Blackmagic Intensity Pro, Premier Pro, Cineform Workflow Question

[Miguel Lombana]

Is anyone running Premier Pro with Cineform and using a Blackmagic Intensity for monitoring?

I know that the Blackmagic cards have been discussed, read just about every thread here, but I'm curious to know if anyone is actually using the Intensity Pro card for video out via Component to an HDTV monitor for preview.

I'm also curious to know what workflow is being used, analog capture of HDV source via Component for editing in PPro as an SD Project or full blown HDV.

Again, most important, is this combo working for anyone and what did you have to do to get it to work, then what are you doing for ingest and finally production with preview.

Thanks for the help in advance, sorry for the off-beat question and most important, I'm not using HDMI at all.
Miguel

[David Taylor]

Miguel,

Unfortunately we do not support the Intensity card for timeline monitoring or playout at this time due to some technical mismatches between the Intensity and CineForm software interfaces. We're hoping Blackmagic will fix that in the future, otherwise we will have to, but in the mean time Intensity is a great card for acquiring uncompressed material into Cineform Intermediate.

[Miguel Lombana]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

Miguel,

Unfortunately we do not support the Intensity card for timeline monitoring or playout at this time due to some technical mismatches between the Intensity and CineForm software interfaces. We're hoping Blackmagic will fix that in the future, otherwise we will have to, but in the mean time Intensity is a great card for acquiring uncompressed material into Cineform Intermediate.

Thanks David, so what is the right process for acquisition, I assume you're talking HDMI only right? Since I ingest from a Sony M15U Deck I'm running 1394 into the PC now so the Intensity is basically doing nothing for me now, is there a way to use the Intensity for Component Video ingest that will actually work, I've been unable to get it to work in any manner.

[David Taylor]

Miguel,

Intensity is HDMI only. Intensity Pro also has component inputs. To capture using Intensity (Pro) into CineForm Intermediate files you use our external utility HD Link. You cannot capture through Intensity (Pro) into CineForm files through the PPro capture interface. For live capture or other very high quality sources this is a great way to bypass tape-based compression.

[Ed Hecht]

David,
Just to clarify:

I CANNOT use Intensity to send video out from a timeline (i.e. Premiere Pro CS3) to an HDMI monitor (i.e. Benq 19" w/HDMI)?

I just received two of these monitors from newegg after seeing them endorsed by this community. So far I have only been able to view captures from my Canon HV20 on the Benq via HDMI-not all that useful compared to monitoring a rendered project. If the answer to my question is yes, I am disappointed: I bought the hardware for this purpose. Thanks for your response.
Ed

[David Taylor]

Ed, you CANNOT. We're disappointed too, but hope to change this in the not-too-distant future, although no schedule is being presented. HDMI is a very useful physical interface, but the BM and CineForm software interfaces are different which causes this problem.

[Paul Cronin]

David,

How about using BM Pro as a way to view the timeline by HDMI with FCS2 with that work? I just purchased a Mac Pro with two DVI video card, BM Pro and want to view by HDMI from the timeline at the time on a HDTV while running dual monitors.

[Mike McCarthy]

If your display card can support your HDMI monitor, Prospect should be able to display full screen on it as a secordary monitor. (Video Overlay option in Playback Settings) Obviously that means you can only have one screen for the desktop app.

[Ed Hecht]

Originally Posted by David Taylor

Ed, you CANNOT. We're disappointed too, but hope to change this in the not-too-distant future, although no schedule is being presented. HDMI is a very useful physical interface, but the BM and CineForm software interfaces are different which causes this problem.

Bummer. Oh well, I needed a twin span setup anyway. :)

[Paul Cronin]

Mike I might not have been clear enough in my post. I am running two 24" monitors off the two DVI from the video card and want to run a HDTV off the BM Pro card off HDMI. And view the HDTV will editing on the time line in FCS2.

[Mike McCarthy]

"I might not have been clear enough in my post." Sorry I was addressing the original question. My Prospect suggestion applies to PPro on PC only.

I am setting up a Mac system with BMD hardware with Cineform codec, so I will be giving that configuration a whirl in the next few days. Anyone from Cineform know if any Hardware output from Mac works in realtime with Cineform files. AJA or BMD, FCS or PPro?

[David Taylor]

Mike,

With PPro on Windows CineForm "owns" control of special-purpose output cards like HD-SDI (AJA or BM). We don't own the graphics card which is why we don't have a spec for a specific graphics card. This is why we specify certain HD-SDI HW.

In FCP, we don't "own" any of the graphics or special-purpose cards - those are managed by FCP. I will admit that we haven't done a lot of testing with HW cards on Mac yet, so we don't have specific do's and don'ts for you yet.

Regarding our codec performance on Mac - we still haven't finished optimizations. We play back at full res without a hitch in QT Player, but FCP doesn't yet play full-res CF files at full frame rate (we have more threading optimizations brewing for Mac). You'll find that the "less than 100%" settings for video sizes in the dropdown box on top of the FCP monitor windows always play CF files in RT, and if this output is sent through a BM card it should work fine. If you encounter some issues (you might) let us know and we can try to help. We'd like to begin promoting this workflow more heavily.

[Mike McCarthy]

What about for Premiere Pro CS3 on Mac. Decklink released their driver for CS3 on Mac last friday. I have installed them, but have not had time to play yet. Any chance CF files will playback with BMD project settings. I know not on PC, but Mac setup seems VERY different to me as I begin to explore it. BMD allow many standard QT codecs in realtime, but is very limited on PC. Any chance Cineform might be supported in that way?

[David Taylor]

PPro on Mac will be similar to FCP in the sense that we don't control cards. Our codec works fine in PPro/AE on Mac, but we haven't yet ported our importers/exporters to PPro/AE on Mac. That'll come, but later.

[Miguel Lombana]

BTW to get back to the original, I did get my new BM Intensity Pro to work, there is a hidden utility that they don't do a good job of documenting in the Windows Control Panel that I needed to reset but once that was done I have the ability to capture via HDLINK provided that I pull the 1394 cable out of my Sony M15U deck.

I can preview from the PPro timeline however only using the BM preset in ProCS3 which means that I then had to have used their interface to capture the footage and in that case it's all uncompressed anyway which chokes my machine.

So experiment was a total bust for 350 bucks, I don't get any performance increase, I don't get preview from the timeline and I'm still a happy Cineform customer, you guys just don't let us down!

Now please, we need realtime preview from the CS3 PPRO timeline, can Cineform find an interface they like, write code for it and give us the ability to do realtime preview with that card.

I've spent way too much money this year on Matrox Parhelia APVe's, FX1500's and not BM Intensity Pro's to find that one worked poorly and the other 2 not at all.

Does anyone have a mega-editing system running in the windows world that does 2 monitors plus real time preview to a 3rd HD monitor that they can recommend, I'm willing to keep spending until I get the right solution.

Miguel