Richard Squires
Forum Replies Created
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Well there’s it in a nutshell. My setup uses too many monitors. However this is a standard setup for FCP and I wouldn’t run After Effects without being able to view my changes on a broadcast monitor. So it kind of confirms my feelings about Motion.
I assume you both use Final Cut. How do you monitor your final output?
All the best
Richard
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It’s nice to know Motion runs great for you guys but that doesn’t really help me in my situation. So with your setups are you running the same amount of screens I am running and are you monitoring to a broadcast monitor whilst working. My first feeling is I am possibly pushing the graphics card by running 2 monitors. Also what graphics card are each of you using and if possible machine specs too.
All the best
Richard
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Not footage unfortunately as this happens with a simple shape on a color background, or with text. No effects either. Basically it’s the multi processing eating into the ram preview immediately.
I have tested without MP on and it works fine but that sort of defeats the whole idea. What are the optimum settings for MP and ram preview?
Richard
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I was wondering if you can tell me what version of Mac OSX you are using or were using when you installed these codecs. I had a load of pain with After Effects and the 1.8 codec but I think I installed it incorrectly. I’d just be happier knowing what set up you had so I can make a judgement on installing it on my machine. I have the same problem in that I need to output an alpha and can’t at the moment.
all the best
richard
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What are the SD Playback codecs for Blackmagic Media Express. I tried DVCPro pal SD and it doesn’t seem to work. I have an SD monitor and an HD monitor and I can view DVCProHD fine on the HD one. I just get a non sync display if I try to playback HD on the external monitor.
all the best
rich
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DV is I think the only format that uses lower field. Have you generated the footage yourself or was it ingested from a DV camera. Anyway when you render it it has to be lower field first
all the best
Rich
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After doing some research on the web it seems I was mistaken in thinking that the Intensity Pro card can do what it claims to do. I’d say with pretty much %100 certainty that if you are working on an HD project in After Effects that is above 1280 x 720 and want to do a ram preview to an external monitor in real time with no dropped frames then you are out of luck. It seems to be a common problem, and I guess a limitation of hardware, software and everything in between. I was able to get a frame rate of 15 frames per second in a 1920 x 1080 comp in Motion, and that was after having rendered a ram preview of the timeline, but obviously this is far from useful in the real world. In AE it was 8.6 frames per sec!
The way around in After Effects I have found is to use the HD to SD conversion in the Intensity settings. This way I was able to ram preview in realtime with no dropped frames a 1440 x 1080 composition, but this was only a single layer without effects so I don’t know if I’d be able to do a whole comp with multiple layers. I’ll look into that. Also you can render out your project and monitor in HD through Blackmagic Media Express, using DVCProHD.
What is slightly annoying is that from all the blurb on the Blackmagic website the impression I got was that this was possible.
Design and Effects
Intensity even allows high end design and effects work, great for the special effects you’ve always wanted in Independent Films, use After Effects, Shake™, Motion™, Combustion™, Photoshop® and more. Intensity also includes an RGB QuickTime™ preview output for After Effects and Combustion™. And, you can always preview on the video-out interactively as you design and then play pre-renders using real time ram preview. When rendering your project, processing quality using the Blackmagic codec is full 16 bit, so you always get the advantage of uncompressed video.
Yes you can do SD ram previews no problem but the thrust of the Intensity cards marketing is towards HD not SD. So the inference above is that this is possible for HD when it’s plainly not.
Also the application support is patchy to be honest. Shake monitoring is really not supported ( I’ve tried it and there’s even an article on the Blackmagic site saying this) mostly due to Apple not updating Shake 4.1, but there should be caveats in the promotional blurb.
Intensity is an ideal companion for most video editing software. Mac OS X™ compatible software includes Final Cut Pro™, After Effects®, Photoshop®, Shake™, Motion™, iDVD™, DVD Studio Pro™, Cleaner™ and many more. Windows™ compatible software includes Premiere Pro®, After Effects®, Photoshop®, Encore DVD® and many more.
Now I’m not the litigious type but I am sure some people out there are. I do think some sort of disclaimer should be attached to some of the claims on the site. Unless you can convince me otherwise that I can in fact output a full HD Ram Preview from After Effects in native HD to a monitor through the Intensity Card
all the best
Richard
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Thanks Kristian,
that explains it. Since I don’t have any decks with SDI and I really would only use it to monitor out I think the intensity would be a good choice. I have a Blackmagic SD Decklink Pro on my G5 and monitor using the component outputs to a Sony PVM-14L2. This is great for colour accuracy.
Thanks again for the info. I’ll do a little more research. I am in Melbourne where would be the best place to perhaps see a demo of the intensity card in action?
all the best
richard
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Thanks Kristian
may I ask then why the card is so cheap in comparison to the other HD cards. What are the disadvantages over say the HD Pro extreme. I really need a card only for output to a monitor. I don’t do a great deal of ingestion from tape and if I do it’s on my other machine with an SD Blackmagic card. Even then I usually ask for quicktimes on a drive or dvd.
all the best
richard
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yeh seems the way to go I guess
regards
rich