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Blackmagic Intensity Vs Matrox MX02 capture card latenciesHi All, Does anyone have any experience using both the Blackmagic Intensity card and the MAtrox MX02? I'm interested in the latencies for both, namely if the matrox is better than the intensity. For us the intensity seems to have a decent latency under OSX and Linux but not Windows - I'm guessing this is a driver issue but I'd love any other suggestion for things we can look at to improve this. I've also read on the forums here (I can't find the exact post) that people found the matrox a little flakey - is that still the case or have the improved things? Cheers James Internal case: https://b33p.net/kosada/node/4435
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So, regarding flakeyness.
The original MXO2 and friends used the Express Card slot. Those were flakey only because the cardslot could be easily unplugged, and the drivers did not like that too much.
Now, with thunderbolt, the entire line of devices from all manufacturers can be unplugged at random since the Thunderbolt port is made to do so. As far as I can tell, most drivers are pretty good about this, but most host applications die a horrible death if you unplug a device while capturing.
I'd say over all, Black Magic is a touch better here.
Now : Latency.
This is a tricky subject due to a nuance of factors.
Pretty much all capture devices can be accessed using Apples Quicktime capture components. Most applications that do not offer native device support use this. The way Quicktime handles capturing has a bit more overhead (it does additional CPU side memory buffering as far as I can surmise), which adds some delay, and CPU overhead, which for both devices can be slow.
Now, Black Magic (and I am unsure about Matrox), also allow devices to be captures using CoreMediaIO/AVFOundation, the 'new' path. I have yet to test, and I am unsure what software actively uses these new drivers and paths, but I would not be surprised if latency differs for the same hardware on the CMIO path.
Now, if you ingest a format that requires some conversion (say, an RGB stream but are requesting YUV buffers), something, somewhere, has to do a format conversion. Most of the time conversion happens on the device, hardware accelerated. Typically its fast, but there are times when that can cause ~ a frame of delay.
Now, finally, Both Matrox and Black Magic offer SDKs. The Black Magic SDK is publicly available and Matrox, I think, only if you ask, and they agree to give it to you. But the point is, these SDKs allows direct memory access off of the capture board, offering much lower CPU and memory usage. I mean, a ton. Like from 150% cpu down to 20% (in my experience using 1080 / 2K capture), and reduced memory overhead of a few hundred megs.
So you have a bunch of scenarios you have to account for.
Do you control the software stack? If so, your best bet is probably Black Magic, using Native SDK, but will most likely require you doing work to write capture solution or to find a plugin that works for your environment (say QC or OpenFrameworks, and hope its well written).
If you dont, and are using off the shell software that uses Quicktime Capture, honestly, its going to be about the same.
All in all, I prefer AJA and Black Magic to Matrox, but at the end of the day, all work reasonably well, and all have their own series of gotchas.
Email kineme and see if they're going to release the Blackmagic plugin they made for Control Freak Systems (I think they asked recently).
It's fast, and notwithstanding some bugs in the initial builds, I think it should work really well. I've seen it working next to an mbox media server ( a really pricey custom deal built into a tower, and that's only rented ), and my eye could barely detect a difference.
Yep. A couple years ago Stuart White of Control Freak Systems commissioned us to develop a patch which uses the Blackmagic API to directly retrieve images from a DeckLink, with a focus on minimizing latency. Stuart has agreed to let us distribute this patch now. We're preparing it for release.
(However, this patch was designed for the DeckLink; it will probably need some changes to work with the Intensity, but we don't have an Intensity to test with.)
Oh, that's right, it's a decklink. Apologies for the misinformation.
If the plugin is well built ( ;) ) it should work across the board with the Intensity line, Decklink line, Ultrastudio line and Mini Recorder, as the driver model is the same. I know because I've tested SDK code on all of those devices.
edit:
Actually, I have all 3 of those devices, so I can test it pretty easily if you mind sending it along, or releasing it, or whatever.
So far it has worked with Blackmagic capture devices I have.
My favorite device these days is the UltraStudio 3D which gives me the same performance as a PCI card, but with only a Thunderbolt connection. It allows low latency HDSDI and HDMI (dvi-lite) into laptops which was a huge thing for me.
I bought two of the UltraStudio 3D's when they first came out, but at the time they hadn't released many of the cheaper or USB 3.0 versions. I suspect those will all work just the same.
