Blackmagicdesign DeckLink HD Extreme

… another DeckLink topic about another DeckLink card

Hi,

I am currently testing if a Blackmagicdesign DeckLink HD Extreme might be a good capture card for use in VVVV.

Until now I am only using standard definition PAL video via SDI. Besides deinterlacing the image quality in general looks great and until now there seems to be no “flashing problems” like reported somewhere else in the forum with other decklink cards.

Nevertheless there are some problems or strangeness that I want to share/report here and of course ask for tips/support:

  1. Property Page
    It is nou possible to make changes in the “Property Page” of the VideoIN node. You can actually change settings but they do not have any effect and if you close the “Property Page” and reopen it everything is reset to default.
    In a Decklink FAQ I found this, what might be a hint to the solution of this problem: “How can I get the DirectShow SDK AMCap sample to change video capture format ? - You must turn off preview in order to change the video capture format.”
    Could the reason for the problem be that in VVVV this preview is always on/connected whether the VideoINn node is enabled or not and whether the “PropertyPage” is opened or not ?

  2. Latency / video delay
    When connecting the vide-pin of the VideoIn-node to VideoOut or a VideoTexture-Quad-Renderer combination there is a very long video latency of about 0,5s. If connecting the preview pin instead the latency is only the expected apprx. 1 frame (without any further processing). Why is this ? What is the difference between these two pins ?

  3. Deinterlacing
    If selecting vide format UYVY you are able to select PixelAdaptive and Bob Vertical Stretching on the Deinterlace Mode Pin, but deinterlacing is not working at all.
    Joreg - didnt deinterlacing work pretty good this way when we tested the SD Deckling Card about a year ago in Frankfurt !?

… thats it for now …

Markus

Hi Markus,

I’m interested by this HD card too. Do the 3 points you talk about concern SD or HD card?

Did you try the shader BOBDeinterlacer I’ve made?

>> Here

Hi Thiv,

all three points are concerning the HD-card “Blackmagicdesign DeckLink HD Extreme” but until now I only tested the card in SD.

I hope I will find some time to some testing with HD signals and also your deinterlacer next week.

Markus

halo ms.

*1. Property Page: Could the reason for problem be that in VVVV this preview is always on/connected whether the VideoIn node is enabled or not and whether the “Property Page” is opened or not ?

mm…probably yes. actually that is exactly what i fixed when i had thivs declink-card here. the preview pin is now only connected after the format was changed (when it was changed via the nodes format-pin, but not when changed via the property page). why do you need the property page? what additional parameters does it have? can you post a screenshot of it?

*2. Latency / video delay: When connecting the video-pin of the videoIn-node to VideoOut or a VideoTexture-Quad-Renderer combination there i a very long video latency of about 0,5s. If connecting the preview pin instead the latency is only the expected apprx. 1 frame (without any further processing). Why is this ?

sounds very strange. can you post two screenshots of graphedit? one, when having videotexture connected to the “Video” pin and another when connected to the “Preview” pin.

*What is the difference between these to pins ?
here is some official information on videopins

*3. Deinterlacing: If selecting video format UYVY you are able to select PixelAdaptive and Bob Vertical Stretching on the Deinterlace Mode Pin, but deinterlacing is not working at all. Joreg - didnt deinterlacing work pretty good this way when we tested the SD Decklink Card about a year ago in Frankfurt !?

strange again. right deinterlacing worked pretty smooth. what formats else do you have but UYVY? selecting any other doesn’t show any deinterlace options in the enum?

Hallo Joreg,

-1
You need the property page, to select the input formats of the card as the pins “Analog Video Standard” and Analog Video Input" only show “(nil)”. So the property page seems to be the only way to set the video format in VVVV.
If you set video format different to the decklink default - no idea where this default ist stored - with other applications like amcap, this is overwritten when starting VVVV (if I understand the changelog right, this should change with the next upcomming version >11.1 - right !?

-2
Please find the requested screenshots attached - I can see no difference !?

-3
There are two more formats offered: V210 and Unknown.
Selecting them no deinterlacing option is shown in the enum.
Attached also find a screenshot with all Stream Capabilities listed.

Any ideas, tips, further questions ?
If you like, if it makes sense and If you have the time, I can send you the card to have a closer look !?

Markus

graphedit_capture.jpg (128.4 kB)
graphedit_preview.jpg (130.5 kB)
properties.jpg (197.6 kB)
StreamCapabilities.jpg (163.9 kB)

  • You need the property page, to select the input formats of the card as the pins “Analog Video Standard” and Analog Video Input" only show “(nil)”
    ok, then this seems to be the problem in the first place. for this to fix i’d really need the card here.
    the fix for next releas only concerns the procamp parameters (brightness, contrast,…).

  • -2
    what i see in the screenshots is a moonlight filter i would try to get rid of. there should not be the need of a colorspace converter. hmm…maybe you can deactivate the filter (we had a tool for this mentioned once) and try again.

also have a look at the pins subtypes (rightclick them…) what is the colorspace converter converting from/to?

with sending the card lets wait until next year…

Moin,

ok, got rid of the moonlight color converter … attached you can find a screenshot of the changed graph.

