I’m hoping someone that has two PC’s with TD installed can do a test for me. I just ordered a second machine and am trying to figure out how I’m going to get digital video from one instance of TD to another on the two different machines. I’ve been doing some tests with my current machine and an older one and have not had the best results.
I have a Blackmagic Design Decklink card that has HDMI and I’ve tried to connect an older machine with a Quadro FX3000 using a DVI to HDMI adaptor and found that FX3000 machine will not recognize that it is attached to an input and or the signal is incompatible and no signal appears in a video in TOP.
After that I had an idea that I would be able to use the Touch Out and Touch In TOP’s and pass video over the network.
I then installed TD FTE-free on the older machine and found the newest version of TD will not display any images in any TOP (the video card is quite old and does not have a G70 core or newer). So I uninstalled and the installed an older version of TD. I was able to get a stream from one computer to the other but it kept on flickering no matter what settings I used.
I’m hoping that someone might have two machines (connected on a Gigabit network) and could test this out for me with the default movie playing in TD on startup with a resolution of 1280/720 on the newest version of TD.
I would like to figure this out shortly because if I have to buy either a new capture device and or video convertor I would need to soon. I do have a VGA to composite converter I could use to convert the VGA signal from one machine to composite but I’ll lose resolution and dynamic range. Also if anyone knows of a good way (gear) to get an HD signal from on box to another I could go that route as well. Although the Touch Out to Touch In TOPs would be much cheaper.
I’ve tried both TOP In/Out and BlackMagic solutions, basically the problem with Touch In/Out is the you are transferring a huge amount of data over a network. If you do the math of an uncompressed HD feed it is pretty scary ! Not sure if the flickering you’re referring to is due to too much data or not, but in my testing even with 1024x768 it was just not feasible.
Unfortunately the BlackMagic cards are quite finicky with settings and host computers, you definitely need the latest in hardware and to make sure that the signal you are feeding is a proper HD signal. And that the input setting on the VideoIn TOP exactly match the input signal. If you’re feeding it anything other than what is specifically supported you are SOL. And even a seemingly minor difference, such as 1080i/59.94 vs 1080i/60, matters. But, once they work they work great.
Another option may be this card, xtremergb.com/products/Xtrem … dEx2-(PCIe.html. I don’t know how much they cost, but I read on another forum that they are basically plug and play as opposed to the BlackMagic cards which seem to require a few hours of tweaking.
Thanks for the info, I had a feeling that the Touch In/Out TOPs might not do so well. Actually I looked into fibre channel Ethernet cards but they are around $2000 each. I have found some converter boxes that aren’t to expensive that will hopefully work. Blackmagic makes one that is a HDMI to SDI converter (I’m waiting to hear back that it will convert a computer RGB signal). Also Gefen makes some inexpensive converters as well.
That XtremeRGB card sounds like it is the way to go though (it is exactly what is needed). I did find an online dealer multi-monitors.com/product_p/spcrgb-ex1.html that is selling them for $1200, which is not too bad considering that not many other cards seem to be capable.
Which Blackmagic card did you have working? Last night I did have some partial success but it still would not function fully. I connected the second DVI port on my Quadro 4600 to the HDMI input, set all the proper settings and got a pink image that was not updating properly in Blackmagic’s media express. In Touch I had no signal. Were you using a Blackmagic Intensity card? I did read on the creative cow forum that some people did have success with these cards?
I’m using an Intensity Shuttle and my partner a PCI-e version of it. He had some issues at first with the correct motherboard (I think has to be SandyBridge), once that was sorted it has worked fine. To my great surprise, the Shuttle actually works fine with my laptop, which is an Alienware m14x.
Is your hardware specifically listed as being supported ? Russ spent hours on the phone with BlackMagic tech support and they said basically only the motherboards and USB drivers listed on their website work. Which if I remember is 2 motherboards and 1 version of USB 3.0.
I do have a couple Imaging Source composite video to firewire convertors but they only receive composite (720*480) so I would still need a VGA converter which I do have but the image quality is not that good.
I checked out the Intensity cards and if I could get one to work that would be the most bang for the buck. They say on the website that x58 and P55 motherboards will work for the USB version but they don’t say anything about the PCIe card. Do you know what kind of machine your partner has? It wouldn’t happen to be a Boxx? The motherboard in my new machine (Boxx 3960 xtreme) is going to have a P67 chipset and is a Sandy Bridge board so I’ll call Blackmagic on tuesday and see what they have to say.
We have used the intensity pci-e cards, we have had success connecting the DVI out of various laptops directly to the HDMI in, quality is good. However, the latency is around 7-8 frames which may or may not be acceptable. I am curious if the usb 3 version would be better, we are also looking a testing one of the higher end cards as well.
MD
Thanks Matt, can you tell me what kind of machine(mobo) you have? It seems only the Intensity cards will work. I’ve tried almost every possible setting to get my Decklink card to work and have yet to get a usable signal. I also thoroughly searched the Blackmagic Creative Cow forum and so far only intensity users have had success.
Latency is an issue(even with the Deckling when I capture component) but I don’t know if any low latency cards exist. I’m going to contact XtremeRGB and see if they can tell me how much latency their cards have. I have a feeling the latency is not do to the card but the driver. Much like Directx and ASIO.
I found out a couple of things people who would like to capture DVI signal’s might be interested in.
Most of the Blackmagic card’s except for the intensity series will not capture RGBHV (normal DVI output).
A lot of laptops will output other colorspace so they may work (especially Macs).
Quadro cards only output RGBHV so they will not work.
I found a scalar/colorspace converter made by a company called TV One that will convert just about any signal to any other signal. The particular converter I’m using is a 1T-C2-760 which has 2 DVI inputs and 1 DVI output. It is working perfectly with a BM Decklink Extreme 2 on its HDMI input at 1080p and 720p. The Decklink seems only to work in a Windows 7 environment not XP.
There is still latency but it is working. At one point I’m going to contact the xtremeRGB people and find out what kind of latency they have with their cards.