Hi guys,

We've just released the v1.5 driver for Intensity (Mac and Windows 32-bit). This release supports the Canon HV20. Sorry about the wait.

http://blackmagic-design.com/support/software/

Excellent news. Thanks for the post, Kristian.

When will the Pro version begin to ship... your website still says May...

Thanks for the update for the HV20....

Kristian, I tried Intensity (not Pro version) with drivers v 1.4 and it did not work.

(the card itself did not; nothing to do with hv20... the card simply would not see the hdmi video source like sony v1u...)

Had to downgrade to v 1.2 and it worked.

Is this issue fixed in v 1.5?

Intensity Pro has shipped. Some customers are already using it.

Kristian, I tried Intensity (not Pro version) with drivers v 1.4 and it did not work.

(the card itself did not; nothing to do with hv20... the card simply would not see the hdmi video source like sony v1u...)

Had to downgrade to v 1.2 and it worked.

Is this issue fixed in v 1.5?

Hi Alex,

I'm actually not aware of this issue at all. Could you please try the v1.5 drivers and let me know. If necessary, log a support request using this address:

support[at]blackmagic-design.com

Thanks.

Thanks for the official update! And for the hard work. Now i need to save a few penny's for the Int. Pro. :)

Very interesting. So, if you have one of these cards do we not have the same problems with pulldown?

I think the issue wasnt with pulldown but with getting a 1080i signal over hdmi instead of just 480i. I'd like to hear if anyone has news about how this actually affects that issue.

I'm looking at all the data on their website..

what does "supported now" mean? Did it not work with its HDMI output before? Does it now support realtime 24p pulldown capture?

Honest questions - not tyring to be difficult

I just wanted to add my thanks for posting the news, Kristian.

Thanks for keeping up with it.

I just wanted to add my thanks for posting the news, Kristian.

Thanks for keeping up with it.

yes yes! Thanks for the news, its much appreciated!

Regardless of the current situation - i'm getting a great deal on being able to setup a HDTV monitor in my home studio with HDMI and getting composite-in for $350 (when i pick one up next month)

anyone tried it yet?
didnt notice til just now, ill have to test it later.

terence

I was looking through some other posts about this card, and it doesnt look like it affects the pulldown process at all, but hopefully someone who knows can confirm this one way or another. If by some stretch of the imagination it actually does remove pulldown I'll be ordering one of these before weeks end.

I'm looking at all the data on their website..

what does "supported now" mean? Did it not work with its HDMI output before? Does it now support realtime 24p pulldown capture?

Honest questions - not tyring to be difficult

Hi Don,

Intensity was unable to capture from the HV20 previously so we updated the firmware on the card to support it.

We currently capture the 1080i output and don't pull down to 24p.

Please clarify this: what exactly are the results when capturing footage shot in the 24p mode on this camera.

Please clarify this: what exactly are the results when capturing footage shot in the 24p mode on this camera.

The camera outputs 1080i60 via HDMI and that's what we capture. It applies pull down to the 24p footage.

Gotcha.

Is there any way to actually capture the 24p output of this camera without pulldown, anyway?

if you use cineform neo HD to compress, it can remove the pulldown on the fly. otherwise you will need a second process with an app like after effects to remove th epulldown.

theres a number of threads on that here.

now wheres my xp64 drivers :)

terence

I picked up one of the pro cards on the way home from work and installed it on a Dell 390 Workstation....

to be clear, This is a native 390 workstation with a Quad core processor,
a Quad Nvidia 3500 video card, sound blaster card, and 1394 card... 4 GB of memory running XP pro... it is naked with no virus or firewall...

The card installed correctly using the new 1.5 software from Black Magic.
The only issue I had during the install was that it knocked out the sound during the install. I fixed that by changing the sound back to the sound blaster card... I'll play with the black magic sound later to try and figure out what to do, if anything...

From a Windows standpoint the card is somewhat more complex than I expected. This is due to the presets that get loaded for Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Aftereffects and Photo shop.... yes it supports photoshop too.

But also I have not even began to explore the non HD funtion of the card...

The Card did fine captureing from the HV20 and it reports 1920x1080 4.2.2
8 bit... the video going to the timeline in PP 1.5.1 is reported as 29.97

It looks nice and no I dont have any footage to show... sorry, just too much to test...

Interesting that using the Cineform capture they piggy back off of the black magic and use their onscreen video display during capture... but it works great so no complaints from here.

The key is to understand what your cam is outputting and dont stray to other formats as the software gives you lots and lots of selections... and of course only one of those selections will work with the cam that is connected at the time...

