[Mrproductions]

Thanks Bill, this is my fault for not being more specific with my question. What I need to know is, how well does a Decklink HD card (of any flavor) display ram previews under AE 7 or CS3 when running under X64? We use AE exclusively in the X64 environment.

I’ve spoken at length with Decklink Support about this on several occaisions and unfortunately, their U.S.-based support team is cannot provide an answer (the Decklink engineering team is in Australia and cannot be reached directly, so everything is secondhand).

While Decklink has some 64-bit Windows drivers, and the cards do provide some functionality in X64, they claim there is an issue with ram previews in both AE and Combustion when running X64, and displaying the output to an external HD monitor. Essentially they say it won’t work.

They (the engineers) further claim the problem stems from Decklink’s dependency on QuickTime for generating the ram previews??? Sounds bizarre because you’d think that the whole idea behind AE’s “ram” previews obviates any file format of any kind — it is rendered to “ram”, after all.

Anyway, I do know there are issues with QT 7.2 that did not exist in 7.1, and, I have heard that AE CS3 may generate ram previews differently than AE 7. I also know that QT 7.1 performs flawlessly under X64 — we’ve encountered zero issues in X64 when working with QT HD files, or any other QT feature for that matter.

What Decklink’s support staff cannot answer is: Under X64, does using an earlier version of QT resolve the ram preview issue? Does eliminating QT’s nasty little “qttask.exe” fix the issue? Or, does using AE 7 instead of CS3 resolve the issue? Or is it the other way ’round? Maybe it’s AE 7 that has problems and not CS3. Unfortunately, Decklink Support could not tell me “what” version of AE or QT were used for testing under X64 because they simply don’t know, and inquiries to the engineers have gone unanswered. Maddening.

One interesting thing Decklink Support ‘did’ mention was, I’m not the only one asking this question.

[Mrproductions]

A lot of this has to do with your motherboard’s chipset but, you “may” be able to get AE to see 3GB — actually 3072MB — using the /3GB switch in your boot.ini file. This is the best that XP Pro can offer simply because of its addressing limitations.

A typical boot.ini file for this would look like:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT=”????” /3GB

Try Googling “xp /3gb switch” for in-depth explanations on how to do this.

I’ve personally been able to get this to work, but I also know that on some machines it cannot be done. If you ‘can’ make it work it’s pretty cool to see AE launch under XP and tell you it has 3072MB of RAM available.

Anyway, it is just this limitation that drove me to Windows x64 and 8GB of RAM. Windows x64 takes the first 4GB for the OS, and allows AE to see a full 4096MB for itself.

‘Hope this helps.

[Mrproductions]

Thanks Motti88. I still need to know if anyone has tested this under “x64”, not XP Pro.

[Mrproductions]

Thanks Motti88.

Actually it was the local Decklink rep. who said the Intensity was CODEC dependant. I ‘did’ finally get through to Decklink support, and a tech. there was kind enough to run a few tests on-the-fly for us with a Decklink HD Extreme.

Seeing as you have an Intensity Pro (I’m assuming connected to an HD monitor) I have a question for you: Do you get normal RAM previews output to your external monitor with a comp set to 852×480, square pixels, 30 fps, and a mix of differing file types like QT and PSD layers?

Also in 1920×1080?

Thanks!

[Mrproductions]

I

[Mrproductions]

Thanks, but any QT incompatibility must be with Decklink. Though a 64-bit version of QT doesn’t (yet) exist, all features of the 32-bit version run flawlessly under x64. Inside and outside of AE. I’d very much like to hear from someone who has a setup similar to ours — x64, FX 1500, AE, and a Decklink HD card. Anyone?

Thanks!