Using BlackMagic Intensity Pro Video Compression card with FCP in a MacPro

BlackMagic is offering the Intensity Pro card that they claim is enhancing the quality of video compression for better results than software driven compression, even with Standard DV in addition to HDV, and at a surprisingly cheap cost (less than $300).
http://www.h-digital.com.au/hardware/hardwareview.asp?id=152
As someone used such hardware driven compression card in a MacPro ?
Does-it really help making better quality DVDs?
If not are there better hardware driven compression card?

7-8 years ago, we said that analog video was at the low end and DV was at the high end.
Uh, DV was NEVER on the high end. Digibeta and Beta were analog, and were HIGHER end than DV. Just because it was digital doesn't mean it was better. DV is compressed 5:1 and has 4:1:1 color sampling. Beta was 4:2:2 and better than DV...and Digibeta was and still is the high end SD format. DVCPRO 50 a close second. No...DV came in on the low end...like HDV comes in on the low end of the HD spectrum.
If this Intensity card does not help to get better compression than software driven compression, is there another card which can do so ?
Well, I answered this, but you must have missed my answer, so I will bold it for you: *THERE IS NO CARD OUT THERE FOR THE MAC THAT WILL AID IN DVD COMPRESSION.* I don't know about the PC side, so I make the statement to include MAC only. There are several hardware solutions for encoding DVDs that distributors use when making the theatrical DVDs like OCEANS 13...but those are separate hardware encoders. And no, again, those encoders are not available on a Mac.
What I mean at the end is to find ways to have higher quality DVDs than when using software such as Compressor. Do you follow me ?
I follow you....you aren't following me. Since I am an editor and not a distributor, I don't know what those solutions are. They exist outside of the editing world, so you have to GOOGLE this or look elsewhere. Needless to say, the Intensity does not aid in this. No capture card does. That is not what they are designed for. They are designed to capture non-firewire formats and to output to non-firewire formats...not to aid in DVD compression.
Shane

Similar Messages

Anyone using Blackmagic Intensity Pro with Premiere CS4

I've looked through the threads and have seen similar postings, but no real good answers. Is anyone using Blackmagic Intensity Pro to viiew timeline on a HDTV using the HDMI connector?
I purchasedf the Intensity Pro and can't get it to work with CS4. Any assistance would be appreciated.

If you're using a Core i7 processor, one of the problems might be with the motherboard. There's only one Intel board that BM has approved (sorry, don't have the model in front of me -- on a piece of scratch paper in my wife's car).
I'm looking to build a new system myself and have been looking at the Intensity Pro card as well. The main feature I'm looking for is real-time preview and program output to an HD monitor that I'd hook up via HDMI. I probably also would use it to capture analog sources for audio and video. I don't have any interest in BM's lossless data capture as it creates monster-sized files. That's why I was also planning to add Cineform once it's fully approved and working for CS4. However, as best as I can tell, the Intensity Pro card doesn't recognize the Cineform codec on the timeline. Does anyone know if and how well these two will function together within Premiere? (I'm also assuming that the new 4.1 release might make these types of Premiere add-ons work better.)
Thanks.

I am a final cut pro user and i recently started using adobe premiere pro. for anyone firmiliar with fcp, there are interesting ways of doing introductions on it and im wondering if anyone could tell me if premiere pro has preset introductions i can use

i am a final cut pro user and i recently started using adobe premiere pro. for anyone firmiliar with fcp, there are interesting ways of doing introductions on it and im wondering if anyone could tell me if premiere pro has preset introductions i can use.

Singenu wrote:
I tought about looking in Monitor Activity to see what happens...
Well, when I start working (should I say try to work with FCPX, activity monitor in the %processor column for FCPX jumps rapidly over 100% and reaches more than 200% ??? What the **** is that ?
200% or more is not strange. Remember that your mac has 4 cores (you say it's 3 months old, so I assume it is a new model), so 200% amounts to using 2 of these 4 cores to the max.
Regarding the question of creating a new admin user: while it sits in the same system, it may help if the problem is caused by some user-specific preferences or settings. Not likely in your case, since you seem to have reinstalled from scratch, but still it is worth a try. It takes 5 minutes and may help pinpoint the problem.

