Black Magic Intensity Shuttle & Cineform AVI's

[Rich Perry]

Not sure if anyone can help with this but. I just purchased a Black Magic Intensity Shuttle and am trying to get playback in Premier pro CS5 using Cineform 720p x 59.94 cineform AVI files. When scrubbing the timeline or source monitor it works fine and displays on an attached external HDTV via HDMI but when playing, it plays about 2 seconds and then just stops. Sometimes it also crashes premier.

Playback is working fine with other files (.mt2) but not Cineform intermediate. The USB 3.0 firmware and driver are up to date and I have an x58 mobo (ASUS P6X58D Premium) and intel 960 cpu which is compatible with the BM intensity shuttle.

I have tried multiple settings and configurations in PP including setting capture as Blackmagic Capture and uncompressed 10 or 8 bit, motion jpeg etc and various sequence setting but it still no joy.

Any advice would be appreciated, I have sent an email to BM support for assistance also.

[Rich Perry]

I just got off the phone with BM and they told me Cineform files should playback, but don't offer support on this.

[David Newman]

Where is the crash? Does it tell you in the details? If so, send support the crash log.

[Rich Perry]

Thanks, I opened up a ticket with support with the details.

[Greg Fiske]

Did you update both software to latest revisions?

[Rich Perry]

Yes all software is current, firmware on USB 3.0 Bus as well as drivers and BM drivers and utilities. I should have noticed before but video playback is also dropping frames. It does not happen in any other preset (either cineform or desktop etc , but only seems to be BM with Cineform, mabey other files too.. who knows. Low bitrate files seem fine as are higher XDCAM and also uncompressed avi was playing back OK. I have read other reports of Intensity pro dropping frames, as its seems to pumping full res video though the USB 3.0 port, this could be a bandwidth limitation of some sort.

[Mark Wilson]

I occasionally see similar behaviour in PP CS4. Turning off the "dropped frame warning" in the blackmagic playback dialog box seems to cure it.

[Rich Perry]

Thanks, I tried unchecking the dropped frame warning although its better, it still grinds to a halt :)
Whats odd is that several formats with high bit rate play back fine. Actually Cineform, low and mid quality play OK but filmscan1 pushes it over the cliff :) - Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

[Ian Lewis]

I've never had much luck with Cineform files in BM presets, either - whatever I do...

[Leo Baker]

I would go with an AJA card as had loads of issues with Blackmagic in the past.

[Rich Perry]

Unfortunately single socket motherboards have limitations and AJA cards do not support ASUS mobos, only workstations, HP, Dell etc. The holy grail for decent cost effective timeline monitoring continues, been through the MX02 and now the Intensity Shuttle, next up maybe the Motu HDX-SDI, anyone played with one of these yet - or any suggestions for monitoring HD-SDI would be great, but perhaps its time to invest in a dual socket board.

[Mike Harrington]

that is a shame....i was looking to get into an intensity shuttle......

sick of these half ass attempts at cheaper products...

out of curiosity does the intensity shuttle work capturing into cineform files.....thats actually my main concern.

Keep us posted on this....unfortunately for you, were learning by your unfortunate purchases.

[Rich Perry]

Indeed Mike -
It's an oddity in the fact that the Intensity Shuttle outputs filmscan1 bitrate cineform files with no issue via First Light, which is very nice. However the same file in PP CS5 drops frames all over the place?
I can't explain that one :)

As for capturing, I have not tried this yet but will attempt and let you know. It looks like capture is supported via HDLink as it sees it's capture source as Decklink Video Capture when the shuttle is connected. So my guess is it will probably work fine for that.

As far as playback from CS5 timeline, after more testing the device can't even output Cineform (low or medium) biterate files converted from HDlink, in my case 720P x 59.94 fps.However it does seem to be able to output SD cineform files, so I am testing a project with low res cineform proxies to see if this workflow has any benefits. Cineform state that this is a Black Magic issue and vice/versa, shame as the shuttle device itself and drivers seem very good quality, much better than Matrox MX02 Mini which I had a horrible experience with with constant crashing of CS5.

[Jeff Kosmicki]

Rich,
Checkout this thread, it may be the same issue you are having:

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/cineform...timelines.html

[Rich Perry]

Hi Jeff - Thanks for the info, I think it might be related although in the case of the BM Intensity Shuttle the CPU seemed fine. I am sure BM are aware of this issue with cineform files and Intensity Pro as I have seen a lot of posts on it, however I don't foresee them fixing this soon, the tech I spoke to at BM (twice) shifted the blame to Cineform. I already sent the shuttle back to BH photo for a refund as the idea to work with proxies was not really so great either, as I have about 1000 + clips online in any given project so the re-linking turned out to be a real hassle and I was HDlink was crashing a lot in the conversion process. Would be nice if PP had a proxy tool to manage or create a set of proxies from a project.