6.0d & decklink

quokka wrote on 3/24/2006, 1:12 AM
Is anybody actually getting captures from SDI through Decklink working? (Using BM 4.8.1 driver)
The new interface for 6.0d capture is great but when we try to batch capture we keep getting captures at timecodes that are nowhere near what we set in, plus error messages. I'm pulling my hair out with frustration with Vegas's continual poor support for an industry wide card. Is it ever going to work or is vegas not intended to be used professionally?

Comments

farss wrote on 3/24/2006, 2:16 AM
"Is it ever going to work or is vegas not intended to be used professionally? "

Just lately I'm starting to wonder myself.

What version BMD drivers are you using. By all accounts the latest releases do not sit well with Vegas. I think 4.8.1 is the latest (only?) version that'll work. Just to be safe do a search on the forum, the precise info has been posted more than once by Sony.

Still you'd think this'd be in a white paper / knowledge base article that's a tad easier to find in the heat of the moment.

Just be warned, even though I've got it to work but I haven't tried it with 6.0d you do loose a lot of what comes down the SDI cable, like all but two of the audio tracks and you can only get the audio at 16/48K. Oh and needless to mention forget about 10 bit video.

All in all a pretty pathetic effort.

Also I've tried rendering out of Vegas using the BMD 2YUV QT codec but all you'll see on other systems is black, I believe that's a know bug, well, known if you were lucky enought to see the post whiz by in the still of the night.

Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 3/24/2006, 8:36 AM
4.8.1 drivers working here. But only on Intel machine, they're AMD driver support is abysmal.
Could be worse. We could be FCP running on BMD cards 3 revs old.
farss wrote on 3/24/2006, 1:01 PM
Well yes,
it works but tell me how to get the 8 tracks of audio off the tape, even how to get 2 tracks off without it being resampled?
And then how to get it all back onto the tape without the 10 bit video data being truncated to 8 bit?
Things could be worse, or they could be better, it seems another PC based NLE can do it.

Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 3/24/2006, 1:04 PM
Premiere works with it, albeit after a lot of false starts, and I don't know how to get the 8 tracks of audio off...we both know you can't.
It could be a LOT better, no doubt. Vegas is always 8 bit, but I don't find this nearly the big deal some folks make it to be. HDCAM is 8 bit too. 10 bit would be great. Can they do it without munging up the works? I dunno.
Either way, it works, we're able to ingest and export, although for us it's mostly ingest, export goes to a service bureau.
Coursedesign wrote on 3/24/2006, 1:10 PM
Vegas is always 8 bit, but I don't find this nearly the big deal some folks make it to be.

It is not harmful to have 2 extra stops to play with in post though.
ForumAdmin wrote on 3/24/2006, 2:59 PM
"Is anybody actually getting captures from SDI through Decklink working? (Using BM 4.8.1 driver)"

Yes- I personally do this multiple times a week, SDI to/from digibeta and HDCAM HD-SDI as well. Timecode is accurate.

Is your drop/non-drop setting correct?
peteros wrote on 3/24/2006, 4:20 PM
Dear ForumAdmin:

If you did take the floor to speak about Vegas supporting Decklink, could you be so kind as to let us know if 10-bit processing will be introduced soon and smooth hi-quality preview from Vegas timeline enabled.
I purchased my card almost a year ago as an alternative for a hardware MPEG-2 encoder, which works well, but have been hoping that Decklink will eventually be more fully integrated with Vegas, which has been my companion for almost three years...
Re. the very drivers, iIt's been four or five updates for Decklink since 4.8.1 and Vegas is lagging behind its competitors...
farss wrote on 3/24/2006, 4:32 PM
No problemo with smooth playback here, SDI feed from Decklink to SDI monitor is very smooth, probably smoother than 1394 but you do need plenty of disk and bus bandwidth.
I don't quite know why all the fuss over what rev drivers work, 4.8.1 works fine for me, what are we actually missing out on?
Well OK, what are we missing out on that should work with the 4.8.1 drivers?
Please consider though that my comments are based on working with DB, for those poor souls stuck with SP I understand your grief.

Bob.
Spot|DSE wrote on 3/24/2006, 4:36 PM
Which competitors? FCP is on older drivers than Vegas is, Premiere Pro 2.0 won't run with the newer drivers, and not at all on AMD dual core machines. While I wish the Vegas team could get Vegas more integrated with Decklink, I also wish Decklink would solidify their drivers before moving to the next set of drivers. It's not just a Vegas thing.
peteros wrote on 3/24/2006, 5:02 PM
DSE:
I know it's not just Vegas thing, but I also know that a lot is up to the Vegas team.
Re. the competitors, I have I friend whose Premiere does work better with Decklink+5.1.1 than my 6d+4.8.1. The latest is still 5.4.2, though...

Farss:
I capture from both SP and DB, but I haven't managed to make Vegas deck-control them and can't play clips smoothly from the timeline. Should I capture my footage at 8-bit resolution to avoid recompressing?
The situation is by no means caused by low transfers. I tested my array with the Disc Speed application provided by Decklink and the figures are a lot bigger than the PAL 25 fps requirements.
Coursedesign wrote on 3/24/2006, 5:31 PM
FCP uses Decklink 5.4.2 drivers totally successfully now, ditto for Premiere Pro 2.0.

There are isolated bugs, like putting DV footage on an uncompressed timeline, but that's hardly disqualifying for everybody.

I think Madison needs to decide on where their bread and butter is supposed to come from:

hobbyists?
wedding videographers?
broadcast folks?
long form editors?

