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Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2014 11:09 pm
by jdiesel
Hey,

Recently hooked up my Decklink 4K Extreme to my Mac Pro and have it hooked up to my PC via HDMI (and out to an external 32'' Samsung monitor) for game capture and am currently unable to get any results coming into Media Express. I've tried a variety of setting changes and nothing seems to do the trick. There is some communication as when I click "playback" in Media Express, my connected monitor acts accordingly and displays the black screen but there seems to be a missed connection on the way in. It was working with the display before but whenever I would attempt a capture it would crash, I updated all my drivers and upgraded my Mac to Mavericks 10.9.3 and everything seemed to be in order but I am still without any results. I've also tried capturing in Premiere and am getting the same "Black screen" issue.

Basically I have my mac connected to my PC via HDMI and then a separate HDMI out from my mac and into my TV. Really bizarre stuff...

Can anyone help me?

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2014 11:12 pm
by Tony Rivera
There have been some reports about 10.9.3 being problematic for people. You may want to roll back to 10.9.2 and see if that is a problem still.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2014 11:36 pm
by jdiesel
Hey Tony,

Thanks for the quick reply. I will definitely try that. I actually had 10.9.2 and I was getting the same issue so I decided to upgrade right after installing Mavericks but that was prior to doing a thorough look through of my capture settings. I honestly have very little idea on what is going on but it's starting to make more sense to me. What are the possibilities of it being a Blackmagic Media Express driver issue? I read on a different thread that it would be beneficial to try and downgrade from 10.1 to somewhere in the 9's but after installing 9.9.3 I seemed to lose almost all my options in the settings pane... One more thing, what is the possibility of it being an HDCP issue?

Thanks for any and all feedback.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2014 11:40 pm
by Tony Rivera
Sorry I didn't mention that before but the easiest thing to try would be rolling back to an older version of Desktop Video and seeing if that resolves it. The 10.9.3 just stuck out to me which is why I mentioned that before.

HDCP could also be an issue. You would have to check the settings on your video card to see if it possible to avoid that though as all our products are compliant with that.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 7:28 am
by Sam Jones
if its a HDCP issue, a cheap converter on Amazon may sort that out for you. can i ask what the Spec is of your Mac as well and what format you are trying to record?

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 8:10 am
by Elvis
I have succeeded to connect the tv decoder and my dvd recorder but only in composite video (Y in) and in hdmi it doesn't work.

I can see and record everything in the composite entrance and it works very fine even in Windows 7 32 bit. But I don't care for the Windows 7 as I have bought the card so that i can only use Windows 8.

I use Windows 7 only to capture TV with my avid box but the box doesn't have any hdmi entrance.

With the composite video I am even able to capture a protected movie in my tv decoder but that I was already able with my avid box.

I just want to capture movie or other tv stuff.

I have not buy the card to be able to capture protected movie.

I understand that it's possible that I can't capture protected movie and it's fine for me but if I connect the BM card to my recorder I should be able to see the dvd logo and image if there is no dvd in the player. In composite mode I see the DVD image and logo and also the dvd himself.

I am just making test now with the tv decoder and the dvd recorder.

I have just making a test with a protected movie in composite and it works even for protected movie but I was already able to make that with my avid box.

Personnally I have saw the card fonctionning with the same TV decoder in hdmi and it was great but the guy who had the card don't have any protected movie in his decoder. So I can't say now if it works with protected movie but I don't care for that point.

So for me I don't think that it's a problem of protection

I begin to thing that there is a technical problem with the hdmi entrance. I have also to say that I have chose the good way in and not the way out.

Thank you

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 8:39 am
by Adam Simmons
Well you still haven't said what the output through the HDMI is. Most modern players will upsample, so you need to find out what the player is actually outputting through the HDMI before going any further.

Maybe if you gave the model of the DVD player and the model of the TV decoder it might also help

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 9:02 am
by Elvis
The TV decoder is the Belgacom decoder V5. It's in fact a Cisco V5

The dvd recorder is the Panasonic DMR-EH63

The recorder support 720p (750p), 1080i (1125i), 1080p (1125p).

I have tried all the different possibilities of settings. with composite video no problems.

I doesn't work with any settings in hdmi.

If I put the settings for the composite that is working, if I only change to hdmi, I don't have any image.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 9:04 am
by jdiesel
Sam Jones wrote:if its a HDCP issue, a cheap converter on Amazon may sort that out for you. can i ask what the Spec is of your Mac as well and what format you are trying to record?