Blackmagic Intensity Pro Video Card

I am in need of a HDTV/HDMI video out solution when playing back Quicktime movies in Logic Pro 8. Can anyone report success with the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card? Or are there better alternatives (besides Firewire out).
Thanks.

hi,
ihave bought it and am using it with my quadcore g5 2.5 ..
for now i switched back to canopus because its much more stable and not
"touchy" when i jump around in the timeline...
but this may have a lot of other reasons ..
with finalcut its very nice ans stable, i think the drivers have been written
to be compatible with fcp rather than logic.
I wantd to have the picture for an HD Movie in Llogic but now i prfe to have
stability,
bets regards,
andy

Premiere crashing. Using Blackmagic Intensity Pro HDV sequence

Hi. I'm editing with Premiere. I'm using an intensity pro card(blackmagic design) with
Q4000 Nvidia Graphics card. It keeps crashing on me. More so with the HDV footage I'm editing.
I have included my computer specs as well as media info of my source footage and the sequence settings.
Any help with this would be much appreciated!!!

I checked your PSU based on your list of components and it gave me these results:
These figures are without any safety margin. I usually advise to add around 10% for safety. If I look at your PSU, it shows these data:
This tells me that your +5V rail may be a weak point because of the lacking amperage with this PSU and worth checking. Your system needs a combined wattage of nearly 190 W but delivers only 150 W on the +3.3 and +5V rails. This also shows that it will be hard to make this a more balanced system with better disk I/O, because the wattage is just not enough to add a dedicated raid controller and some more disks. I would not be surprised if the PSU is the culprit here, but let your IT guy check this out. And let him carefully check the temps of CPU, mobo and GPU, both idle and under load.
A good disk setup for a balanced system with such a powerful CPU would be something like described in the 'Warrior' system here: Adobe Forums: What PC to build? An update...

Blackmagic Intensity Pro - Video playback doesnt work

Hi there, I am experiencing some weird issues with Premiere CC and the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card.
I mainly use the card to playback my edit to an HD monitor. This has worked quite well, but as of today it stopped working.
Last time it stopped working I opened a different project (one I knew the card have worked before) to check and it was working. I did nothing and opened the project the card wasnt working and to my surprise it just worked.
Today I am having a problem as I cant make any of the projects work w the card.
It feels it works at random. I would appreciate any help on this.
Working on a Mac Pro Quad Core INtel 3.2GHz
Sequence is Blackmagic Uncompressed 23.97fps
Preferences>Playback - set to Blackmagic
Problem started when I was flipping between headphones and external speaker (to cut my audio). I do not however send audio through the BM card. Always Line out or Headphones.
Thanks in advance for any info.
Pedro

hi,
ihave bought it and am using it with my quadcore g5 2.5 ..
for now i switched back to canopus because its much more stable and not
"touchy" when i jump around in the timeline...
but this may have a lot of other reasons ..
with finalcut its very nice ans stable, i think the drivers have been written
to be compatible with fcp rather than logic.
I wantd to have the picture for an HD Movie in Llogic but now i prfe to have
stability,
bets regards,
andy

MacPro, BlackMagic Intensity Pro video card and output to HDTV

Hello folks,
I purchased an Intensity Pro card a little while back, but haven't actually gotten to use it. I captured most of my video material through firewire. I have a MacPro and I'd like to view photos from iPhoto, renders of my 3D work and possibly stream Netflix to my HDTV. Both of my DVI outputs from my ATI Radeon card feed my two desktop cinema Displays, leaving the DVI output from the Intensity Pro card open. Before I go an buy a DVI to HDMI adapter from Apple I want to know if the Intensity Pro DVI port only works if I'm in editing mode with Final Cut or Adobe Premiere or will it output anything at anytime as it it was just another graphics card?
Thanks so much for any help,
Brian

hi,
ihave bought it and am using it with my quadcore g5 2.5 ..
for now i switched back to canopus because its much more stable and not
"touchy" when i jump around in the timeline...
but this may have a lot of other reasons ..
with finalcut its very nice ans stable, i think the drivers have been written
to be compatible with fcp rather than logic.
I wantd to have the picture for an HD Movie in Llogic but now i prfe to have
stability,
bets regards,
andy

