Intensity Shuttle Problem.

[Danny Hays]

That's strange Jorrel56 as the post right above yours states that's not supported with several reboots to recover. Nor did it help with HD progressive capture success.
That scares me a little. Audio should show up at the mini jack while capturing from any input, per the contol panel.

Signal, Where are you getting that Decklick Video Capture settings window from? I've only seen how to select resolution settings in Media Express "Edit/ preferences"
and my window looks nothing like that or does it have the paramater tabs that are in your window.

[Signal]

@Jorrel56 - Hmm.. if you had the Intensity Shuttle drivers installed prior and ran the 7.8.1 installer then you should have received this screen:

The Remove button only being available and forcing you to remove the drivers first.
Are you sure you didn't get that?

@Danny Hays - The Video Capture Settings are from the Capture Driver which you can get to via VirtualDub.

[Jorrel56]

Positive I didn't get that. It just installed, I rebooted, and then it installed the firmware on the device when I rebooted.

[Danny Hays]

Signal, Where did you get that Decklink video capture properties window from?
My Media Express contol panel or Express/edit/prefferences window where I can chance the capture settings looks nothing like it, or does it have all those option tabs?

[nut123456789]

I'm having huge problems.

Installing the newest 7.8.1 (and the 7.7.3) will crash anything that has any connection a video device.
This includes even MSN and Skype. Once I install them, reboot, Skype and MSN crash on startup.
Once I remove the USB 3.0 Drivers 7.8.1, they return to normal and work as usual.
Are the drivers not working or what?

HOWEVER, 7.7.1 seems to work perfectly fine. (which I was using instead)
Please resolve this, I've had this issue for quite some time.

I followed the Uninstall everything, unplug everything, and install everything one by one.
I don't even have to plug in Intensity Shuttle for this to happen, just the presence of the USB 3.0 drivers will do.

Just a note, I've checked if it is a unicode problem (which it is apparently not), and my NEC Electronics USB 3.0 driver version is 1.0.19.0.
My motherboard is P6X58D-E, which comes with USB 3.0 ports.

Have had this problem on several fresh installs of Windows 7 64bit Ultimate.

Anyone with any clue?

[Signal]

@Danny Hays - think you missed my answer in my last post... easiest way to get to the capture driver properties is with VirtualDub. The screen shot I posted was when using GraphStudio (a GraphEdit replacement) which I was using for troubleshooting a couple of items . Those extra tabs in my screenshot are used for programming purposes and are not extra features. VirtualDub is your best shot.

@nut123456789 - one difference between 7.7.1 and later was that the newer drivers registered the dll's so other windows apps could use the Shuttle.
This was posted by Kristian here.

If MSN and Skype are blowing up because they see the Shuttle as possible capture device and don't like what they see you could try unregistering the dll's by adding a /u
For instance, on a Win7 x64 box open a command prompt as administrator and run:

regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blackmagic Design\Blackmagic Desktop Video\decklink.dll"
regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files (x86)\Blackmagic Design\Blackmagic Desktop Video\decklink64.dll"

And to register them again don't add the /u.
You should open a ticket with BM on this in any case.

[mufunyo]

I'm having huge problems.

Installing the newest 7.8.1 (and the 7.7.3) will crash anything that has any connection a video device.
This includes even MSN and Skype. Once I install them, reboot, Skype and MSN crash on startup.
Once I remove the USB 3.0 Drivers 7.8.1, they return to normal and work as usual.

I can confirm this happens when the drivers are installed but the Shuttle is either:
- Not connected
- Having a driver problem.

Basically, if the Decklink DirectShow filters can't find the device, they crash, and take down the host application with them. Might want to fix that.

[nut123456789]

Hmm, problem was that I registered these dll's when in 7.7.1 didn't pose any problems.

However, unregistering these allowed MSN and skype to work.
Great. Re-registering them made them crash again, not so great.

I also made sure that my USB 3.0 drivers and firmware are correct.
Drivers are 2.0.4.0 and Firmware is 3025, which I suppose are the newest ones.

Next, the programs are not recognizing my intensity shuttle now.
The blackmagic control panel is completely greyed out, and Media Express 2.2 is saying that the hardware cannot be found in my system.

