult to fix.

Martin @ ZEN

[Martin Kay]

Most analogue audio mixer channels can be switched to take mic or line level signal levels, so try it first before buying anything extra. If you find your mixer is the exception to the rule and only accepts mic level signals, look for some in-line attenuators (“Pads”) which come in values like -10dB, -20dB, etc, and which can be stacked in series to create higher values (eg two -20dB pads give -40dB).

Martin
ZEN computer Services

[Martin Kay]

In my experience the 32bit version of Windows XP Pro will not use more than 3GB (from 4GB of RAM modules) no matter whether you have a PCI-Ex Decklink card installed or not. The motherboard supports it because different operating systems (eg Linux) support >3GB, but you will probably have to wait for Decklink drivers that run under the 64bit version of WinXP Pro before all your 4GB of RAM gets used.

As for the Premiere Pro rendering only using 55% of CPU resources, I think some effects are only single-threaded so can only use one core.

Regards,

Martin
ZEN Computer Services

[Martin Kay]

Yes, same here on the latest Windows drivers. I emailed a sequence of screen grabs to Blackmagic a week ago, but hear anything more about it.

I suspect it’s some sort of mismatch between 24/32bit YUV/RGBA data required/supplied, hence the pattern isn’t vertically aligned, and the green lines are alpha information (which should have been removed) being interpreted as colour information.

Am I anywhere close?

Martin
ZEN Computer Services