Blackmagick Decklink Studio 2

Hey guys,
What options are you using with your Decklink cards to get them to work? I’m having trouble getting consistent results but honestly have not spent the time troubleshooting the issue since it’s low on my list.

There are no fewer than 3 option screens to choose incoming resolution & bit depth depending on what library is being used in the Video In TOP - intuitive? No.

I don’t have much respect for their Blackmagic’s support department after working with support from Barco, AJA, Matrox, etc, and I’m looking to avoid a phone call with them.

Can you post a tox or toe file that includes a Video In TOP with your standard settings?

Thanks.
Brain.

Whenever I’m using the DeckLink, I set all my options directly in the Video In TOP. I always use the Blackmagic Library, and my device says “DeckLink Studio 2”. The thing I’ve noticed with it is that unless your settings are at least 95% correct, you won’t see anything in the Video In TOP (just black). The two settings to get your signal correct are the Deinterlace and the Signal Format. Set those according to the input signal, and you should see signal in the Video In TOP. I rarely have to fiddle with anything else.

Also something to keep in mind is that the Studio 2 can only handle 1 stream of video, either in or out. You can’t do both in and out with it, which for a while was throwing me off, because they use very sly wording and their diagrams are extremely misleading. I remember there being a built in pass-through, so if you have an input and output hooked up, I believe it just sends the input through the output.

One of the issues I found was that I had an HDMI to SDI interface with custom-stored EDID that was conflicting with my camera. Once I changed EDID on the device a lot of the problems went away.

I don’t have an Image Pro or any other processor here with me at the moment so I was have trouble gauging what the actual resolution coming out of the camera was (it has multiple resolution options). Manual says 60Hz but is most likely 59.94Hz with a +/- .03Hz tolerance since its a consumer-ish product.

Thanks for the confirmation, I’ll play around with the various settings to see where the magical settings are with my particular camera.

Have you used the HDMI ports on your DeckLink Studio 2 with any success?
Do you know what the USB port is for on the back of the card?

The manual doesn’t reference the USB port and only shows it in a couple of images. I’m guessing its for the EEPROM but haven’t played with it too much yet. I don’t really care too much for BlackMagic’s engineering capabilites or support but I can rant somewhere else.

Thanks again!
Brain.

I’d love to hear your rant! Always good to know more about products.

I also noticed that USB and definitely no mention of it anywhere.

In all honesty, even if someone tells me what resolution is coming down the pipe, I usually just manually go through most of them, just incase.

I personally haven’t but my colleague has used the HDMI in to connect laptops for keynote presentations and such.

So far I haven’t had any issues with the Blackmagic other than the wording on their website that doesn’t explicitly mention how many simultaneous ins and outs you get. When I bought the Studio 2, after looking at their connection diagrams I thought I was pretty set, and turns out I definitely needed another SDI card as well.