I need to test some more and will report back as I work through all of the components...

Ray,

Thanks for that bit of insight there. I've yet to see oneof these cards and the software that controls it so if you could elaberate on how you chose codecs to capture to and perhaps some screenshots even, that would be great. I'm only familar with the good ol' analog TV capture cards. They had software that would let me select any compression codecs for a/v. Wondering if its the same with this thing.

Cheers!

you can download the software from Black Magic.. in the zip file is a pdf with instructions and screen shots... if that will help...

they ask for a SN, but it seems that you can put anything in that box and the software downloads....

How is the new version 1.5 software handling timeline monitoring through an external monitor? In particular, is it able to monitor anything captured with Cineform products?

Hi folks,

I have the Intensity card installed on an Intel Mac Pro. I just wanted to share my experiences here in case other mac users wanted to give this a shot. After the upgrade to firmware 1.5, I was able to do the following:

- Plug in my HV20, connnect the HDMI, launch Final Cut Pro, and capture HDV footage from tape as a 1080i stream at 29.97

- In order to get that footag turned into 1080p @ 23.98 fps, you need to have Final Cut, or Cinema tools, or After Effects or some other program do the pull down removal. Check the software user guides and check other threads on this forum.

- I was able to monitor my timeline using the HDMI-Out port on the Intensity going to a HDTV. The HDTV I have can view 1080i footage, so I just selected the Intensity (1080i mode) as my monitoring source in FCP, and it immediately worked. I was able to monitor both standard DV timelines, as well as HD timelines. Looked great. :)

- One last thng that worked for me was that I did a live capture using Final Cut Pro and get the uncompressed imagery before it got crammed into the HDV codec. This worked for only a few seconds before my hard drive said "That's enough I can't keep up." But if I had a really fast drive or a RAID array, I could have kept up and gotten that footage.

FYI -- I am using Final Cut Pro 6 (FC Studio 2)

Jason

Sounds great Jason.

Have you looked at capturing live into lesser compressed formats--DVCPROHD, ProRes etc.? Let us know how that goes.

Yeah, forgot to mention that. While doing the live capture, I did another test where I selected the Intensity 1080i capture using ProRes422 (HQ). The only ProRes capture option was ProRes High Quality (HQ). I did not see a capture option for standad ProRes. Which is fine by me. :)

It captured fine. A 45 second clip of video where the camera is locked down was 1.2 GB.

J

Yeah, forgot to mention that. While doing the live capture, I did another test where I selected the Intensity 1080i capture using ProRes422 (HQ). The only ProRes capture option was ProRes High Quality (HQ). I did not see a capture option for standad ProRes. Which is fine by me. :)

It captured fine. A 45 second clip of video where the camera is locked down was 1.2 GB.

J

Hi,

We only created easy setups for ProRes (HQ) but if you want to try the standard ProRes codec, just duplicate the capture presets and flick it over.

Is it possible to select any other codec before capturing?

Yes, you have the choice of non-compressed or jpeg when you use the black magic capture....

If you use Cineform you also have avi,mov or m2t

Sorry to ask again, but does anyone know if Cineform files can now be viewed on an external monitor in Premiere with Intensity 1.5 drivers? In the past, Cineform Aspect and Prospect HD could not give external timeline monitoring with Blackmagic products. If that's changed, it will be a big bonus.

When I install the V1.5 drivers and I restart the computer I can no longer get the audio to work when playing videos or even music.
When I go to the device manager and disable the "Blackmagic Intensity" audio driver they all work again. If I enable it again the audio stops working.

Any idea what this could be?

the black magic card is an audio interface. its possible that its been accidentally set to the default windows audio device. should be able to change that in the control panel.. somewhere :x

terence

Blackmagic cards - both HD-SDI and HDMI Intensity - are known to make themself a default audio card after install.

Simply go to your PC's audio properties and re-assign your own audio card as default audio playback interface.

Sorry to ask again, but does anyone know if Cineform files can now be viewed on an external monitor in Premiere with Intensity 1.5 drivers? In the past, Cineform Aspect and Prospect HD could not give external timeline monitoring with Blackmagic products. If that's changed, it will be a big bonus.

Just tried it out... I could not get a cineform preset project to pass the footage over to an external monitor thru the Black Magic HDMI port...