I don't suppose anyone who has used the plugin would care to comment on its latency please? (and also if it allows for dynamic specification of the capture res/frame rate etc)
As a basis here are some tests someone in our office performed, the attached images show
A Macbook Pro with an Intensity Extreme capturing a mirrored display via
The black magic software - 3 frame latency
A simple QC composition with the video input patch - 6 frame latency
A Mac Pro with an Intensity Pro capturing a mirrored display via
He tried a few different resolutions and frame rates and it didn't seem to affect the latency
I'd love to test out the Latency on my MXO2 mini but I can't get any of the drivers to even show an image under OSX 10.8.2 in QC in 64-bit mode (I can get an older driver to work in 32-bit mode) but for my own purposes that won't suffice. Anyone have any insight as to how to get the MXO2 working in QC under Mountain Lion?
VideoTools 2.3 is out, which includes the
Blackmagic Capture
support. It's only been tested on the Blackmagic Decklink (since we don't have access to any other hardware).Can someone confirm if this works for them please (preferably with an intensity) or if its something to do with my setup/machine?
I've tried with an intensity pro and the plugin doesn't capture under 10.8 with the following appearing in the console
Under 10.7 it crashes with the following
Intensity pro - 10.8 - and i get this..
Hey baja - could you please start up the console, hit the clear display button up the top left, try again and then copy and paste the error message here
Cheers - James
Here you go - hope this helps...
Hi - I am having crashing issues with a Decklink Studio 2. Tried 10.6.8 and 10.7.5.
Please see crash report below:
regards
Nev.
Hi Nev,
If you wrap your crash report in <code> </code> tags, I think it will format a bit nicer.
Just tested with a Intensity Extreme (thunderbolt) on both SL and ML the blackmagic patch crashed. The same setup worked with the stock video input patch under SL and FV video input patch on ML.
The crash reports are in the txt file. If you need more info or something tested let me know!
Thanks for the crash reports, everyone. I think we've got the information we need to do some more investigation; we'll get back to you soon with an update.
Hello, would it be possible to record both audio and video from a camcorder via HDMI and a BlackMagic Ultra Studio Mini Recorder with Videotools ? If not, is there a way in Quartz Composer to combine and sync a video and an audio stream in one file ?
Thanks.
(If you prefer I can start a new thread)
hi Chaps
Is there any rough ETA when this may be fixed?
Many thanks in advance
Nev.
@xniala: No; by design Quartz Composer can't deal with audio data in any meaningful way — it can trigger freewheel audio samples, and it can analyze incoming audio, but given that graph execution is driven by output video framerate and arbitrary UI events, there's no sensible way to support manipulating audio sample buffers. This is something we're addressing in our design for Vuo.
@nevbull: Sorry, we don't have an ETA yet.
Thank you for the answer. My hope is that Syphon Recorder can record both audio and video sent by the BlackMagic card...
I'm getting the same thing, I can only hook up the patch to a billboard/sprite if the viewer isn't open, once i open it qc crashes. I've tried all formats and deinterlace options. Although i'm running it in 32-bit mode on 10.8 with a thunderbolt intensity. I'll buy it straight away once it works :)
I know that there have been some problems with VideoTools 2.3. I appreciate the work you're doing to try and fix the plugin.
I was thinking the other day that there must be some combination of hardware and software that allows the plugin to function correctly. Perhaps someone who has gotten this plugin to work could list the hardware and software they used to have success. I would greatly appreciate it.
Thank you, Sam
Hi, when you reference "frame latency", what FPS is the source? 60 FPS?
The images in your post seem to indicate it was capturing at 24 FPS, but the time stamps in the images go above 24 (the source video probably has a higher FPS?).The reason I'm curious is because I am looking into using the Intensity Extreme + Quartz Composer to manipulate video for live musical performances-- Therefore, the latency must be as low as possible. If the source video is 60 FPS, that would put 6 frames of latency around 100 ms. If the source video has a lower FPS, that could make a meaningful difference in latency.
Thanks
The
-[QCOpenGLContext virtualScreen]
crash is fixed in VideoTools 2.4. Thanks, everyone, for your patience.@gwjvan - Sorry I must have been away when this thread got some love and my method of catching up on emails was to just delete everything mailing list related.
Re - the latency testing I didn't make the test video (or do the tests) but I just looked at the movie and it looks like it was a 28FPS (or 30) movie and its been rendered out at 25fps - the 11th, 17th ans 23rd frame are always missing.
Just wanted to tell, if somebody looks at this thread: VideoTools Plugin 2.4 is working with Blackmagick Intensity Shuttle with Thunderbolt connection. On a MacBookPro11,4, input Nikon1 V1 directly over HDMI. Well, it was quite a fuss to get it working (days, my camera and thunderbolt were set to 720p60Hz but finally recognized in the patch, and any other software on my mac, was 1080i59.94 or something like that...)