Blackmagic Intensity Pro capture card

Josh,

I have sent a couple of emails via your website to support, no response..? I'd like to take the support aspect of this offline of the lafcpug. I'll just report the good news back to the forum...

You need to call Chuck. Probably easier

Michael Horton
-------------------

I'm currently the first in line and the next available technician will answer. Soon...

You need to call Chuck.

How is Chuck calling himself gonna help?

Commas man...commas.

Boy George wrote a song about that you know...

"comma comma comma comma comma chameleon..."


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Well, apparently I put myself on hold and then teased myself that I was the next in line for about 45 minutes.

Unfortunately I have to leave for football. I'll try again Monday.

Chuck Spaulding Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Well, apparently I put myself on hold and then
> teased myself that I was the next in line for
> about 45 minutes.
>
> Unfortunately I have to leave for football. I'll
> try again Monday.

Chuck, sorry about that. We must have been swamped that time. As for the emails, currently we are buried under a large load so it can take us a few days to respond.

If it helps, I've got nobody waiting on hold now. So give us a call, I will look for your emails.

Never mind...I made Dan answer it. Please let us know if that doesn't solve it for ya!

Here's a report of how things are going so far. Please keep in mind that any criticism is meant to be constructive.

I got through on phone support on Monday morning and they were able to help me immediately. The problem was a two parter, part one was due to my unfamiliarity with the Mac, I knew the card must have a control panel but I couldn't find it. Turns out it was located in the System Preferences. In my defense however, [part 2] nowhere does the documentation mention the existence of the control panel let alone where its located.

Once I located the control panel it was very easy to setup the card to accept the component input.

so with the device control set to FW [anything] and the capture card set to component I set off to see if this wold work. I could not get this to work in FCP, I kept getting an error telling me that either there was no device found or that it couldn't initialize the FW device and that both the Device Control and the card had to be set to FW.

Quote

The HDMI spec does not contain timecode nor device control. It was designed mostly as an all inclusive way to put audio and video in one connection while simultaneously supporting the newer audio and video formats. This was meant to simplify the average guys home theater setup experience.

For obvious reasons it has appealed to a much larger market. It can support 1080p, 7.1 audio and a vast array of audio and video configurations. But with all these great features there were bound to be some limitations. Such as no timecode and no device control.

That said, the editing software we use has features that allow us to get around this for most HDMI. How it works is that we allow the ieee1394 connection between the camera/deck and the computer to handle the AVC shuttle commands and timecode. At the same time we set the application to capture video through our board. Viola! Timecode and device control.

At this point, it is worth mentioning for sake of clarification. This is NOT a limitation in our board, but a limitation in the HDMI spec. So we work around it as best as possible.

Josh, what NLE are you using? Is it possible to get this to work in FCP? As a work around for FCP users, could you add this capability to the Blackmagic capture software? At least having the ability to capture the entire tape (Capture Now) with timecode would be very useful.

At first blush this is a great capture card (Especially for the price) and its exciting to think that this could be such an elegant solution to the nasty problems associated with editing HDV (namely, don't do it!).

That's all I have for now, I'm sure I'll be testing it in more depth over the next couple of days. If anyone has any questions about this card I'm happy to share my experiences, just let me know.

Quote
Josh, what NLE are you using? Is it possible to get this to work in FCP? As a work around for FCP users, could you add this capability to the Blackmagic capture software? At least having the ability to capture the entire tape (Capture Now) with timecode would be very useful.

Chuck

Read Josh's reply a bit more carefully. The workaround is this:

Quote
How it works is that we allow the ieee1394 connection between the camera/deck and the computer to handle the AVC shuttle commands and timecode. At the same time we set the application to capture video through our board. Viola! Timecode and device control.

That simple. And yes, it works with FCP.

Michael Horton
-------------------

I have not been able to do this.

I tried changing the device control in the Audio/Video setting and when I opened the Log and Capture window I got the error that it could not find the device. If I changed the device control settings in the Log and Capture window to any of the FW controls I got an error that it couldn't initialize the HDV device.


How do I set this up?

Trash preferences and try again. What deck you using?

Michael Horton
-------------------

I'll try that.

I'm using a Sony HC1 camcorder and I'm going to try the Sony HVR-M25U.

Its probably an iLink Settng on the camera menu thats not been set correctly and you need to plug in the firewire then switch to play mode and refresh your video devices on FCP.

See if that works.

My girlfiend has that camera and it can be a bit funny in what order you connect it...

If you don't get any joy I'll have a look at the HC1 when I next go over to hers.

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

If you use the HVR-M25u (or probably any Sony HDV product) make sure you have the iLink
HDV->DV downconvert menu option set to "OFF".

Hi guys,

Picking up where this left off...

I'm using the Sony HVR-M25U [iLink HDV->DV downconvert menu option set to "OFF"], outputting video and audio via HDMI. I can capture with no device control using "capture NOW" -- image and audio quality are fine.

After trashing preferences, I used an easy setup for the intensity settings and when I try to capture using the Log and Capture Window ther is no device control, after trying to set the device control to firewire I get the same error message I reported earlier.

Any suggestions on how to solve this would be appreciated...

Someone must have the answer to this problem...

Please, help.

Thanks

Is anyone able to control a deck or camera through firewire, using the "log and capture window in FCP" while capturing the video through HDMI or component?

I spoke with BMD support and they told me it works with some NLE's and not others.

So I guess I'm asking the questions has anyone actually been able to do this with FCP?

The conlusion that I've come to is that it is not possible to capture video over component or HDMI with machine control and timecode via firewire.

Non of the HDV decks, that I'm aware of, have 422 deck control and I'm not sure if any have HDSDI. We have three HVR-M25U's and it would be nice to be able to accomplish this.

Is this possible with the DeckLink HD card?

BMD_Joshuah how can I get in touch with you directly?