The patch is still working without the moonlight filter, the delay on the video pin did not change and still is much longer than the delay when using the preview pin.

What changed:
Now even with UYVY there are no deinterlacing options shown on the Deinterlace Mode Pin !?

Markus

graphedit_preview_nomoonlight.jpg (196.9 kB)

indeed rather strange.

i should be able to say more when i have the cards in hands.

how about the mediatypes of the pins connecting the avidecompressor and the vmr9? rightclick the pins and click properties. please post screenshots of all the tabs that you encounter there.

uups … right … forgot to mention my problems with rightclick on the pins in Graphedit !

Everytime i rightclick on any pin in Graphedit and try to open the properties I get the error message “The requested property page could not be displayed.”

What do I do wron here / what is the trick ?

Markus

error_graphedit1.jpg (190.1 kB)

ah…right.
the trick is to register “proppage.dll”
it should lie in the same directory as graphedit.exe does. if not download it from here (i just did a google for proppage.dll)

if you have it take a command prompt and type: regsvr32 propage.dll

now you should be able to open property pages.

Moin,

ahh - now i can see the pin properties ! Thank you !

Attached find the screenshots of all pins in capture and preview mode.

Both look exactly the same to me.

Markus

pins_graphedit_capture.jpg (156.4 kB)
pins_graphedit_preview.jpg (158.6 kB)

interesting thread - if one is so inclined, at least.

We got a BM Intensity HDMI capture card yesterday. Suppose we can add that to the parcel to Joreg… But we’ll try for ourselves first.
Maybe after Christmas.

feliz etc.
m

hm…here we see that for some reason the AVIDecompressor for some reason converts the stream to rgb32 which is not a valid format for vmr9’s yuvmixing mode.

you can further try the following:

  • change “Texture Size Mode” on the videotexture node
  • insert a Cheater (DShow9) node between VideoIn and VideTexture

if both doesn’t work you could reinstall the moonlight filter that probably does something right in providing the vmr9 with the correct format so that offers deinterlacing.

also the moonlight filter didn’T seem to have anything to do with the delay which i still have no idea for where it could result from.

besides, have you ever tried the DScaler node for deinterlacing in connection with the standard videotexture node? for using it you’ll have to download dscalers directshowfilter and put it into vvvvs \bin (or register it manually)

hmm … again

  • to change “Texture Size Mode” doeas not have any effect, have player with this already

  • inserting a cheater node again shows different results with the capture and the preview pin. With the capture pin it does not or very occasionly and unstable work. With the preview pin the cheater node passes a signal only if VVVV is not the active window - otherwise the video freezes !? Using cheater node the deinterlacing-options are shown, but choosing them does not have any effect. Reinstalling/enabling the moonlight filter did not help.

  • the DScaler node does not work on the preview pin (only scrambled and frozen video). With the capture pin it seems to work - but with a very long delay (almost a second and a very low framerate of the stream).

When are you ready to receive the parcel from Frankfurt ? What videosources for testing do you have available in Berlin ? Do you have anything that outputs SDI ? Please let me know what have … then I can have a look what equipment / converter I could include in the parcel.

Markus

news about this card ?

sory. not yet. but i’ll have a date with the card in early april. hit me if i forget.

… almost years later …

this weekend I found some time to test the actual driver of the card with beta 13.1
Here some results of my brief test:

  • the card is working stable and without any problems with all common SDI/HDSDI signals except of SD-SDI in NTSC (cant say why this is nor working)
  • to make a certain input format work you only have to chose the exact height, width, framerate and video format, the pins “analog video standard” and “analog video input” show nil. Sometimes the selection by just typing in the resolution does not work - in this case you have to “drag the value of the pin up and down by rightclicking and moving the mouse”
  • it is not possible to grab from the analog inputs
  • deinterlacing with “VideoTexture - EX9.Texture VMR9 YUVMixingMode” does not work / not able to select
  • deinterlacing of SD-SDI Pal with the DScaler node works and especially “Bob” looks pretty good, the latency incl. deinterlacing is 2-3frames (apprx 100-120ms). Outputting this deinterlaced video with a fullscreen renderer in 50Hz works very “fluent” almost without any “ruckeln”
  • deinterlacing of interlaced HD-SDI seems not to work with the DScaler node

Markus

An update to this thread is, that I’ve just got a Intensity Shuttle, the usb3 capture device, and it works as well, you need the cheater node to reduce the latency, but you can get it down to 2 or 3 frames (not tested, but to my eye its seems that way) I set clear time stamps to 1 on the cheater node by the way.

Ah, I added my basic patch to my main patch, and tty was spitting out errors, so I got rid of the cheater node, errors go, and I have now discovered that if you change the fps while the input is running, I’ve got a switch on an onopen, then the input works with minimal latency without the cheater node, why I don’t know! But errors gone and input working = :) cat