Looking for a way to monitor my HDV footage for color-grading in post. I'm thinking about picking up the Blackmagic Intensity card for this purpose but don't see anything in the literature that says it'll support 1080p. I shoot with XH-A1s primarily in 24f mode.

Will the Blackmagic Intensity card have any problems outputting this to external monitor? Thanks in advance!

Bump, to see if anyone might know. Thanks.

Glen,
I have a black magic card on the way and was wondering if you were using one to view the 24f footage externally? Thanks

Yeah, I took a chance and picked it up. Unfortunately it seems no one on here knew the answer to my question. Thankfully it does indeed work. It doesn't have a 24f/p preset but it still sends the signal. Im using a 40" Samsung T-series 1080p LCD to proof my colors, i love it! I calibrated it using blue gel THX glasses.

Hi Glen,

Sorry I didn't catch this thread in time. Intensity does not actually support 24p. What it is doing is applying pulldown to the output to your TV so that you're monitoring 1080i59.94 in real time.

Hey Kristian, thanks for chiming in. I don't know that 24"f" footage really even needs "pull-down" per say. Any insight into that? Granted the most important thing is that it works, which I'm grateful. I just wish I knew more about the ins and outs of both the footage format and how the hardware works.

Glen,
I'm no expert, but I think that you're part right, the 24f doesn't need pulldown to play properly on your computer, but it must be put back into a 29.97 stream to play out of the card to your monitor. This a limitation of the card, and not your monitor or the camera itself.
I don't think you'll know the difference watching it on your external monitor. It should "look" 24p to you.

Any official Blackmagic people wanna chime in and correct me... feel free. I'm a hack.

***EDIT***
Looks like it's a 59.94 stream... but you get the point.

Hi Glen,

Just came across this thread, and am curious about the cards myself.

I am wanting to run the same setup as you (minus the very cool 40" lcd screen!), XHA1 in 24f, with the Intensity card.

What NLE are you running it all on? (We have Adobe CS2 at the moment.)

Thanks,

--JA
www.madjavaproductions.com

I have the Intensity card, and captured from an HV20 set to 24P. I then did a 3:2 pulldown using After Effects, and the video looks amazing on playback.

My problem is that it is out of sync in Premiere CS3 (project is set to 24P), but the video is in sync when played back in windows media player.

Any thoughts?

-S

Glen,
I'm no expert, but I think that you're part right, the 24f doesn't need pulldown to play properly on your computer, but it must be put back into a 29.97 stream to play out of the card to your monitor. This a limitation of the card, and not your monitor or the camera itself.
I don't think you'll know the difference watching it on your external monitor. It should "look" 24p to you.

Any official Blackmagic people wanna chime in and correct me... feel free. I'm a hack.

***EDIT***
Looks like it's a 59.94 stream... but you get the point.

Yes, to play back 24p on the computer, you don't really need pulldown. The computer does not care what the frame rate is. However, in order to send it out to a hdtv or some kind of monitoring display, this will matter. You'll find that a lot of displays do not support 1080p24. For example, the professional Sony BVM CRTs will play 24p as 48i as the refresh rate for 24 is too low. As such, the Intensity card will apply pull down to the video output stream in real time such that it will work with most displays used. It does not change the original 24p nature of your clip.

I have the Intensity card, and captured from an HV20 set to 24P. I then did a 3:2 pulldown using After Effects, and the video looks amazing on playback.

My problem is that it is out of sync in Premiere CS3 (project is set to 24P), but the video is in sync when played back in windows media player.

Any thoughts?

-S

What do you mean by out of sync? Are you referring to audio/video sync? If so, are you monitoring audio and video from the Intensity card?

I am not trying to monitor through the Intensity card.

I am simply watching the video on my computer screen and the audio is out of sync with the video, when played back in Premiere.

Yes, the audio does come out of the blackmagic multibridge, which I have on my editing system. Capturing is on a different computer. Again, it's in sync with this hardware configuration, when viewed with windows media player.

-Sterling

Yes, to play back 24p on the computer, you don't really need pulldown. The computer does not care what the frame rate is. However, in order to send it out to a hdtv or some kind of monitoring display, this will matter. You'll find that a lot of displays do not support 1080p24. For example, the professional Sony BVM CRTs will play 24p as 48i as the refresh rate for 24 is too low. As such, the Intensity card will apply pull down to the video output stream in real time such that it will work with most displays used. It does not change the original 24p nature of your clip.Kristian, two follow-up ?'s:

So are you saying that the pulldown is being added by the Intensity card and not by the camcorder? I have an HV-20 and thought that the camcorder added the pulldown to 24P going out of the HDMI port.

Are there plans for a laptop compatible version of Intensity?

Thanks much!

I was planning to get this card for monitoring HDV and XDCAM footage. For those that have used it, can you use any timeline codec, for instance can I edit XDCAM EX in its native codec and just let the BM card send a component or HDMI output or do you have to use some BM specific codec?

Thanks,
BE

any update on this?
I am using this setup with FCP 6.0.2 and I can't get it to output to the Intensity card. There is a signal going out because when I switch the card to something like NTSC DV out, it sends a crappy signal to the monitor that doesn't update in real time. So the connection is there.
I got it to work once, but FCP was having problems at that point that required a fresh install and a firmware update to the video card. Since then, no luck.

What settings are you using?

For reference, in case anyone encounters this problem.
I have gotten this to work - using the BMD Intensity Pro to output 1080 24p HDV footage however there is something weird that I have to do.

When starting up FCP, I have to choose View->Video Playback ->720p 59.94 FIRST and play the sequence. This seems to let the system sync up with the monitor. Then I switch to 1080i 59.94 and it works just dandy. For whatever reason, if I choose 1080 first, it doesn't work.

For reference, in case anyone encounters this problem.
I have gotten this to work - using the BMD Intensity Pro to output 1080 24p HDV footage however there is something weird that I have to do.

When starting up FCP, I have to choose View->Video Playback ->720p 59.94 FIRST and play the sequence. This seems to let the system sync up with the monitor. Then I switch to 1080i 59.94 and it works just dandy. For whatever reason, if I choose 1080 first, it doesn't work.

Nate, I was just wondering if you could give any feed back on the performance of your setup now. How smooth is the playback on your hdtv and what format video are you editing and any effects etc?