High Definition for PC » Decklink

Blackmagic for CS3 on OSX

McCarthyTech — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 05:49:49 +0000

I have a strong personal preference towards using Windows PCs over Macs running OSX. That said, Adobe’s release of an OSX of their CS3 suite of video products has recently brought me into more frequent contact with Apple’s products. I currently have a MacPro tower in my office, primarily for testing purposes. Until last week, the Mac version of Premiere Pro had no hardware I/O support, limiting its usefulness in professional environments.

Blackmagic has become the first company to support the Mac version of CS3 with their line of hardware products, with the version 6.6 release of their drivers on Oct 26. I was aware of this at the time, but didn’t report it here until I had a chance to experiment with them myself. I have installed a Multibridge Extreme in my MacPro and done some quick tests. Everything seems to be in order, and most of the issues I encountered can be attributed with my lack of familiarity with the Apple way of doing things.

The only real advantage I see Mac offering over the equivalent PC system, is that the Quicktime engine allows a greater variety of compression formats to be played in realtime through the hardware output. (For example DVCProHD) I am hoping that this more open approach to compression support will allow Cineform compressed MOV files to be output in realtime sometime in the future, maybe even at 2K with the MultibridgePro. I also hope to see this on PC, but the Mac Quicktime architecture currently seems one step closer to achieving this than the eventual PC solution.

I plan to do a more full fledged test of the HD-SDI I/O options in the near future. So far, the only thing I have been unable to do, is get a realtime down-converted SD output of my HD timeline. Does anyone know if this is supported, and if so, how to configure it? I will need it to add pulldown, since most of my HD work is 23.976fps. Since I only have an internal SATA array on the MacPro, I will not be able to push the Blackmagic hardware to its limits. My three disks will be struggling to provide the data-rate required for 1080p 4:2:2, let alone 4:4:4 RGB or 2K.

UPDATE: I found the settings for downconverting, and it seems to automatically add pulldown for SD output, but I don’t see a way to add pulldown to HD output. Unfortunately my system is currently doing a center cut to SD even when I have anamorpic or letterbox selected. I have also been having many other playback issues, so it seems there are still a few things to be worked out.

One other benefit that the Blackmagic solutions provide, is that the same hardware can be used by PC applications in Windows. This will be a significant advantage to those of you out there who are using Bootcamp to run Windows and OSX on a MacPro. Currently Blackmagic offers the only hardware solution that publicly supports this dual environment compatibility.

Blackmagic Multibridge

McCarthyTech — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:44:29 +0000

I was never all that impressed with original Multibridge from Blackmagic Design. It was not an I/O interface for your computer, it was just a Analog to SDI convertor, both ways. When the Multibridge Extreme was released, and with every major revision since then, computer I/O was added in a brilliant way. Basically they embeding their Decklink electronics within the breakout box, and then devised a way to tap directly into the PCIe bus. I don’t believe they created the original concept of External PCIe, but they were the first by a long shot to market a product utilizing the concept. Caldigit and Ciprico, among others, have recently developed drive arrays with an external RAID controller that uses the same basic connection.

Another major feature that the Multibridge was the first to offer, was DVI output for monitoring on an LCD in full screen independent of the graphics card. It was also the first simple solution for monitoring 2K at fullscreen, using the DVI port to drive a 2560×1600 pixel LCD. This has been replaced by HDMI in the newest revisions, removing integrated 2K monitoring support, but that is now offered through the HDLink Pro. The most recent version, the Multibridge Pro, can capture or convert to and from HDMI, SDI, and Analog formats. Their newest feature is support for 3Gb/s SDI, allowing HD 4444 and 2K 444 over a single cable in realtime. (Which allows 2K preview on an 30″ LCD though the HDLink Pro, which is a separate item)

On the PC side, they support three basic editing modes, well really two and a half. Uncompressed is their primary format, 8 or 10bit, 422 or 444, and now 2K. They recently added a compressed MotionJPEG codec, but they have not unlocked all of the options to vary the quality yet. This allows the realtime capture and playback of compressed files through their I/O. Their MotionJPEG codec is 8bit 422, and from my use, I would class it as a great codec for full rez and frame rate offline editing, if you are finishing to HD or Film. For Web encodes or SD, it is probably fine for online work, unless you need 10bit for Digibeta. The last option is a Capture only one, into the Cineform codec. I know for a fact that this works over HDMI on the Intensity card, but I have heard that all of the Blackmagic products are supported. Blackmagic products are the only way to capture RGB over dual link SDI in realtime to the new Cineform 444 codec, and possibly even to Cineform2K.

There are a few disadvantages I am aware of. Low realtime effects or rendering support in their hardware or editing modes. They don’t support many compression schemes, MotionJPEG being somewhat limited. The big issue in using it with Cineform is that it seems that realtime monitoring is not available from Cineform RT projects in Premiere. Lastly, Blackmagic products are known for their reasonable prices, but not their long lifespans.