Black Magic Intensity Pro Users pls help

[hitp]

Hello any Intensity Pro card users out there who can help please chime in. I am building a test system that would soon replace our aging G5 PT 7.3, Aurora Fuse rigs. I am running on a Mac Pro 8 core Nahalem, with 6GB of ram with the latest 10.6.5 OS, ProTools HD2 with core on slot 1, accel on slot 2 and Intensity card on Slot 3 with driver version 3.6.1. I connected both the HDMI connection to my main LCD monitor and the Composite out to my TV in the announce booth.

First thing I noticed with the new Intensity cards is I no longer can display my video from stand alone apps like Quick Time 10. I could easily do it with the old Aurora cards running on Quicktime 7 Pro or VLC.

Video works in ProTools 8.1 ( We are upgrading to 9 as I write this ). But I am finding that the way the Intensity Pro displays SD files out of the HDMI outs changes the aspect ratio from 4:3 to 16:9, making everything looked wide horizontally. What do I need to do to correct this. How do I set up my Intensity Pro to output SD video and not HD? The preferences seem really simple. Also I generally use small 320 x 240 video files for spotting purposes and ADR. What I notice is that the Intensity displays the video in its original size (filling about a 5th of my screen) instead of filling as much of the screen as possible at the proper aspect ratio that the Aurora cards did perfectly out of the box. What am I doing wrong? Can anyone give me a clue where to start trouble shooting?

Thanks for your help, it is very much appreciated. Looking forward to some answers.

[hitp]

OK getting answers back by directly emailing people and spending endless hours on the net. Here is what I got, just in case people have the same problem in the future. Special thanks to DUC members Rick Sanchez and Nathaniel Reichman for sharing. Thank you to Black Magic support as well.

One thing I really liked about the old Fuse cards was they had the capability to mirror whatever was in the QuickTime window directly out to a video monitor. Very cool for clients and presentations. The Black Magic cards do not do this but just display at what ever native resolution the original files are. Bummer for us audio post types as it will certainly look like a step backwards to our Ad Agency clients who will not understand the tech behind it and I think we are such a teeny market for Black Magic to implement such a feature in their preference panel.

You can understand Black Magic's POV as they want to display as true to the actual video spec as possible.

So the solution to my problem is just to request our video houses ( Most are on FCP or Adobe Premiere ) to output a format that we can instantly output on our work monitors from 640 x 480 to 720P to 1080. I figure with the proper riders given out to all our clients, we'll be able to do the transition nicely and deliver work files that would work. I am assuming all the new Mac Pros have the juice to output compressed video without a major hit to PT assuming you are on HD and have sufficient RAM and processor power.

Any comments welcome. Would like to hear what are the favorite codecs and video sizes (320 x 240 / 720 x 480 etc) you guys are working with and which seem to give you the least trouble. Seems like Apple ProRes is a favorite among a lot of you. Others like DV. Please share. It would be a nice resource to everyone looking for answers in future threads.

[mikevarela]

Try out DNxHD as well (avid) the free codec is online and it's the same as pro res. also, you might think at this point about trying out Video Sattelite LE as it would completely offload the video to another mac - that's where you'd put the video card... or, just a quicktime file of any size and play it through the dvi slot on the mac (like mini or macbook or something like that)

[SDDP]

So the Black Magic Intensity Pro works for sure on a PT 9?

From avids info section, they mentioned the Intensity Pro has not been tested:


http://avid.custkb.com/avid/app/self...329&NewLang=en

[Dallas Taylor]

Originally Posted by SDDP

So the Black Magic Intensity Pro works for sure on a PT 9?

It has been working fine for me.

[SDDP]

Originally Posted by Dallas Taylor

It has been working fine for me.

Oh great. What type of video are you running through it?
I have a canopus ADVC that I have to convert all QT's to DV and its going to a CRT and from HD QT's it looks very clear and perfect. But due to an upgrade, I have to loose my crt and go with a Flatscreen LCD, thinking either Samsun or Sharp.
Sharp has S-video so I could still use the canopus, but the samsung which look WAY better and sharper doesn't have S-Vid so I'd have to get a Intesity Pro to use the hdmi. Wanted to know if it's even worth spending more on a Samsun/BM Intensity route VS. Sharp using Canopus route?

Any input would be great.

Thanks

[Dallas Taylor]

Originally Posted by SDDP

What type of video are you running through it?
I have a canopus ADVC that I have to convert all QT's to DV

Yeah, I did that as well before I bought the BIP. The cool thing about the BIP is you can use any codec at any frame rate. Motion JPEG A seems to work best with Pro Tools, but ProRes is also good. If I'm doing fast-turnaround short form, I'll even use an H264. You'll definitely want to keep the Sync Check handy if you're using a bunch of different codecs with an external TV monitor. (I use a 42" Sony Bravia)

http://www.syncheck.com/

[hummerZ]

I could be wrong, but I think the problem here is the resolution of your video. If you were using standard NTSC resolution, I imagine that your LCD/plasma would do an up-res to fill the screen. Using a non-standard (and very small) quicktime is likely what's causing the issue: the 320x240 raster is probably being encapsulated within a 1080-line signal. You should be able to check the operating resolution of your TV by hitting the "info" or "display" buttons on the remote. My guess is that it will say 1080.

Additionally, the LCD/plasma is responsible for how SD is displayed on the screen. There should be settings for aspect ratio, zooming, etc. Re-reading your post, it sounds like Blackmagic informed you that the HDMI output is always 1080? Even if you're outputting an SD signal, it doesn't up-res? That seems suspect, considering their SDI outputs switch between HD/SD automatically.

The Aurora cards were only ever capable of SD, so they scaled all QTs to fill those dimensions. HD is a different animal, with so many formats to choose from.

Here, I always use ProRes 422 at either 480 NTSC or 1080 HD. Both look perfect, and fill the screen of my LCD entirely. However, I'm using a Decklink HD Extreme via SDI (auto-switching between HD and SD), feeding a Blackmagic HDLink Pro, which has specific settings for up-res of SD, anamorphic display, interlace simulation, etc.. (Highly recommended, btw) -- I don't think there's any reason to use DV anymore, since ProRes can achieve better quality at similar data rates, especially if you use ProRes Proxy or LT.

Finally, if you want to play QTs out of your Intensity without launching Pro Tools, you can simply use Blackmagic's Media Express app. It was very cool that the Aurora cards were capable of "hijacking" the Quicktime output. Early versions of the Blackmagic drivers also had this capability, but for some reason, the feature fell out of favor. I think it might actually be an OS limitation, because when I installed an earlier version of the Blackmagic drivers and tried to utilize it, it was very flaky.