Setup Guidance and Troubleshooting

Hi all,

First time poster here. I have spent fruitless hours trawling the forums to try and help me. Whilst I can find any number of solutions that are close to my problem I cannot find one that actually fixes it.

My setup is a Thunderbolt Intensity Shuttle hooked up to an iMac. The video source is coming form a Canon Vixia HF M500 through HDMI. I can get a video signal and am able to capture but I am getting an awful lot of dropped frames so I have to turn off the 'stop capture on dropped frames'. I'd rather troubleshoot to get a consistent signal without frames being dropped but I don't really know where to start...

Any advice greatly received.

If you are dropping frames, then your hard drive can't keep up with the amount of video you are capturing. This is common when trying to capture to the internal hard drive of your computer. The hard drive isn't fast enough to write each frame of video to the disk and also read/write from the operating system files at the same time. You will need to get an external thunderbolt hard drive, preferably solid state (SSD). Also, make sure in the Media Express preferences that you are not trying to record in the "Uncompressed" codec.

You can also try running the included "Disk Speed Test" app that came with the Intensity to show you which video formats your hard drive(s) are fast enough to capture.

Thanks for the guidance. I ran the Disk Speed utility and it could only recommend PAL or NTSC to the internal hard drive (around 50mb/s). I plugged in a USB 3.0 external drive and was getting 100MB/s but it still only recommended PAL or NTSC. What sort of data transfer rate do I need for 1080i HD 60fps? A new external Thunderbolt is pricey and I want to ensure it will do what I want...

Thanks

Really - you probably just should not be capturing uncompressed. Do you realize how large the captures will be?

Select a different capture format in Media Express (on Windows the only other choice is Motion JPEG) - or use a different capture software.

The bit rate for uncompressed 10 bit 1080i60 is around 160MB/s (megabytes per second).

In the Media Express setup I don't get too much choice for capture format:

Quicktime Uncompressed 8-bit YUV
Quicktime Uncompressed 10-bit YUV
DPX 10-Bit RGB

If there is a setting elsewhere for me to change then I cannot find it!

I am running Media Express 3.3.1 on OS X 10.9.5

I'm not a Mac user - so I can't help further with that. There are other tools that can capture on a Mac (instead of Media Express) and those can use different codecs with higher compression. I just don't know what those are. Hopefully a Mac user can chime in here.

In the Media Express setup I don't get too much choice for capture format:

Quicktime Uncompressed 8-bit YUV
Quicktime Uncompressed 10-bit YUV
DPX 10-Bit RGB

If there is a setting elsewhere for me to change then I cannot find it!

I am running Media Express 3.3.1 on OS X 10.9.5

Andrew,
Maybe you should install the Prores codecs. I'm not allowed to post URLs, but if you search the web for

"Install the Apple ProRES codec without Final Cut or ProApps", you'll find how to do.

Hope it helps,

Marcel

How are you able to even get your Canon Vixia HF M500 to recognize Andrew? I have the Canon Vixia HF M50 and can not get the HDMI settings to adjust to something supported by my Shuttle USB. I found the recording settings in the camera but those did not adjust the HDMI output.

The M500 only outputs in 1080i 60, the R50 outputs in 1080p 60 which is only supported by the Decklink Studio 4k and higher and the Ultrastudio 4k.

How are you able to even get your Canon Vixia HF M500 to recognize Andrew? I have the Canon Vixia HF M50 and can not get the HDMI settings to adjust to something supported by my Shuttle USB. I found the recording settings in the camera but those did not adjust the HDMI output.

My Shuttle is the Thunderbolt version. If that makes a difference?

For my Vixia HF M500 to work through HDMI I have to have the Apple System Preferences for Blackmagic Design set as HD 1080i 59.94, and the Media Express settings the same. At HD 1080i 60 the signal does not come through. That being said I get lots of dropped frames so I am going to try to use the additional codecs recommended earlier in this post.

Because we are only using this for web streaming using WireCast Pro I have used an alternate setup utilising good old analogue. I have an analogue output from the Vixia going in to the composite video on the shuttle along with the RCA for audio. I tested a stream yesterday and it was sufficient for our purposes.