XLH1 decklink capture settings
 

Hi, I've finally got my system up and running using a decklink HD pro card. However I can't find any capture settings for 25f do I use 50i instead? I've looked in the manual and I've contacted blackmagic but I haven't had a reply yet. Any advice would be much apreciated. Thanks.

Hey,

Could you specify your set up please?
any info will be greatly appriciated, I'm about to set up a system for the H1 and would like to hear what works for you.
especially quality of the samples (HD throught the SDI and such)

Many thanks
Lior

Hi Lior,

I've got a hp xw9300 workstaion using prem pro2 with external FirmTek sata raids. Yesterday I managed to capture a few seconds to Jpeg2000 before one of my drives failed. This was my first attempt which was quite frustrating as the decklink manual kind of relies on you knowing what your doing (which I don't). And I spent half the day switching off and on the settings to get it to work. I'll post a couple of stills later. Over all I was very impressed with the results, you get a very small window on capture where you can use a pull down menu to select which codec you require. So you can see how the picture quality will look with that compressor. As soon as I finish testing I'll post some results.

Many thanks for the quick reply
Hope things work out with your drive.
can u plaese tell what proccesor are u using and Ram ?
also, have u tried any kind of "uncompresed " settings? im guessing they will be harder for the system to run but would be almost full HD quality.

once again, thanks.

Lior.

Keeping in mind I do not own an XL H1, but here is my take.

All XL H1's output only one mode. Like 60i or 50i. How you get 30F mode is just progressive over interlaced transmission, or what is called segmented frames. It looke like interlaced but field 1 and field 2 are from the same frame and time, unlike in interlaced where its from different times. 24F is therefore handled with 3:2 pulldown or 3:2:2:3 pulldown and transported again as segmented frames over 60i. Its still frame mode output just transported in a rather inefficient manner.

I would assume this also translates over for 25F being transported over 50i as segmented frames.

Lior,

Its a dual Amd opteron 2.6 ghz single core system with 2gigs of ram. I didn't get a chance to capture any uncompressed settings, but i'll give the 4:4:4 a try as soon as I get the new drive in. I guess the data rate will be huge!

Thanks Keith.
So i'll set it to 50i on capture. There is also a setting for 1080i 50hertz, is that the same thing?

Thanks

Ya, 1080i 50hz is the same thing as 50i. Both are interlaced at 50 fields (25 frames) per second. A hz or hertz is just frequency meaning number of cycles per second.

Here is an option that may work. I have not been able to test it because I do not yet have a Decklink card and I am putting off getting one until I know if this works.

Well the Decklink cards are Directshow devices on the PC. The Main Concept mpeg2 encoder has a capture module that uses Directshow Devices. With this tool you should in theory be able to capture up to a 300Mbit 4:2:2 I frame only full raster mpeg2 file. You can also capture to other codecs and formats.

One of you guys could download the trial version of the encoder to see if it works.

Martin what other codecs could you capture to? I was under the impression that you could only capture to an uncompressed codec on the PC. If other codecs do work you could also try the sheervideo lossless codec. The filesize is still large but at 1/2 it really cuts down on the hard drive bandwidth needed.

Thomas, it has all the usual ones H.264, BMP, Cinepak, Jpeg, etc. I'll download the sheer video encoder. It pops up in the decklink codec menu! I'll let you know how it works out.

XLH1 capture in FCP
 

As a fairly new geezer to the world of HDV has anyone had knowledge of capturing 1080 50i from the XL H1 via firewire into a G5? I can capture at 25f but having a bit of trouble getting the 50i rate directly into the mac.

Cheers!