Just to provide more info

7. A firmware update dialog will appear, go ahead and update
This did not happen to me when I connected my intensity shuttle

[mufunyo]

Next, the programs are not recognizing my intensity shuttle now.
The blackmagic control panel is completely greyed out, and Media Express 2.2 is saying that the hardware cannot be found in my system.

This is exactly what I said. The DirectShow filter will crash if it cannot find the hardware, which can be due to either the device physically not being connected, or there being a driver problem. In your case it seems it's the latter. I got the same results on one of the PCs I tried to get my Shuttle working on at the gaming meet-up in France-- Windows says the driver is functioning correctly, but neither Media Express nor the BM control panel can see the device.

[Signal]

If it helps I'm trying to duplicate this.

Without the Shuttle plugged in VirtualDub Capture or inserting the capture driver in graphedit will throw an exception.
Plug in the Shuttle and the BM Control Panel and those apps are fine.
Either with a cold boot and the shuttle not plugged in or unplugged after a boot

Maybe those two apps are playing "nice" by capturing the exception instead of killing everything.

I take it other "normal" usb video capture devices give a more meaningful response if it isn't plugged in and trying to be used. I don't have one to try.
Got another app for me to try aside from MSN and Skype?

[nut123456789]

Yes, one thing to try may be Media player classic with external filters loaded with the decklink dlls.

[nut123456789]

After looking through the manual and stuff, I find that it should be that my blackmagic shuttle didn't go through a firmware update, "possibly" leading to the other things not being able to detect it. Is there any way to do a manual firmware update?

[Danny Hays]

I had the same problems with 7.8.1 crashing, bluscreen memory dump thing. It made me do a firmware update installing it. I was successfull going back to 7.7.1 by unpluging the shuttle, uninstalling Desktop video, and Media Express 2.2. I was running Windows 7 32 bit so I made sure there were no folders left for Blackmagic in my Program files folder, X86 Program files if your running 64 bit. I made sure my Renasas USB drivers were still right for the Shuttle, and re-installing the previous drivers I was using 7.7.1 Descktop video and Media Express 2.1 and It works the same as before. Still no 1080p capture. It did make me do a firmware update going back in order for it to work. I didn't at first and Media express control panel didn't see the Shuttle. I was able to reboot, plug in the shuttle and it said I needed to upgrade the firmware. This time I did and it works the same as before. What ever you do, don't stop a firmware upgrade during the process. You'll brick the device,,, no worky no more. I did it with a Digidesign Mbox. Poured a little beer in it before I threw it away. Made me feel a little better.

[nut123456789]

So you suggest me going ahead and reinstalling 7.7.1 to try to flash the firmware and then going to 7.8.1?

=> Tried it, didn't work. Still no firmware update after plugging the device in.

Problem seems to be that the device isn't going through this firmware update step, for some odd reason. It actually did come out in 7.7.1, but not in 7.8.1.

[mufunyo]

.

Poured a little beer in it before I threw it away. Made me feel a little better.

.

[Danny Hays]

No, I'm saying I'm staying with 7.7.1, M.E. 2.1 until I hear more positive results with 7.8.1.

[Signal]

The firmware update is a one time event and have never see it downgrade or redo when going back/forward a driver rev. once it does complete.

Alright - I dug around and found the firmware updater and it leaves me with more questions.

Run msconfig and go to the Startup tab.

One of the items on my system is "Blackmagic Firmware Updater" and it runs:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Blackmagic Design\Blackmagic Desktop Video\CheckVersionPCI.exe

Now I found this post on the CreativeCow BM Forum here (from Joshua 3rd and 5th post down).
Note: Granted these posts are not directly talking about the Shuttle however the BM drivers do share the same architecture/layout to give us a clue.

I suspect is happening is that the firmware update is not happening prooperly or is more likely being stopped by UAC. There are a couple of ways to fix this.

You might want to check to see if the CheckVersionPCI.exe process is running in the process viewer to confirm. If it is, kill it then do one of the following.

One is that you can disable UAC on the computer which will allow the CheckVersionPCI.exe application to run.

