Broadcast Monitoring in 10.0.3 - Matrox, Blackmagic, AJA?

Broadcast audio is only 16-bit, digital video natively is only 16-bit.

No. Not in my world (Euorpe) . It's 24 and DeckLink cards do 24 since many years back. Everythin I deliver for broadcast or cinemacast is 24 - it's just standard - I only work in 24 whatever I do so I don't have to think about it. 16 is old stuff - obsolete standard - for CD's .

The broadcast signal - mpeg4/H264 in Sweden and most Europe - is 16 of cource - but I don't broadcast - I produce content. We don't ude tape anymore - I myself work mostly with ProResHQ and it's 24 of course. Everything is 24 today. Here.

I just sent Black Magic a support message from their site letting them know the current status of the 9.2 Beta update.

Didn't complain, but just wanted to share feedback from Beta 9.1 to 9.2 and what works and what doesn't.

I'll share any feedback if I get any.

Actually, no, PAL is 16-bit, and is not obsolete at all. There are some very good arguments about why 24-bit is actually a waste of time. It hold information humans can't hear, 16-bit covers all the data of frequencies humans can hear. Broadcast is in fact 16-bit, even PAL. Even recording studios (I grew up in recording studios) do actual recording in 16-bit, only using 24-bit for mixing, but the original recordings and deliveries are 16-bit.

PAL is gone - in Sweden nothing is produced in PAL. I think its gone in most of Europe. PAL is a memory - havnt produced in PAL for at least 3 years now. We send all PAL hardware stuff to north where they melt it down for copper and gold.
I dont care about any discussion about the need for 24 or anything else...I just deliver what they want - I follow the specs and the specs are 24 and has been for a while. This is common knowledge in my country amongs pros. I woult deliver 4 bits sound if they had that spec . Or 246. Mono if they want it. Thats how I make a living.

No music recording studio in Sweden use anything else than 24 since many, many years. sane or not - thats how it is here.

Well after downloading the Black Magic Beta 9.2 update yesterday, I had no luck running it with FCPX as even though I set the BM Control Panel to 720P 59.94, FCPX still recognized the Intensity Pro card as SD 29.97 output.

Aha, that is until I fired up my system this evening.
I checked the control panel and it was still set to 720P 59.94.
However when I went into FCPX, the display showed up as it should as 720P 59.94.

Seems to run smooth as far as I can tell. No stutter like last night when output was showing up as SD 29.97 in FCPX.

It seems that after I installed the drivers and Beta 9.2 update, and rebooted as suggested, that the 9.2 control panel was set to default. After I changed it, it to 720P, it seems that the change didn't take effect, until after I rebooted again.

So for now all seems good, as I have Intensity Pro previews in FCPX.

Happy camper for now.

Beta 3 still sluggish with 720p50 - plays jumpy and slomo after a second.

Remember that the A/V Output for 10.0.3 is itself in "beta", as Apple has publicly stated it's not yet up to their own standards yet. But, couple months, it'll rock.

Couple of month! Max 3 weeks is descent . But - yes - I suppose its mostly up to Apple...but we will never know - always guessing. How hard can it be? Video out? Why is it a hard nut to crack? IS it a hard nut? Why is this a common truth?

Video out? Why is it a hard nut to crack? IS it a hard nut?

FCP X is a completely different nut than FCP legacy because that everything displayed is going through Open GL on the GPU on video card. In essence when playing back unrendered items in FCP X, it is really a preview of layered Open GL elements—full frames are not computed. If you look at previous attempts to do a OpenGL based video out - Motion 4 or After Effects with OpenGL rendering, you will see that it plays back at a very slow frame rate -- maybe 2 or 3 fps. The fact that FCP X is getting some decent video out playback of unrendered material is an engineering triumph!

They will get it figured out. I'm sure they need all the vendors to get their first few rounds of drivers out, and then they will have something better to work with.

Actually it's not even an OpenGL or OpenCL issue. Lion runs all A/V processes on what's called the "AV Framework". This replaces the outdated QuickTime Framework. It's a whole new and much more advanced animal. Why are AJA and BlackMagic having to take so much time to get their drivers to work correctly and full featured? Because they're not updating existing QT drivers, they're having to write new drivers for a new groundbreaking technology from scratch.

Apple publicly stated that A/V Output for FCP X is not yet up to their personal standards, but decided to release it as a beta so third parties could begin trying out and refining their drivers.

All new technology, never done before, so yes, it is a VERY hard nut to crack. QuickTime is only used for computer screen playback at the moment, and in 5 years or less won't even exist on your Mac anymore.

Just like Shake, the coding was so old, so outdated, so behind the times, it simply wasn't worth the effort to update any longer.

