Bob, what part of the HDMI v1.3 spec do you need to be supported? Is it the v1.3 specific support for 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths?

"Is it the v1.3 specific support for 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths? "

I want to be able to connect the X series Bravias and feed them xvColor. Just how that'll get processed in Vegas is an interesting question I've barely touched on. Sony say that xvColor to the Bravia will only work over HDMI 1.3, which part of that I have not a clue.

The whole issue is kind of up in the air, we have a 32bit pipeline but no clue as to how to get anything beyond 8 bit in or out of it.

The BMD Multibridge Eclipse is probably the best way to go as that has all the possible connections for feeding 2K 4:4:4 to monitors.

Bob.

Hmmm, interesting question... The Intensity will support 10-bit, but I'm not certain if that is only through the component I/O or if it is supported via HDMI as well. The Intensity is YUV 4:2:2, so I'm guessing that it won't process xvYCC color. I'll ask BMD.

In the meantime, here is a link to the differences between the various flavors of HDMI. Certainly v1.3a is the most capable and the only one that supports the IEC 61966-2-4 xvYCC color standard.

I'd be very interested to hear how things work with the Decklink card. I've been getting the impression that neither BMD nor AJA products actually work with Vegas and it'd be reassuring to hear something different for once.

Rob

The Decklink card with the old drivers and V7 works fine for basic capture and PTT. None of the fancy features on the card are available to Vegas though.

Bob.

Bob,

I got an almost immediate e-mail reply from tech support at Blackmagic and they said that the Intensity HDMI interface currently supports the 8-bit v1.2 standard.

John

(EDIT: 1920x1080 MJPEG files do not play at full frame rate in Vegas):
John, I do appreciate the update and keeping up with this. What is the comment on playing back in Vegas? Do you mean it just does not play back correctly from the timeline? It does render out and then go from there OK though? I am assuming all other deck controls etc work or I guess you are checking it all out. Thanks again.

Gary

No, it plays correctly from the timeline, just not at the full frame rate. On my 3.0Ghz Quad, 1920x1080 HD MJPEG video plays at around 13-14fps in "Preview (Auto)". This is only on HD MJPEG files, on HD YUV or SD MJPEG and YUV, it does play at the full frame rate and works as expected. Vegas doesn't seem to be using the Intensity hardware MJPEG accelerator. This isn't surprising since Vegas has always been hardware agnostic and has never supported any hardware acceleration.

Thanks John and I assuming these drivers are good for all the lines fo the cards. I am looking to integrate existing decks and be able to add newer ones as needed for digital and YUV decks. This is good news for how to move the studio now. Thanks for the hard work.

Gary

John,

Did you ever find out whether BlackMagic Design just "fixed" their codec so that the Vegas MJPEG built-in decoder reads the BMD files properly or does Vegas now use the new version of the BMD decoder?

I'm still waiting for the 64 bit BMD codec v1.84 upgrade (sigh).

I'm assuming that BMD "fixed" their codec since it was an update to the Intensity drivers that fixed the issue and not a Vegas update. Vegas reports that it is using the BMD MJPEG codec and not its internal MJPEG codec.

I, too, am waiting for the 1.8.4 drivers for Vista64. I dual-boot Vista64 and XP and, for now, I'm using XP for Intensity/Vegas purposes. The 1.8.4 drivers included a firmware update as well as the drivers and I'm reluctant to boot up into Vista64 to see the v1.8.2 drivers will operate with the v1.8.4 firmware that got installed when I updated the XP install.

"Bravia will only work over HDMI 1.3, which part of that I have not a clue."

Bob, the 1.3 spec is required for the Bravia's xColour (and any other 1080p capable LCD panel, such as a Samsung F8 <theirs is caled true colour> (which is what we've got here) for full 1080p 10bit ingestion. These panels can only go up to 10bit though, but i believe another issue is hyperwhites (whites supported at 117% (which the EX also supports) as opposed to 100%

I should also note that the 1.3 spec HDMI also supports full conversion from 10bit SDI sources, so if you have a camera with SDI, you can connect it to a conversion box from SDI to HDMI and youll get a clean uncompromised stream.

Why this is, is simply due to the fact that many a time, these panels are used in productions as reference monitors (aparently)

One of the reasons is Sony etc want the consummer to have a more 'cinematic' experience in their home cinema. That this might yield a poor man's way to get affordable monitors for serious grading is what I'm interested in. If I can avoid the cost ($30K+) of having to feed dual HD SDI to a matching monitor I'll be very happy.

Bob.

I do know that the Samusung F series are the best units when it comes to blacks, and with LCD's if u dont get a true black, you dont get a true colour.
The Bravias only just make it at 18000:1 contrast. Still not as black as the Samsungs, but close enough to it and enough black to remain rich, without being crushed

FYI Received today from BM support RE Vista

<<Our latest driver (6.6.4) offers support for Vegas 8.0b. I would suggest you download it and see if things work properly for you.>>