It has been well established that not having the support of professional users affects even the hobbyist market immensely, because they like to use "the same stuff as the big boys."

Premiere Pro 2.0 is a much stronger competitor than PP 1.5 ever was, and the strong application integration is very helpful for getting an efficient high-quality professional workflow. It does 10-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit float, too. Uses the latest Decklink drivers, and the DVD app is more advanced than at least the current Vegas DVDA.

FCP is now getting help from substantially increased sales of Apple computers because of the move to Intel processors (yes, it's already happened, even I ordered a MacBook Pro). Incredible $199 single application upgrade price to Final Cut Pro Studio (FCP 5, Soundtrack Pro, Motion, DVD Studio Pro which is a far more advanced DVD creator than Vegas DVDA).

Madison needs to stop looking in the rearview mirror. The competition is in the direction of the hood ornament now, and they are looking smaller and smaller but not because they are shrinking...

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/24/2006, 6:02 PM
PP2 isn't working for me with those drivers, so maybe there is something wrong with my machine. I can't use it at all on my two dual/dual core AMD's, because BMD hasn't made drivers available that are stable on AMD yet.
re: DVD Studio Pro...tough app to beat. I love it. Encoding in Compressor and Sorenson isn't anything to brag about, but the DVDSP app....that's a beauty.
peteros wrote on 3/24/2006, 6:13 PM
DVD Studio Pro is an example Sony should folllow if they intend to stay on the market. DVD SP is the famous DVD Maestro bought out by Apple and converted to be used on their OS platform.
As fars as editing software, not many players are left in the times of mergers/takeovers. A similar example from this field is Avid who took over Pinnacle. Now they have a full range of products from the top adrenaline HD, through Xpress and it mutations to the very bottom end. Sony has XPRI on the very top, then there is a gap, the comes Vegas and its little brothers (Movie studio, etc.). I thik it all boils down to filling in that gap...
Coursedesign wrote on 3/24/2006, 6:51 PM
The BMD AMD mobo problems seem to be caused by PCIe bus conflicts on certain mobos. It is not related to AMD CPUs vs. Intel CPUs.

Using BMD's PCI cards instead avoids the problem and works very well.

BMD has officially certified the following Dual Opteron mobos for use with their PCIe HD cards:
Tyan Thunder K8WE (S2895)
Asus A8N 32-SLI Deluxe

And the following Dual Opteron mobos are certified for use with their PCI-X HD and SD cards:
iWill DK8N (Dual Opteron)
iWill DK8X (Dual Opteron)
iWill DK8EW (Dual Opteron)
farss wrote on 3/24/2006, 8:14 PM
What are you using to capture?
Are you using the Vegas INTERNAL capture facility?
I stress that point because VidCap attempts to capture but it's NOT the way to do it, trust me.
The BMD deck control widget works but captures to the BMD 2YUV codec and there does seem to be something wierd going on with that.
Also the BMD card needs a lot of bus bandwidth, my systems integrator was very specific about which slot the card had to go into.

Apart from that though deck control works, I don't make much use of it as I just capture whole tapes.

Bob.
peteros wrote on 3/25/2006, 1:18 AM
>> Cap attempts to capture but it's NOT the way to do it.
Can you be more specific? Tried as much as I could, I have never managed to capture anything via Vegas. What's your workflow?

The hardware meets the requirements for SD. I have Decklink-certified mobo P4SCT+II, the measured disk transfer is almost three greater than the required minimum. I admit I don't have a powerful graphic display card, but it souldn't matter in this case...

farss wrote on 3/25/2006, 1:36 AM
Ok,
I'm kind of winging it here as my Monster PC with the BMD card is a few KMS away.
Vegas has two capture mechanisms.
1) VidCap.exe which is actually an external program. Do NOT use this for capturing with the Decklink cards.

2) An internal capture, used for HDV and SDA, you MUST use this.

So open new project.
File>Capture Video select Use Internal Video Capture application.

If you don't see that option then you may need to enable it in Preferences.

To state the obvious you need to have a BNC cable from the SDI input on the Decklink card to the SDI out on the deck and a 9 pin 422 cable from the card to the serial control input on the deck. Sorry but I've had people assume that control goes down SDI.

Using any other method to capture one of several things will go wrong. You'll have VidCap look like it's working but droping frames like crazy or using the Decklink capture utility you'll capture to a .mov file which I've had some really wierd problems with, unsmooth playback being one of them.

Bob.
peteros wrote on 3/25/2006, 4:57 PM
Bob:
Maybe I wan't clear anough - I am able to capture via IVC. The problem is I can't play it back smoothly (without recompressing). What preferences do you set to play the captured material back "in the native mode" from the timeline through Deckling?



farss wrote on 3/25/2006, 7:28 PM
Good question and I don't have the answer at hand.
I assume what you've ended up capturing is using the Sony YUV codec?
I can play that back out the SDI monitor port on the Decklink card in RT at Preview Auto from memory or using the Vegas preview on second monitor.

The file was coming off a SATA RAID 0 drive system, Highpoint controller, Supermicro mobo with dual 3.0GHz Xeon CPUs.

A few tricks, zoom the T/L all the way out, redrawing the T/L can rob CPU cycles, turn off every unnecesary process including all network options.

Turn off thinks like scopes in Vegas, with RT updating that also uses a lot of CPU power.

Hope this helps somewhat, the machine in question isn't with me here and I've pulled a few bits from it while I get another one running back home and J30 decks are very hard to find at the moment, we could have hired out twice as many as we've got, the Commonwealth Games sucked every bit of broadcast gear down to Melbourne.

Bob.