Use Blackmagic Intensity Pro to Monitor FCP7

So I'm trying to help my brother get this to work over the phone, but he's not as technical as I am. It doesn't sound that hard, but he can't seem to get any output to this card and I can't seem to find a setup guide online.
He's running a 2010 Mac Pro with Snow Leopard (I think) and FCP 7. Can anyone run down the basic setup for this card or point me in the right direction?
Thanks.

Thanks for the quick reply.....
what Im trying to work out is how much better a analogue monitor like
http://www.planetdv.net/Content/ByManufacturer/JVC/Video_Output_Monitors/JVC_TM-H150CG_15inch_ColourMonitor.asp
JVC TM150CG connected via componants out of Intensity card..
would be over a
http://uk.lge.com/prodmodeldetail.do?actType=search&page=1&modelCategoryId=0102& categoryId=0102&parentId=01&modelCodeDisplay=19LS4R&model=3
LG19LSR connected to the Intensity pro via HDMI
Cheers and I hope the links work

Numbered Stills won't preview with Blackmagic Intensity Pro in CS5

I am an animator and I import numbered stills (jpeg) into Premiere. In CS3 I would drag the sequence on to the timeline and then hit "enter" and the animation would render a preview. In CS5 the preview won't render. Instead of a red bar or green bar, there is just a gray bar and the animation plays back very choppy.
I am pretty sure this is because I am using Blackmagic Intensity Pro, but would love to know if there is a solution. The previews render when I choose a "DV" preset instead of "Blackmagic", but of course they don't show on my tv monitor then.
Has anyone come across this problem?
Thanks

There have been quite some posts here about the BM Intensity, but denying it is not uncommon in this business. Look at Dell that refuses to admit that about 12 million of their systems are suffering from faulty, leaking capacitors and die quite often. Around 97% of their Optiplex range is expected to die within three years, due to the Nichicon capacitors used .

Problem with video capture with Blackmagic Intensity Pro card

I have just installed a blackmagic Intensity Pro card to download analogue VCR tapes to DVD. I have set all the input parameters to the Blackmagic card in both Premiere and the input routine for the card. I am using the breakout cable for NTSC input with the green Y input for the video and the L & R audio inputs. When I try to capture I get snow in the premiere capture window, but it does record the L & R audio. When I stop the tape deck I momentarily get the blue screen with STOP showing and then back to snow. I am hoping it is just a setting somewhere but where????
The computer is running Vista 32 home premium with 3G ram
Comments very welcome

Is there a BlackMagic setting required to tell the driver to see the green as composite rather than component?

Soundtrack Pro with Blackmagic Intensity Pro Card

Hi
Just wondering if anyone was using STP with the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card to monitor video on a TV?
If so, whta are your experiences and especially does STP allow you to continue using your selected audio device (MOTU Ultralite over Firewire for me) while viewing your Quicktimes on the TV.
Thanks in advance
Gavin
gavin little
echolab
dublin, ireland
http://www.echolab.tv/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1962022/

Hey Bill
Thanks for getting back so quick! No, I've checked the audio/midi and the default audio device is my MOTU Ultralite firewire interface - even when the default output is set to the mac's internal speaker, once you select the external video it mutes the output.
I can still see levels withing STP as if the audio is playing. There is an official Apple Support document about audio not working when you are using external video to firewire and it says that it is a bug that can be bypassed by setting your bus to surround (1-6) instead of stereo (1-2) but this has no effect for me )-:
Would love to know if it works for you! and if so, what way you have things configured
Thanks
gavin little
echolab
dublin, ireland
http://www.echolab.tv/
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1962022/