Hey Sam,

I have a Mac Pro OSX Mavericks version 10.9.3, 2x 3Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon with 16GB of memory and an 800 MHz DDR2 FB-DIMM.

I'm trying to capture ProRes422 in 1080p/59.94 fps. I have tried to adjust the capture settings many times, nothing seems to work. Ideally I'd like to capture around 60fps. I recently spoke with some collegues that have a similar set up and they referred me to switch to 59.94fps in 422 and they also said to try DPX 10 bit but to no avail. It honestly feels like I've tried everything. I don't know what I'm doing wrong here...

Like a previous poster mentioned, it would be worth it to downgrade to OSX 10.9.2, I had 10.9.2 prior to upgrading to 10.9.3 and it made no difference...

Has anyone else dealt with this type of issue before? The TV definitely has some connection to my Mac because when I switch over to playback in Media Express it recognizes that it wants to play back a clip but of course there is no clip to play back because it is completely black.

Thanks to all that have posted, will continue to search for a solution.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 1:15 pm
by Elvis
I have downgraded to the 9.9.6 version and it's the same.

No hdmi and always ok for video composite.

I have tested the hdmi video out of the card and it's ok it's working

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 3:43 pm
by Adam Simmons
Well although it doesn't say it specifically it does imply that the DVD recorder requires HDCP to work, which would imply that it outputs a protected signal.
I also suspect the TV decoder also uses HDCP.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri May 30, 2014 6:25 pm
by jdiesel
Elvis wrote:I have succeeded to connect the tv decoder and my dvd recorder but only in composite video (Y in) and in hdmi it doesn't work.

I can see and record everything in the composite entrance and it works very fine even in Windows 7 32 bit. But I don't care for the Windows 7 as I have bought the card so that i can only use Windows 8.

I use Windows 7 only to capture TV with my avid box but the box doesn't have any hdmi entrance.

With the composite video I am even able to capture a protected movie in my tv decoder but that I was already able with my avid box.

I just want to capture movie or other tv stuff.

I have not buy the card to be able to capture protected movie.

I understand that it's possible that I can't capture protected movie and it's fine for me but if I connect the BM card to my recorder I should be able to see the dvd logo and image if there is no dvd in the player. In composite mode I see the DVD image and logo and also the dvd himself.

I am just making test now with the tv decoder and the dvd recorder.

I have just making a test with a protected movie in composite and it works even for protected movie but I was already able to make that with my avid box.

Personnally I have saw the card fonctionning with the same TV decoder in hdmi and it was great but the guy who had the card don't have any protected movie in his decoder. So I can't say now if it works with protected movie but I don't care for that point.

So for me I don't think that it's a problem of protection

I begin to thing that there is a technical problem with the hdmi entrance. I have also to say that I have chose the good way in and not the way out.

Thank you


Hey Bud, no disrespect but you're kind of stealing my thread here... You mind starting your own so I can focus on my issue?

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Sat May 31, 2014 12:18 am
by jdiesel
UPDATE: I tried going straight from an Xbox360 into my capture computer and was able to notice audio levels in Media Express but still no video to display. Still working on a solution. Will update if anything changes.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 5:25 pm
by jdiesel
ANYONE?!?!!?

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 8:35 pm
by Adam Simmons
I can't remember for certain, but I thought the 360 used HDCP through HDMI. If not then you need to check what you have the output of the 360 set to and then match that in the BM control panel and inside Media Express

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Fri Jun 13, 2014 4:38 pm
by jdiesel
This issue has been resolved.

A colleague of mine worked tirelessly to target the issue, including installing a brand new card and testing the issue over and over. At the end of the day what he ended up doing was completely wiping everything off my Mac Pro and starting fresh and running older drivers for media express. Such a weird issue but it's working now and so far no problems.

Re: Black screen issue in Media Express

PostPosted: Tue Jan 07, 2020 8:01 pm
by TheDory97
Hello. I installed the latest Video Desktop on the site and connected ATEM Television Studio with a USB 2.0 cable, as before. The problem is that this latest version (11.4.1) has problems with windows 10 (although I installed the version of windows 10) in the sense that I did not receive video and audio preview in Media Express, although it could record the video and it can be viewed perfectly when it open with VLC or any video program. The solution came from the site BlackMagic where he writes that for Windows 10, the version without problems is 10.9.5. So I uninstalled the first version (the last one on the site) and installed the older version (10.9.5) and at this moment Media Express works correctly with ATEM Television Studio connected via USB 2.0 to the laptop.
Sorry for the wrong English, but I used Google Translate, because I don't know English well.