No clue what you mean by "...a common truth", that makes no sense to me, as a retired IT engineer. There are no common truths.

When I think of Motion 4 I get pessimistic...if FCPX is going to do the same trick I think we need next generation of GPU's to get it done
Or - is it possible to do tricks/magics - if so why havnt they done it before (with Motion4 fpr example)?

BenB: Aha - now I understand more. Anyway - I will be sobbing a little when QT goes seven feet under - I'm already nostalgic . QT7pro have ben my daly savior for many years now. It still is the tool that does the trick fast and simple many times. The man behind QT should have the Nobel Prize.

With "common truth" I just meant that everyone semed to be so understanding about the difficulties with FCPX and video out. I was the only one that didnt understand why THIS should be so hard - everyone else just nodded seriously like they did know something

Like everything else it's also about resources - man hours. iOS gets it all nowdays. The pro-departement gets what it gets in Cupertiono I suppose.

mjg wrote: Beta 3 still sluggish with 720p50 - plays jumpy and slomo after a second.

To get my Intensity Pro to play back in real time the FCPX timeline has to match the card's output setting, otherwise the output falls behind after a few seconds.

So I just installed the matrox drivers and on a very effects heavy project (all unrendered) it played back really bad. Video quality was good but the playback was bad. I switched to proxy editing and it was really smooth. I rendered in both and playback looks to be pretty freaking smooth. It looks like I might turn on auto render again soon.

This morning created a fresh partition with 10.7.3 (I still running 10.6.8 on my production MacPro) with the Matrox beta on a MXO2 Mini. MacPro 2006 (1,1) 13GB Ram, Radeon 5770.

I have a Dell 4210 (supposedly close 701) though HDMI and my trusty Sony PRV CRT (I forget the model) through S-Video.

Wow! Okay this thing is super buggy and barely works (you have to restart FCP alot), but it is buttery smooth and has a fantastic feel. I was playing back non-rendered 1080p material (Photo JPEG) spitting out to both displays, with my waveform scopes on and was super smooth. I did a bit of color correction during playback and it worked very well. Added a few effects and even added a ken burns effects on a few clip and all super smooth.

Now compared the solid video out in FCP 7, this is not up to par. But considering I was playing back unrendered PhotoJPEG this will be way ahead of what FCP 7 could do as far as performance and real time performance. Also the best I could get with broadcast out in Apple Color was maybe 10 FPS on this machine, so this appears to be playing back 29.97 1080 with color correction without a problem.

This is definitely beta, perhaps they should have called it a beta "preview". But just with playing with it for a few minutes gives me a taste of what is ahead.

mjg wrote: Beta 3 still sluggish with 720p50 - plays jumpy and slomo after a second.

Just downloaded Beta 3. Set the prefs in both System and FCP X.
Created a new Timeline set at 720P HD 50P.
Created a custom project at the same resolution.
Dropped some footage into it. (Wasn't 720P but shouldn't matter as the sequence rendered it to that format.
Played perfectly no slow down what so ever.
If I tried the sequence at 720P 25 after one second it slows down.
Maybe there is some mismatch going on?

Yep - jeffkirkland was first on this trace. It's kind of good news - there is no power missing - it CAN play 50p - it just doesnt understand 720p25. It's a bug in FCPX or a bug in the BM driver. Or they havnt fixed all fps variations yeat - just the broadcast standard ones.
Anyway - to for example play 25 fps in a 50 fps timeline should be a simple fix (just play every frame twice).

I suppose - and really hope - that all this making a lot of settings in different places (system preferences and settings in FCPX) is a beta thing. FCPX is extraordinary indifferent on what you put on the timeline - it's very "transparent" - even frame rates. So - if a card from BM, AJA, Matrox cripple FCPX in this aspect - its not really usefull cards at all.

But - they will fix it . BM have proven they can put out 50 progressive fps - its not a matter of juice - its just some tweaking to do .

Installed the new BETA 9.2 update last night and my Intensity card seems to be working excellent now.
The last update got me very close to the preview I wanted, but still had it's issues, mainly the screen would go black when playback stopped.

The latest update seems to have corrected this, as I am getting smooth playback with 720P footage in the timeline. And when I either place my cursor somewhere in the timeline or stop playback, the frame it's on stays on the screen.

Also, I tested a multicam clip (3 cameras and compound master audio clip), using both 2nd monitor to display viewer, and AV output using BM Intensity card.
Playback was using BEST playback, not optimized.
And as expected the playback from the Intensity card was smoother than the viewer preview. There were a few hiccups here and there, but very few with playback and the Intensity card.

This is on a 1st gen 1,1 MacPro with 16GB of Ram and upgrade 5770HD video card , Lion OSX, and Events and Projects on separate internal WD Caviar Black drives.

Does the video update while color correcting?