Blackmagic Intensity Pro Output

[Sam Parnell]

So I thought that with CS6, pretty much any sequence could ouput via my BlackMagic Intensity Pro, and I didn't have to be in a BM sequence. Well, I have found that I am restricted by resolution and framerate - I have to be in a 720p60 sequence or nothing will output to my TV (which is a 720p TV). This is quite a problem as I am almost exlcusively working in 1080p24 sequences. Am I doing something wrong? Or have I misenterpretted the capabilities? FCP was able to pretty much ouput any seq/frame rate with the card.

-sam

[Richard M Knight]

Does it matter how the 'default video standard' is set in the BMD Video 9.5 control panel?

Richard Knight

[Sam Parnell]

No, I tried to change that to 1080p23.98, and it did nothing. And the BM manual said that only FCPX uses that option.

-sam

[joe_bloe_premiere]

redprod,

Has your problem been resolved?

I am anxious to hear Adobe Mercury Transmit success stories!

What's the best third party hardware for CS6 Adobe Mercury Transmit?

[excited_Genie16B8]

I am anxious to hear Adobe Mercury Transmit success stories!

Ditto.

[Cutwithray]

Trying to understand your frustration....so your trying to send a 720p television a 1080p 23.976 (24p) signal and its not working. So where are you expecting the conversion to take place? The TV or the card? Not sure of the exact model of your TV, but there are quite a few out there that cannot support a 1080p signal. I guess the next question would be....did you ever send a 1080p 23.976 signal to the same TV prior to CS-6?

Ray

[excited_Genie16B8]

I would presume the card would handle any necessary conversions from sequence settings to desired output settings.

(I would also hope that the card is fully capable of sending out whatever the sequence gives it, without conversion, if that is the desired behavior.)

[CSTeam3]

I'm demoing CS6 and had my own thought on this.  Let me see if this helps articulate the problem.

The crux of the matter is, in Final Cut Pro as an example, the BM Intensity output is completely independent of whatever sequence settings you use.  This has never been possible and is still not possible in Premiere.

In my case, I use an older HD CRT for color correction that only accepts and outputs 1080i and I often edit 23.98 material. The main thing in FCP -- I could always leave my monitor on no matter what I was editing.

In Premiere Pro CS5 and earlier, the framerate output of the Intensity always changes to match the BM sequence. Obvious, yes.

So I knew I had to only use 29.97 Intensity sequences. I knew if I jumped to a BM sequence I would get a normal picture.  When I jumped back to a regular, say AVCHD 23.98 sequence for instance, it would shut the Intensity output off. It wasn't ideal, but the output signal was simply controlled by whatever sequence I selected.

Now, because of CS6's new way of outputting video to the Intensity, unless I always only edit in 29.97 or deselect the Intensity output in the menu, I am constantly having to either shut my monitor off myself, or dig down into some submenu to deselect the Intensity output. Honestly, it's a pain.

For me CS6 is a step backwards in video output to the BM Intensity card. 

[Cutwithray]

It sounds like this is more of a monitoring expectation problem rather than a Blackmagic problem. In my suite, I have a Flanders broadcast monitor and also a Panasonic Plasma VT-25. I know first hand what types of signals these monitors can sync too. For illustration purposes, If I were to load up some 5K PAL material in Premiere Pro, I wouldnt expect either monitor to display that content because they simply are not designed to do that. I also wouldnt expect the Blackmagic Card to do the conversion.

If you are expecting to put any type of footage (resolution & frame rate) and it comes out through Mercury Transmit and I/O card, I dont believe that is the correct way approach it. If you really need that then I would take a look at a Teranex solution.

Please keep us posted on this situation and your experiences. I am very curious how this plays out.

Ray

[CSTeam3]

Sorry, Ray.  I do expect it because obviously, either the Blackmagic card or Final Cut is already doing exactly some type of conversion at least from 2398 progressive to 29.97 interlaced and it works fine.  

I don't know what you're talking about.

[Cutwithray]

No Worries. I am just trying to understand if there is a problem or bug or limitation. Lets go back a moment and try to figure out where the problem is being introduced.

1) Premiere Pro

2) Mercury Transmit

3) Blackmagic Card

4) Monitors

Is this a new situation introduced by CS-6 or were you able to accomplish this is CS-5.x?

I have Premiere and Final Cut on the same system and also the BM Extreme 3D card. The workflow between FC7 and Premiere Pro is certainly different. I find that in Premiere as long as I work in any sequence that the BM card supports, I have no problems. The other variable is back to the monitors being used. If the monitor cant sync to a certain framerate or resolution then its a no go.

Ray

[excited_Genie16B8]

as long as I work in any sequence that the BM card supports, I have no problems.

That is supposed to be the main benefit of the new Mercury Transmit feature.  ALL sequences are now supported by the BM card.

The question is, will the BM driver offer the user a choice of conversion to a specific format in order to comply with specific monitors capabilities, as well as passing through any signal unaltered.  In my opinion, any third party output card really should offer both options - conversion and pass-through.  A pass-though may not work for some monitors, but the conversion option should work for any sequence with any monitor.

[Cutwithray]

If you go over to the BM page and take a look at the Intensity Pro technical specs here are the HD specs:

1080i50, 1080i59.94, 1080i60, 1080p23.98, 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p29.97, 1080p30, 720p50, 720p59.94 and 720p60.

Pretty Awesome for $199.

I am not seeing anywhere that mentions that this card will "cross convert" to other formats. It will do a basic HD>SD provided its the same framerate, or capture SD to HD at the same framerate. Not sure why you guys are expecting more from the Mercury Transmit Feature? Its the same hardware card being utilized in a new highly optimized way via the Adope SDK /API. The functionality of the card hasnt changed, just the way Adobe is accessing it.