Or you can go to the C:\Program Files(x86)\Blackmagic Design\Blackmagic Decklink\ folder and find the CheckVersionPCI.exe file and modify it so that it runs as an administrator (right click and select properties). You can also find this by running the MSConfig utility and clicking on Startup tab. There will be a listing for Blackmagic Firmware updater which will show you the path as well.

Then try to reboot and see if that helps.

and

Okay, so this is not a solution, just something to check something to get more information.

So when you boot up the computer and you notice it won't capture. Can you go to the Blackmagic Control panel. If the options are grey (I'm assuming) you will not be able to capture. When they are bright, you will.

What (does) this means? Well, on bootup, if the CheckVersionPCI.exe detects that the firmware is wrong it will put the BMD board into a "limited" functionality mode. Which is to say it is powered on enough to take a firmware update. So I am guessing for some reason it is booting up and the CheckVersionPCI.exe and doesn't complete it's process properly and so leaves the board in "limited" mode. Upon the next reboot it believes it's functioning right and releases the board for use.

What I don't know is why. Typical reason is that something is stopping the CheckVersionPCI.exe from doing it's job.

Some other thoughts. Temporarily disable AntiVirus programs that may be stopping this from running. If you are not in the ADMIN profile please try it in the admin profile or make sure the profile you are using is set to admin. Or uninstall the drivers and reinstall them and make sure they are set to install for ALL USERS.

So IF I'm reading that right.. CheckVersionPCI.exe should run with Admin privileges, at boot, and shouldn't hang around as a process.
Taking a look at Task Manager I do see it running (even though I did go through the upgrade process).

I killed the CheckVersionPCI.exe process and ran it with Administrator Privileges and it still hangs around.

If it did actually update the firmware it seems the only reason to keep that process running after boot would be if you plugged in another Shuttle that wasn't updated.
As a test you can uncheck the option in msconfig to not run at startup and reboot.
I tried it and my shuttle is available for use.

It doesn't solve the exceptions being thrown when the Shuttle is unplugged and trying to be used by other apps but it may keep the random "now you see it, now you don't" from happening.

It seems pretty crazy for troubleshooting to not see what rev the firmware is at and have blind faith in a installer that could fail.

One last note - I've always run the installer with admin privileges if that helps.

[mufunyo]

I've just received my Sony MHS-CM5, and hooked it up to my Intensity Shuttle through HDMI. The video drop-outs I mentioned before are constant and highly annoying. To show what I'm talking about, I pointed the camera at my screen (yay Droste effect) and recorded a short clip. The camera and Intensity Shuttle were both set at 720p59.94.



Additionally, I cannot get 1080i picture from the camera. When set to "1080p30" mode, the camera sets the HDMI output to 1080i59.94 (so technically 1080PsF29.97). I cannot get any picture, whether I select 1080p29.97, 1080i59.94, 1080p30, or 1080i60 in Media Express. My LCD TV displays the picture fine and claims it is 1080i59.94.

[Danny Hays]

I have only got 1080i 59.94via component. No 1080i or p from hdmi. Only 720p via hdmi and I had audio sync issues with the 720p. People have gotton 720p via hdmi working though. YouTube the intensity and check some out, all from xbox though. The main reason I got the shuttle is to capture straight from the imager of my hdv camera via component at 1080i. At least that works. I also capturing as mjpeg and have never dropped crams like you. What are you capturing as?

[mufunyo]

I also capturing as mjpeg and have never dropped crams like you. What are you capturing as?

It doesn't matter what I capture to, the drop-outs also happen during preview regardless of settings. Just to check I just ran a short test capture in MJPEG and had the same problem.

[Danny Hays]