BlackMagic Intensity Pro Capture Card & (3) 1TB Internal Hard Drives

Hello,
This is my first time using BM Intensity Pro. Prior to tonight all I used was FW400 & iMovie/iDVD.
I have now upgraded to Final Cut Studio with a BM Intensity Pro Capture Card and Three 1TB Hard Drives (7200 RPM with 32MB cache) - Striped as a RAID set to create ONE 2.7 TB HD for Video Storage.
I have a few questions that I would like some help with.
I would like to capture at the highest video quality possible.
I'm worried that Hard Drives wont be able to handle the capture speed or file size?
I ran the BM Disk Speed Test. I'm just not sure what all these numbers mean?
Can someone please explain to me what the following information is telling me?
Do the results mean that I'm good to go with uncompressed HDV via HDMI?
The first is my OEM Mac Hard Drive. The second is my 3TB RAID set.
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test Results
Date: 2009-06-07 22:10:23 -0400
Mac OS X Version: 10.5.7
Physical Memory: 2047 MB
QuickTime Version: 7.6.2
Read Speed: 62.5 MB/s
Write Speed: 60.9 MB/s
Blackmagic Disk Speed Test Results
Date: 2009-06-07 22:13:26 -0400
Mac OS X Version: 10.5.7
Physical Memory: 2047 MB
QuickTime Version: 7.6.2
Read Speed: 314.9 MB/s
Write Speed: 310.0 MB/s

About using the speed test:
http://forums.creativecow.net/thread/124/864289
I would invest in an external RAID controller.
You can find a variety of such from AMUG in RAID5/6 that will support higher sustained thruput.
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/reviews.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/4322/
http://www.barefeats.com/hard115.html
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/highpoint/3522/
http://www.barefeats.com/hard101.html
Those should also give you a better feel for what to do with those numbers and what to look for.

Premiere Pro with Blackmagic Intensity Pro; Importer

I'm using a Blackmagic Intensity Pro with Premiere Pro. I don't Import anything with it directly, i just use it to preview my timeline on a seperate monitor.
The issue I have is when I try to import a AVI-file to my project
before I had the Intensity Pro, Premiere would input the file as a Microsoft AVI and it worked perfectly.
But now the exact same file is imported as a Blackmagic AVI-file. now I am experiencing green bars in my video and the color information is totally screwed up.
So my question is: can I deactivate or change the Import-settings of Premiere, without to remove the Card completely (turn PC off, remove card, turn back on...)?

Ok, my workflow is:
I'm importing a video file from my hard drive via double-click or drag'n'drop. i don't capture from a video source with the intensity pro!
the specs of the video file according to premiere are:
Type: Blackmagic AVI File
File Size: 1,7 GB
Image Size: 1024 x 768
Frame Rate: 18,00
Source Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 16 bit - Stereo
Project Audio Format: 48000 Hz - 32 bit floating point - Stereo
Total Duration: 00;15;18;28
Average Data Rate: 1,9 MB / second
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1,0
############### BMD Importer Supplemental ###############
AVI File Details:
Timecode:
Reel name: ''
User timecode:
Alternative reel name: ''
Contains 1 video track(s) and 1 audio track(s).
Interleave: 1 : 1.00 (conforming required)
Video Track 1:
Size is 1.49G bytes (average frame = 94.18K bytes)
There are 16541 keyframes.
Frame rate is: 18.0000 fps
Frame size is: 1024 x 768
Video format is 'MJPG' 422 8-bit ITU-R 709
Audio Track 2:
Size is: 168.2637M bytes
Rate is: 48000 samples/sec
Sample size is: 16 bits
I've tried importing the video file at a friend's pc with premiere pro 5.5 and there the file works just fine. so I'm assuming that it has to do with the intensity pro...
It has the same properties execpt under Type there is "Microsoft AVI File" and everything beneath Pixel Aspect Ratio isn't there.
Thanks

