[Mike Medavoy]

Thanks I will send the pics right now.

Yes, it shows in canvas as well, not only on my CRT monitor. If I render out a quicktime self-contained file, it’s there as well.

[Mike Medavoy]

OK I will send the stills – I have them already saved. To what e-mail address? I will send them ASAP.

It doesn’t happen when exporting. Only on the timeline, when I render something, occasionally this problem shows up. Sometimes the artifacts are very easy to spot, sometimes they are tiny and I find them much later. Sometimes they only appear for a singe frame, and are virtually impossible to detect if you don’t play frame by frame specifically for this problem.

I tried rendering to a different drive, no difference.

I haven’t checked my RAM but I doubt this is the problem, since it only happens when I am in my DigiBeta project.

Thanks.

[Mike Medavoy]

No, I am rendering normal video files.
To go to a 8-bit timeline would defeat the purpose of editing in Digibeta uncompressed 10 bit.

I am still verifying and re-verifying every version and I am still finding those annoying green lines or dots here and there, small, in a corner of a frame or something (as if on purpose to escape my eye!). I am going nuts.

[Mike Medavoy]

Bettsy,

How can I thank you?………… It works perfectly!!! Thanks for tracinng the problem!!!

Mike

[Mike Medavoy]

UPDATE

With 720p DVCPRO HD the reverse happens! When I stop the footage, while paused, it gets darker! When I resume, it gets back to normal! I have no idea why… But it’s just the opposite to what happens with SD when I pause it, and look at the CRT monitor.

PS I am downconverting HD to SD through the Blackmagic Preferences.

[Mike Medavoy]

What I did is this (Apple dual G5 + Ati Radeon 9800 + Decklink dual HD 4:4:4 + HDLink):

– ADC to DVI converter plugged in the first output (ADC) of my G5 video card, to which a DELL 2405 is connected as my main (normal) computer display)

– a DVI cable connected to my second output on my G5 video card, left free at the other end on my desk (you will see why…)

– The SDI output from my Decklink HD goes to my HDLink on the desk, NEXT to the free end of the DVI cable mentioned above

– The component analog outputs from my Decklink HD go to my JVC professional CRT monitor

NOW, I have a second DELL 2405 positioned to my left, with a DVI cable that runs on my desk. When I need to monitor DVCPRO HD I will simply plug it in the HDLink, monitoring the signal pixel-by-pixel, and the DELL acts like a regular “TV” monitor along with my JVC (which downconverts the HD to SD)
When I don’t need to monitor HD, I simply switch the second DELL to the free end of the DVI cable that goes to my G5, this way I have two regular computer monitors side by side. I use this when I edit SD, so I could use FCP in dual-screen mode, it feels amazing, huge timeline, huge browser etc.

This set-up is simple and it works wonderfully, and is VERY adaptable.

The only thing, I still haven’t been able to properly calibrate the DELLs to match the CRT monitor (calibrated with color bars). Since LCDs cannot be calibrated to color bars, I am still trying to get the best out of them.

Any ideas from somebody out there will be greatly appreciated.

[Mike Medavoy]

Thanks so much for your answer, and some issues are now clear for me. However, I am still confused on some points:

1) Are indeed all color bars the same? When I output FCP bars, then Echofire bars, then Blackmagic bars, they all look different on my monitor (and I don’t re-calibrate the monitor, of course). They never look exactly the same. And I remember reading in several places (including the Synthetic Aperture manual) that most color bars you can find are “wrong”, I mean not properly calibrated. They said theirs are ok so it could be marketing :-)))

But back to the set-up, then why in the Blackmagic folder after installing there is a Test Pattern subfolder containing SMPTE bars WITH setup and SMPTE bars WITHOUT setup? Now I am really confused.

2) But what I’ll do I will just use FCP color bars since this is my editing platform and calibrate my monitor to it, using all the known steps, and using the pluge at the end. This should give me peace of mind the calibration is accurate, right?

Thank you again.

[Mike Medavoy]

Yes,

On Panasonic’s main site it still says $1,750 for a 4Gb P2 card… Let’s hope it really drops down. I vote for even below $900 like you suggested 🙂

[Mike Medavoy]

Dear Graeme,

Where did you find this new pricing info?

[Mike Medavoy]

I got (almost) everything and thanks for the advice! I will go and buy a composite card for my monitor, only about $250.

What I didn’t get, are there already newer versions of the decklink hd 4:4:4 card out with optional functions? My dual link hd card was bought in the beginning of August. Are there some new features that I’m missing?

Thanks.