What am I missing here?

Ray

[excited_Genie16B8]

Not sure why you guys are expecting more from the Mercury Transmit Feature?

Not the feature, the card.  I expect Mercury Transmit to pass the video "as is" to the card.  I expect the card to be able to now read that video, even though it's not in a BM sequence, and either send it on "as is", or convert on-the-fly to the desired resolution/frame rate set by the user (as most any Blu-ray player can).  If it can't do the latter (conversion) it's usefulness is minimized somewhat.

For example, I have a CRT HD for monitoring which is far better than most any consumer flat panel monitor.  But as a CRT set, it can't take 1080p resolution or 23.976 at any resolution.  So for me to use that card, I'd have to convert on the fly to something the set can accept.

[Cutwithray]

For $199 not sure expectations are totally realistic. Looking back just a year ago the Teranex boxes were very expensive that would do this real time conversion. I understand the Final Cut comparison with the same card and also the frustration you are having now. The good news is that Blackmagic has aquired Teranex and have drastically cut prices. The bad news is we still have yet to determine if this is a limitation of:

Premiere Pro

Adobe Mercury Transmit

BM Card

BM Driver

Monitoring

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/teranex/

$2000 gets you cross converting all day and night.

[excited_Genie16B8]

For $199 not sure expectations are totally realistic.

Blu-ray players are now less than $100, and they all do it.

[CSTeam3]

"What am I missing here?"

Ray,

It IS a monitor issue. That's just the point. 

My monitor won't display anything but 1080i.  The issue is that FCP can overcome this by outputting a display rate that I specify no matter the sequence settings. Premiere can not! Premiere can only pass through what the sequence is set for.  And all this with exactly the same card on exactly the same system!  So I know it's not a limitation of the card.

Geesh, I feel like we're talking in circles here.  You guys figure it out. Later.

[Sam Parnell]

I have same thoughts as CSTeam3 - I expected it to work because it had worked in FCP for me previously. I have a professional HD broadcast monitor I haven't tried it on yet, but I am willing to bet it would work there. The HDTV I am trying to get it to play on is just for client previewing, and we don't really need a top-of-the-line pro monitoring solution there. It's just frusterating because FCP never had any problems with it, and all the prerelease info about mercury transmit led me to believe that Premiere would be able to as well.

Even if I had to make a Blackmagic 1080p24 sequence to always edit from it wouldn't be so bad, but even using BM's sequences, I have to use 720p60 or I won't get anything.

-sam

[Sam Parnell]

I think it is mainly the fact that in FCP I could send pretty much any sequence, regardless of framerate or resolution, through the BM card to the 720p TV and it would play back fine. So I know it can be done. I know it's an entirely different process than with Premiere, but just seeing it work 2-3 years ago in FCP, and now with the newest Premiere it still doesn't work, it's frustrating. If FCP was unable to do it, then my expectations would be different.

-sam

[Sam Parnell]

Worth pointing out, when I copy/pasted 4K RED R3D files into a DSLR 720p60 sequence, scale to fit, half res playback, it played back quite nicely on the TV screen with no rendering. No CUDA graphics card, 12 gigs ram on 8 Core Mac Pro. I do have a Red Rocket installed, but I turned it off to see how much of a difference it was making, and it seemed to still be playing pretty well.

So, if it wasn't for the framerate/resolution sequence issues, this would be pretty amazing.

-sam

[excited_Genie16B8]

4K RED R3D files

And there's another point.  How many folks using 4K media will actually have a 4K monitor?  You NEED that real time conversion from all output cards.

[Shane_Ross]

FCP changed the output IN THE APP.  If you were running a 1080p 23.98...and you didn't have a monitor that supported that...you could tell FCP to send out a 1080i 29.97 signal.  Then the signal going from FCP to the IO device would be 29.97.  The VIEW>VIdeo Playback was where you changed this.  And you could change it to 720p 59.94 if you wanted, and the 1080p 23.98 signal would be converted by FCP to 720p 59.94.  FCP did that, not the IO devices.

For the record, this is something Avid does too...the locking the output to match the sequence.  The project settings determine the output settings, and they cannot be changed.  You can have the card, via it's interface, change the signal. At least in the AJA Control panel.

When I'm done rendering in COLOR, I'll see how the Kona 3 interacts with CS6...

[Mikolaj Banasik]

Erm, am I missing something here? As the previous poster mentions, don't you just need to choose your display format in the Blakmagic Control Panel (or whatever it's called - I use Kona)?

In the AJA control panel you have your Primary Format, ie your sequence settings, then your Secondary Format for converting the signal for output to the monitor. If you happen to have a monitor that supports the same format at the sequence settings you can feed it the Primary Format. This is nothing new for FCP users, it's just that FCP lets you change your Secondary Format from inside FCP.

[Shane_Ross]

OK...I can get PPro 6 to output 29.97 video from a 23.98 timeline with the AJA Kona 3.  Follow these steps and see if it works for your BMD card.

Go to PREFERENCES and select PLAYBACK.  See your device that has the check mark next to it?  Click on  SETUP.  A small interface will appear that offers VIDEO FORMAT and PIXEL FORMAT.  VIDEO FORMAT will say MATCH SEQUENCE.  Click on that and choose what you want it to output.  In my case, I used a 23.98 1080 sequence, but chose to play out 1080i29.97.  And when I did...it worked fine.  Just like it did in FCP.

See if this works for your BMD card.

[Shane_Ross]

There...a quick blog post with visuals:

http://lfhd.net/2012/05/09/video-out-of-ppro-cs6-switching-monitoring-format/