HD link log error with Blackmagic Intensity

[Abraham Lim]

Day 3 of the Korea tests, and I have answered many of the early setup questions by researching. Still there is inconsistent captures with dropped frames. I am reinstalling Windows XP SP2 and starting from scratch. Meanwhile can anyone explain this error? I get it every time I capture HDMI from the Sony V1U live.

Error: m_graph->ConnetDirect(outputPin, pDownStream,0) (0x8004d248-IDispatch error#72) in (Direct ShowGraph.cpp at 378)
Timecode unable to be recorded

Thanks

[David Newman]

Need more of your log output. That is saying the DirectShow pins can't connect, the previous two lines will likely tell us which pins wouldn't connect.

[Abraham Lim]

Ok so I reinstalled XP2and the latest driver for Intensity, and reinstalled Neo. As per your recommedation on the Cineform site, I powered the V1u on and attached the HDMI cable before booting up computer. I still had same problem that the video did not feed in unless I reseated the HDMI cable while Neo was running, then I got signal to the preview monitor.

As in my earlier post the quicktime movie would only playback at 12-15 frames per second from a SATA2 drive that reached speeds of 98mb on Blackmmagic's drive test. Frustrated, I just decided to select AVI conversion and do a test. Surprisingly,the AVI was perfect. It played in QT player at full frame rate. Also, attached are the error logs from both the QT test and the AVI test captures. You will see on the QT error log the "pin" error, but the previous two lines don't seem to indicate anything.

Also a footnote, I installed Panda anti-virus becuase of the student's downloading a nasty earlier this week. I accidentally left it active for the first tests and got even more errors posted on capture. After realizing my error, I shut it down for the tests that I am referring to.

It's 4am and I really should be working on a script are-write. I have spent two weeks gettting the motherboard, cpu and Antec case to work, had to actually clip off a bit of the metal bracket of the Intensity card to get it to fit into the case and I am reminded of why I have worked on FCS2 and macs for the last 5 years. But I am hard-headed when it comes to getting things to work, going back to beta testing the DPS Velocity and Matrox RT in 2001. I am determined to use the HDMI Cineform workflow for my third feature film to shoot in July when I get back to the US, but damn it's a long hard road. Thanks for your help-

[Alex Raskin]

Abraham, I'm on Wintel side of things, and I assure you that HDMI capture with Intensity into HDlink - Aspect HD avi, including on-the-fly 2-3 pulldown, is perfect with Win XP on Intel Core 2 Duo 3Ghz processor.

I never tried mov capture though.

Good luck with your setup, and have faith in Cineform.

[David Taylor]

Abraham, we'll take a look at MOV capture after NAB. The temporary workaround would be to capture AVI files then re-wrap to MOV. using HD Link. Re-wrapping does not touch the underlying compression - it only replaces the wrapper on top so it's very fast.

Although the AVI files play fine in QT Player and FCP, they are only interpreted as 8 bits instead of 10. When you rewrap them to MOV then they are properly interpreted as 10 bits in Mac.

[Abraham Lim]

Hey thanks guys for the response. I wake up and hope they'll be something up here to keep me moving forward. Today I had the chance to do much more controlled testing out my window, just shooting the buildings next door. I did one set of AVI, MOV and MJPEG native through Blackmagic to thoroughly test all input/output. Surprisingly, after opening Blackmagic's capture utility, I was able to open Neo and see the HDMI output of the card on my HDMI monitor while I was capturing. I didn't think this could be done. Anyway, I have a crappy 720p Samsung, so checking quality is not really possible, but at least I could see the camera e to e feeding Neo.

It turns out all the clips play back at half speed for the most part, the AVI playing intermittently at full speed if desktop acceleration is activated. I chose to use an ATI EAX300 pci-e x16 card to keep the heat lower in the case. I figured 128mb video ram was enough for a small capture monitor window. It also has S-video out so I can use a 7" battery powered TV for my monitor. I went out and picked up a small keyboard and Wacom pen partner as well. Monday I will go shoot some clips longer than two minutes featuring students on campus.

Also, one of the professors has an Edius system setup with Aspect I think. I'm going to see him tomorrow hopefully. All in all, a good day of capture tests without dropped frames. Only new issues are feasibility of FCS2 edit. The clips play on the timeline but very easily drop frames the more cuts you add. I am doing basic assembly and it's dropping frames already. Also, the use of Apple ProRez 422 for renders does allow realtime effects, but it won't play even two seconds without dropping out. So, it seems that it's back to early DV days where you have to render any effect you apply. That's fine by me, for a feature film; I did it before.

One final thing- the only way I can see a true full resolution clip play at full frame rate is to render the timeline to an Apple ProRes 422 HQ movie. If I play this full screen on my 2.4Ghz 17" Macbook Pro (2GB ram), it's on the money. But I did notice a huge reduction in chrominance in the QT movie render. This will prove problematic for output I think, because if I render final movie output as Cineform, how can I ever check full frame full rez playback?

All in all, encouraging day for what worked, and as usual more to figure out. The V1U looked grainy even on a bright sunny day with ND2 filter, but that might be an ok look for the film. It's funny though how film school is film school wherever you go, the students don't take very good care of the equipment. Had a really dirty lens. If you want to see the footage I shoot please recommend file format that has least degradation that I can post for you. I also have a website so I can figure out how to post hi rez clips for download. 4am here goodnight!

[Abraham Lim]

Sorry, alot going on, forgot to tell you that even with the .mov capture error in the log, the actual QT mov captures are fine; no dropped frames, all good.

Also, for the newbies like me to Cineform you should know that if you have a slow USB drive or CD/DVD in the capture computer it can affect peak performance of you other drives. I have the DVD 16x on the PATA bus and the system drive on the SATA bus, but maybe they share resources. All I know is that on a mac system I've had that problem for years when really pushing FCP. It's just best to keep the system clean and not use it for casual usage while working with media.

[Abraham Lim]

Hey hope you guys had a productive NAB. Now that you're back can you tell me if you investigated the log error for QT mov capture with Neo? Also David said I can capture as .AVI then wrap with QT , can you give me a quick step by step for the procedure? Thanks

[David Newman]

If you haven't already, please submit a trouble ticket at www.cineform.com/support