Video Blinking Issues with Burst In on Decklink HD Plus
by Matt_Geller
on
Nov 4, 2005 at 3:42:07 am
I have a client here in Chicago who is mad about Blackmagic cards. So mad, in fact, that he insisted with going with the Decklink product into the HD domain. Since the post house in question has a multitude of modern and legacy decks, I suggested the HD Plus for its ability to accept genlock, and a Multibridge to convert legacy analog signals from the likes of a Beta SP deck.
Unfortunately, I feel that might have been a bad consult: after exhaustive testing, asking for a replacement HD Plus card, and doing everthing but standing on our heads and crossing our fingers, we can't avoid what seems to be a "feature" of the card (at least with the 5.1.2 drivers).
In a nutshell, we are getting random, split-second loss of picture..."blinking" as the Blackmagic engineers are fond of calling it, whenever we feed a reliable genlock signal to the ref in of the HD Plus, and then view output from the card, whether viewing through SDI to a Panasonic SD930 DV50 deck, or through the 'bridge to a Sony BVW-70 SP Deck, or just right out of the 'bridge. And yes, we are feeding reliable (we tested other generators and cables) genlock to all three entities: Panasonic deck, Sony deck & the card. And yes, the Panasonic deck is set to external reference as is the Sony. We've even tried the cludgy Y out of the Multibridge through the reference of the deck into the Y in trick, to no avail.
My client is on the edge of getting a you-know-what card, and I'm trying to salvage the deal. Any comments or ideas?
The goods:
Dual 2.5 G5, 2.5 GB RAM, 250GB drive
HD Plus in Slot 4
66Mhz Apple Fibre HBA in Slot 3 - both cables going to a 14 drive Xraid in RAID 50.
Slot 2 empty
OS 10.4.3, QT 7.0.3, FCP 5.0.3, BMD 5.1.2
Panasonic SD930 DV50 deck with SDI
Sony BVW-70 Beta SP Deck
SDI OUT of 'bridge goes to SDI IN on card
SDI OUT of card goes to SD930 Deck
SDI OUT of SD930 Deck goes to in on 'bridge
SP deck component and audio is interconnected to 'bridge
But even if we isolate to the 'bridge, without the SD930, we still get the issue.
And, if we take the 'bridge out, and hook the HD Plus to the SD930, and feed the card genlock, it happens as well. (And yes, we read the doc on the BMD website and are feeding the SD930 external sync and we changed the menu setting for it to ref the external sync).
Matt Geller
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Re: Video Blinking Issues with Burst In on Decklink HD Plus by Neil Sadwelkar on Nov 7, 2005 at 3:37:16 am
This blinking problem was reported by me as well. For the HDPlus.
In my facility, we have two HDPlus with ref not connected as this blinking issue refuses to go away. Some driver release fixes it for some time, and then a new driver breaks it.
Its been this way from Drivers 4.x till 4.8.1.
The ver 5.0 and 5.1 were supposed to have fixed this. But we haven't upgraded yet so I cannot be sure. The downside of not connecting ref is we can make DigiBeta and DV dumps, but not analog Beta as these tend to drift if no ref is connected.
