Blackmagic Decklink Support?

[Syrcular]

Hi all,

Does Pro Tools work with the Blackmagic Decklink or any other their products? I noticed in the Video Compatibility page I didn't see it listed. In fact all I saw is the Avid hardware, some really old cature card, from the 90's and the Canopus ADVC-110, which I currently use. But I'm thinking about upgrading, and the Blackmagic has been recommended and works with Logic and Nuendo, but I'm wondering if Pro Tools supports it....

[Stephen Webster]

I am in the same posistion, what are the upgrade options from Canopus? Mojo , Mojo & Mojo?

S

[reichman]

I will be in the same situation soon. When I decide to upgrade to an Intel Mac, my absolutely wonderful Aurora Fuse-X card won't work anymore. I don't know what the upgrade path is, short of Mojo.

Best,

Nathaniel Reichman
www.nathanielreichman.com

[Ian Palmer]

We use the Decklink cards in all our LE tracklay suites. No problems at all with either digitizing tape into the machine or playback while tracklaying.

The cards are in both G5 and MacPro machines with PT7.1 - PT 7.4 LE systems on 002/MBox2 hardware.

Ian

[reichman]

Hello Ian Palmer:

What I've never clearly understood about the Blackmagic cards, is how they output video. Is the video sent out via a dedicated ouput to a television monitor, or does it simply give you a slightly larger standard Mac desktop for you to arrange a Quicktime movie window in?

What I like about the Aurora Fuse-X is that no matter what codec I want to use, the Fuse does its best to give me a big, clear image on a dedicated SD monitor. No window dragging or resizing.

Also, does the Blackmagic card do any actual decoding work? Many of us find that the H.264 codec drags Pro Tools down. It would be great to have a card that handles the decoding.

Thanks in advance,

Nathaniel Reichman
www.nathanielreichman.com

[edboy7]

Hello Nathaniel,
We're working with the blackmagic/PT HD set up as well. I think its on the screen settings, the 2nd monitor acts like an extension of your view and i just drag the qt file to the 2nd screen and click fit to screen. HTH

[Ian Palmer]

The card does output to a 3rd desktop monitor but to a TV screen. Now, one thing we do is only use the Sorenson codec as the Blackmagic seems happiest with this. The other thing we do is change the QT settings to playback the video at a specific screen size, I think it's PAL (720x576).

I would advise against using H.264 as it takes too much system resources to decode it in playback. I would suggest that you get QuickTime Pro (it's only €30) and export the H.264 encoded videos to DV-PAL (or for the Blackmagic card use Sorenson) as these codecs require less processor power. The trade-off is HDD space (a DV-PAL QT movie is far larger than the same file in H.264) but I think it is worth it.

QuickTime Pro is simple far too useful a tool not to get. Another good example was I did ADR for a show for RTE (the Irish national broadcaster) which was sent to me as an MP4 file. PT (with a Mojo) doesn't like mp4 files so I simply exported it as an .mov file in QT Pro.

Ian

[Frank Kruse]

Sorenson is actually one of the most demanding codecs. It´s supprising that it works best with the decklink.

f.

[EarHole]

I would get a dedicated video computer with an Aja card and then just use the second DVI output on your PT macpro to output via dvi/hdmi cables to your TV monitors. We do this in one of our rooms onto a 42" plasma and it works great. You can also use any codec.

[reichman]

Right, but what if you have to have (2) monitors for Pro Tools (edit+mix)? Is there a 3-head card out there that works with Pro Tools and Intel Macs?

Best,

Nathaniel Reichman
www.nathanielreichman.com