But, when I used the Blackmagic preset in the project the timeline footage did come out of the HDMI port and the timeline was display'd fine on the external monitor ( I used a Optima projector as the external monitor)

We have yet add the Decklink line to our list of support output cards. We have only setup Intensity as a capture source through CineForm HDLink, included with all NEO, Aspect and Prospect HD/2K products. We don't yet have a good visibility on how many CineForm customers own Intensity cards, we are likely to add direct support in the future.

I own Intensity, and I love how Cineform Aspect HD captures live HDMI video on the fly!

Just last night I did a greenscreen work, and the matte quality seemed to be better than before (before being the firewire way.)

We have yet add the Decklink line to our list of support output cards. We have only setup Intensity as a capture source through CineForm HDLink, included with all NEO, Aspect and Prospect HD/2K products. We don't yet have a good visibility on how many CineForm customers own Intensity cards, we are likely to add direct support in the future.

Thats good news David... one item that I thought was nice when I was testing the external monitor was that the Black Magic capture program also
has a "playback" function besides the "capture" function...

This has an added benefit in that you can capture the footage and then replay the footage to the external monitor without having to open the editor and load all of the scenes just to preview....

That option would be very nice in the HDlink...

Ray, output through Intensity within HDLink will happen before direct integration for our Premiere Tools. I'm happy to here that you can use that feature.

Ray, output through Intensity within HDLink will happen before direct integration for our Premiere Tools. I'm happy to here that you can use that feature.

So im assuming Cineform will integrate Intensity Pro support for both capture and output through component and HDMI directly in Premiere soon?

When will that aprox happen? Thanx!

Hernan (a happy Cineform user, wishing to be happier)

Do not assume, we have many many projects on our schedule, that feature is only one of them. No annoucements on delivery schedule.

I'm very frustrated with this card.
I've re-installed the card drivers many times and it just won't capture.
I got it to work only once at the begining but when I made the intensity not the default audio card it stopped working and I haven't been able to make it work again even after I reinstalled it and let it be the default card again. There is no way to get this thing to capture anymore.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Call Blackmagic support?

I found them to be responsive and knowledgeable.

Just back from Mediatech, our local bi-annual trade show (broadcasting, video, audio etc). Interesting thing is that I went to the company "apparently" representing Blackmagic (or one of the Blackmagic products) --- and they had not heard of the Intensity card.
Good choice of representatives, there, Blackmagic!
I would have bought one on the spot.
Ah, well, perhaps better luck in 2 years' time.
Also noticeable by their absence was Adobe and, for that matter, Cineform.
And meanwhile the HV20's keep flying off the shelves here --- the entire South Africa seems to have gone HV20 (and HDV generally).

Carl,
Jo'burg

Intensity shows as Discontinued at B&H today.

Looks like Intensity Pro will be the only option?

Intensity shows as Discontinued at B&H today.

Looks like Intensity Pro will be the only option?

We have definitely not discontinued Intensity.

Just back from Mediatech, our local bi-annual trade show (broadcasting, video, audio etc). Interesting thing is that I went to the company "apparently" representing Blackmagic (or one of the Blackmagic products) --- and they had not heard of the Intensity card.
Good choice of representatives, there, Blackmagic!
I would have bought one on the spot.
Ah, well, perhaps better luck in 2 years' time.
Also noticeable by their absence was Adobe and, for that matter, Cineform.
And meanwhile the HV20's keep flying off the shelves here --- the entire South Africa seems to have gone HV20 (and HDV generally).

Carl,
Jo'burg

Hi Carl,

Thanks for the heads up and I'll let the guys here know about this. I doubt these guys you'd mentioned are representing us. Intensity is flying off the shelves and any reseller worth their while should know about it.

Kristian
The Blackmagic Decklink, as indicated in the Mediatech Guide, was represented by Apple IMC South Africa. One would have thought ...

Carl,
Jo'burg

The BM Intensity cared works well with Premiere offering HDMI out to my 24" BenQ monitor. But I can't seem to get it to work with Vegas.

I wonder if anyone who owns this combination has been able to use an HDMI out monitor with Sony Vegas 7e?

Curious minds would like to know.

Brendan G.
killersocks.com

The BM Intensity cared works well with Premiere offering HDMI out to my 24" BenQ monitor. But I can't seem to get it to work with Vegas.

I wonder if anyone who owns this combination has been able to use an HDMI out monitor with Sony Vegas 7e?

Curious minds would like to know.

Brendan G.
killersocks.com

Hi Brendan,

Unfortunately, we don't support Vegas at this point.

Hi Brendan,

Unfortunately, we don't support Vegas at this point.

Is support for Vegas expected?