Lag with Blackmagic Intensity Pro

I just got Adobe Prod. Premium CS6 as well as a Blackmagic Intensity Pro monitoring card and an eVGA GTX570 graphics card, and to avoid problems, I did a new Windows installation from scratch on a formatted drive. This was done today, so all the drivers and program updates are completely up to date.
I know the Intensity Pro is about the cheapest card you can get to preview video correctly on a TV set, since graphics cards don't display video in the same way as a dedicated editing card does, so I'm still happy with it, but I would like to find it if I can get around this annoyance until I can get a better card, or if perhaps it's a flaw in Premiere and a more expensive card would not make a difference.
The card has about 200 miliseconds of lag compared to the program monitor in the Premiere window. This is not really terrible, but it becomes distracting when watching the TV screen and the change of frame in a cut happens first in the computer monitor in a small window within Premiere, and a fraction of a second later on the TV screen. Also, it makes it difficult when I have to sync cuts to changes in the music. I guess in that type of situation it would be better to do the cuts on the computer monitor and then switch to the TV set for color correction.
But this is not just in regular playback. It gets worse when scrubbing the timeline, or moving with JKL. In those cases, sometimes it takes it like a second to catch up to what I see on the program monitor.
I also have a GrassValley HD Spark monitoring card for Edius that while it has a little lag, it's much shorter than this and it's not so distracting. That card was connected using the same cable to the same TV set, so that tells me the Intensity Pro has some extra lag, but it's hard to complain about it on a $190 card. However, I was wondering if anyone here has found themselves in the same problem and found a solution? I searched but so far I couldn't find anything.
And as far as these type of cards, what is the least expensive one that will give me perfect preview with no lag?

Thanks, I might try that one, although it's a bit over my budget at $660.25, but I'll have to if I don't have a choice.
What about the Matrox MXO2 Mini, has anybody tried it?
About turning off MPE GPU's acceleration, that is not an option for me. I'm used to edit in Edius, where almost everything you do is real time and you barely have to render anything ever for previewing purposes, and Edius doesn't even require an expensive Nvidia card for that, it only uses the CPU. But, it lacks several features Premiere CS6 has, especially when it comes to artistic effects. Overall I'm really hooked up on Premiere CS6, but only if I can have the same fluidness of work I always had with Edius, so I wouldn't turning off MPE. That's why I spent $280 in a new graphics card.
I really hope that this is just a matter of the BM Intensity being a cheap card and not Premiere, because this past couple of days I've been editing almost all day and while I enjoyed the editing process in Premiere, it's very frustrating to start playback and sometimes it will be fine but other times the audio and video will be out of sync, so I have to position the playhead back and start playing again. When that happens half the times you play something, it's really annoying. This is regardless of real time areas or not. To make sure of this, I forced render of an area that had no effects on it and it still has the sync problem. I had to disable auto playback after rendering because that would cause the problem every time, while if I position the playhead manually and then hit play, sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.

Blackmagic intensity pro card

Hey there,
I'm trying to use the blackmagic intensity pro card to capture some audio out a tascam dat deck but can't seem to get the audio to come in. I've resorted to using a y audio cable to go into the macs input. Seems to be working ok but i would like to use the blackmagic for better quality. My capture preset is set to intensity dv capture with the rca input selected. Any ideas?
Thanks

Here's my situation at work. I have a MacPro ProTools HD workstation that uses the onboard video card to send my desktop to two LCD monitors (lots of pallets, running multiple apps). In order to view the Quicktime file during client sessions, I want to send it (full screen mode) to the 50" plasma that hangs in the room (ie. a third display). I'm using the Blackmagic Intensity Pro card to do this, but it doesn't seem to have "extended desktop" options, even though the sales guy said it did.
My only other option (no other cards seem to work in this config) is to ditch the two LCDS for a single Cinema Display and run the plasma as a second display.
Help!

Using BlackMagic Intensity Pro Video Compression card with FCP in a MacPro

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