Is the image stable connected straight to an HDTV? Do you have any other HDMI sources you can test with? Have you tried the disc test app that comes with the software to check your drive I/O? anything HD other than MJPEG takes a raid 0 array to capture. Are you capturing to your system drive (C)? try a different 7200 rpm drive as MJPEG. What are your computer specs. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, 920 i7, 6 gig ram, Asus P6x58D-premium motherboard. I know your source has to be the same rez and framerate unless your upconverting from ntsc in order for it to work, which actually works suprizingly well. Capturing HD HDMI is probably the biggest problem I've seen on several forums except for people not having the correct chipset MB and or firmware update. I have captured from a SD DVD player via HDMI as SD and upconvert to 1080i and it worked fine. But as soon as I try 720 or 1080, there is a problem of some sort.
CreativeCow has a Blackmagic forum that may have some helpfull answers on HDMI HD capturing. I think the product was released before they got it working correctly. I recently tried the 7.8.1 drivers on a Windows 7 32 bit machine and it would bluescreen anytime I opened the Media Express capture tab. I had to revert back to 7.7.1. Haven't tried them on my 64 bit machine at home. Posts have said there were no changes in it's ability to capture HD via HDMI anyway. It's my first Blackmagic purchace and I'm dissapointed it doesn't do what Blackmagic states it will. At least not yet. Come on BM!!

[mufunyo]

Is the image stable connected straight to an HDTV?

Yes.

Do you have any other HDMI sources you can test with?

No. Only a PS3 that has HDCP. Other things I can test with are a Wii (component 480p) and various composite/s-video devices.

Have you tried the disc test app that comes with the software to check your drive I/O? anything HD other than MJPEG takes a raid 0 array to capture. Are you capturing to your system drive (C)? try a different 7200 rpm drive as MJPEG.

I have an SSD RAID-0 array which is fast enough (500MB/s read, 140MB/s write). I also have a 15.000rpm SCSI disk. The problems I'm encountering are not related to disk I/O though, they occur in live preview as well. Last time I'm going to repeat that.

What are your computer specs. I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate, 920 i7, 6 gig ram, Asus P6x58D-premium motherboard.

Hover over the little PC icon to the left of my post. I have an 8-core Xeon workstation that is roughly twice as fast as your i7 system and has 16GB RAM. My system bus is 51.2GB/s and I have 45GB/s worth of PCI Express lanes. If my system is supposedly not fast enough then BM can stick it somewhere.

I think the product was released before they got it working correctly.

Fully agreed.

It's my first Blackmagic purchace and I'm dissapointed it doesn't do what Blackmagic states it will. At least not yet. Come on BM!!

I initially felt confident buying from a pro video company like Blackmagic, but I have since realised that what they are selling is a banana product; it still needs to ripen after being purchased.

It's also eerily quiet aside from user reports pouring in here. Kristian, are you still with us?

[Danny Hays]

Does your motherboard have an X58 or P55 chiipset? Does your camera have a component out with adapter cable like mine does? Do you have a cablebox with component and or HDMI you can try? Anything to show us weather it's the camera or the computer, since others are getting 720P to work. Blackmagics Motion JPEG bandwidth is 19 mbps where DV and HDV is 25 if I remember correctly. It's got to be a hardware conflict I think. Have you captured any video from any input without dropping frames?

[Danny Hays]

Post your questions here as well. Also there are some youtube videos on how to capture HD from XBOX, ect, that mey help you.

http://forums.creativecow.net/blackmagicdesigndecklink

[mufunyo]

--whoops, double post--

[mufunyo]

Does your motherboard have an X58 or P55 chiipset?

I have what is the equivalent of two X58 chips on-board. To clarify, the X58 chipset is codenamed Tylersburg and the 5520 chipset is codenamed Tylersburg-36D.

Does your camera have a component out with adapter cable like mine does?

It does, but the adapter is sold separately. The shipped adapter is composite only.

Anything to show us weather it's the camera or the computer

I have the same problem with Wii component 480p - but the drop-outs are less frequent than at 720p.

Have you captured any video from any input without dropping frames?

Only by coincidence; at 480i the drop-outs are so infrequent that a capture may or may not include one or more drop-outs.

Post your questions here as well. Also there are some youtube videos on how to capture HD from XBOX, ect, that mey help you.

http://forums.creativecow.net/blackmagicdesigndecklink

I submitted a support request to Blackmagic directly, because Blackmagic staff have not been replying to this thread recently and this issue is pretty much a show-stopper for me.

EDIT: Found a user with a similar problem with their Intensity Pro.



And another one:



I can't find any solutions, just people saying it's a bus/bandwidth issue. Which in my case makes no sense as everything else runs blazingly fast and this is pretty much a top of the line rig spec-wise. The USB3 card I'm using is even recommended by Blackmagic themselves!

[Signal]

Wow.. haven't seen drop outs like that yet.

If you want to quaff the neh sayers about possible latency issues on the system try the DPC Latency Checker Tool.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

For an alternat HDMI source you could try what I did and use the second output of your vid card (or from another computer) using a DVI -> HDMI adapter.

So far I can not capture HDMI in at 1080p except at 24fps.
I don't doubt I can't capture 23.98 because I can't get the vid card to get the exact timing however 25 and 30 shouldn't have been a problem.

With 1080p 25/29.97/30 missing from the cap driver itself I'm still betting those aren't possible even from Media Express.

I'm still waiting for some other equipment to show up to try those out again.

[mufunyo]

Wow.. haven't seen drop outs like that yet.

If you want to quaff the neh sayers about possible latency issues on the system try the DPC Latency Checker Tool.
http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

Ah!.. Yes, I know the DPC Latency checker. Helped me loads in the past with misbehaving onboard NIC and onboard sound drivers.

So, to clear that out of the way:


To illustrate, when I say "everything else is blazingly fast", I have a 1080p60 h.264 test video with LOTS of motion vectors that clocks in at 186Mbit/s just for the video stream, which requires 8 decoding threads to playback, which I can decode in realtime (provided that I have absolutely nothing running in the background that eats CPU).

And I apologise if it sounds like I'm bragging, but I'm trying to stress that I am far above the recommended system requirements for Intensity products and IT SHOULD JUST WORK on a system like this. This feels a bit akin to pulling up to a garage in a Ferrari with engine troubles, and the mechanic saying "I see what the problem is, you need a faster car".

EDIT: Got a mail back from Blackmagic support. Seems they don't know that Intel 5520 and Intel X58 amount to the same product as I'm recommended to try it on an X58 system. See car analogy above.

[Signal]

Level 1 support is always fun.
Not sure how your going to get past the "that chipset isn't on our list" mentality when it is the server/xeon version of the X58 architecture.
Wonder if anybody has gotten the shuttle to work on a recent MacPro in Win7 + USB 3.0 PCIe adapter - could swear those models with dual sockets share the same chipset but can't confirm it.

The other tact is tracking down the similar issue you found with someone using a Intensity Pro?

BTW - in your first video in post #138 did you speed up the video? Something in the conversion process?
Noticed the speed of the animated red arrow between 00:00 and 00:03 compared to the rest.

In my quest to confirm HDMI capturing capabilities I tried a late 2008 macbook5,1 with a mini-display port to HDMI adapter and switchresx to manually generate the timing.

Edit: I updated and moved the list to my other post to avoid confusion:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/323104-Intensity-Shuttle-Problem?p=2013745&viewfull=1#post2013745

So media express was able to capture the 1080p @ 25 and 30 while it is missing from the capture driver :/

480p capture - setting Media Express to NTSC or NTSC 23.976 does accept HDMI 480p input however @ 720x486 and produces interlaced captures.

[mufunyo]

Level 1 support is always fun.
Not sure how your going to get past the "that chipset isn't on our list" mentality when it is the server/xeon version of the X58 architecture.
Wonder if anybody has gotten the shuttle to work on a recent MacPro in Win7 + USB 3.0 PCIe adapter - could swear those models with dual sockets share the same chipset but can't confirm it.

Yeah, the 2009 Nehalem Mac Pros use the same chipset. I sent Blackmagic a link to Intel's product comparison sheet.

The other tact is tracking down the similar issue you found with someone using a Intensity Pro?

I left a comment on the second of those two YouTube vids.

BTW - in your first video in post #138 did you speed up the video? Something in the conversion process?
Noticed the speed of the animated red arrow between 00:00 and 00:03 compared to the rest.

Yeah, I noticed that after uploading - they're dropped frames, only Media Express uses a dropped frame timecode instead of standard AVI DROP frames, so regular AVI editors/players don't pick them up as dropped frames and you get the weird speed up effect. In hindsight I probably should've captured that to SSD instead of HDD. It really doesn't matter though, the effect is the same whatever I do, and the drop-outs are pretty much random.

480p capture - setting Media Express to NTSC or NTSC 23.976 does accept HDMI 480p input however @ 720x486 and produces interlaced captures.

I can confirm this.