Blackmagic Intensity Extreme difficulties. Please Help.

I am having a lot of problems with my brand new Blackmagic Intensity Extreme. I cannot get any image to display currently. I have gotten it to work for my Xbox twice, but both times when I came back to it, the video would not start. I was able to get it the first time by fiddling around with my Mac's Blackmagic System Preferences. The second time I got I was fiddling with the preferences in general and just got it to work. Both times I got it to work, I then stopped the program and switched to trying record my Apple TV. When I failed to get that to work, I switched back to the Xbox inputs and found that they no longer worked.


Obviously, I am frustrated. I have spent hours going through YouTube videos and forums to try to figure out why this is causing me such difficulty. I feel like I know most of the hang ups, I am making sure my Xbox is on 720 p, I made sure the Thunderbolt cable is in properly, all the cables are correct, and my project video format is 720p 59.94.

In my system preferences, my output is HDMI & Comp, my set input is HDMI video & HDMI audio, my video setup is at 7.5, my default video standard is HD 720p 59.94 (though I am using Blackmagic Media Express). My select output/input processing are both off.


I am about an hour or two away from driving back and returning this product. Please help me.

your settings sound okay.

in media express preferences... do you have "continue playback when in backround" checked or unchecked? if it's unchecked, turn it on.

also, before opening the system preferences panel and/or media express, make sure your intensity is connected to your computer. also leave other capture capable application that you may have set up closed before opening media express. unless you want to use a specific software for capture, e.g. final cut pro 7.

Byron,

I have the same problem.

The only way I've been able to get my Extreme to work again, is to reboot my Mac. Then it will work flawlessly with Media Express, until I close everything down after an Xbox360 capture session, leave it a few days, and try again, when everything seems to be locked up, and I have to reboot my Mac again.

Unplugging and replugging the Intensity Extreme didn't seem to help, neither restarting Media Express (which is a horrible horrible program to be honest).

- bec

Byron,

... Media Express (which is a horrible horrible program to be honest).

why is that?

This is offtopic, but where do you want me to start, Bendermac?

With regards to Media Express:

* I cannot use AppleScript or Automator to automate capturing of media. I capture XBox360 gaming footage using the Intensity Extreme. My gaming sessions can go for 5 hours or more. If I don't manually stop/start capture in ME, I'll have a 300Gb file to process.

* I can use the menu structure to start a recording, but I cannot use the same menu to stop the recording (it's greyed out!).

* There are no compressed video output formats available - I can only capture and save in Apple ProRes422 or uncompressed. No biggie for me, as I have a 4TB thunderbolt array.

* There are no in-built mechanisms to stop/start capturing either, neither time-based, or filesize-based

* ME streams the output of the Intensity Extreme to hard disk. But I need a tape drive attached to use in/out and subclipping functions. With an Intensity Extreme attached, no in/outs, no logging/subclipping of the footage I've just captured.

As a result, I'm forced to connect my laptop to my iMac using an ethernet cable, open a remote desktop session, and press stop/start at the end of each gaming session, and use other programs to review the footage, and select in/out points and export subclips (MPEG Streamclip) for editing in FCPX.

I'd like to do all the subclipping in ME. At the moment, to me, with an Intensity Extreme, ME is nothing but a glorified capture program, with lots of functions greyed out and unusable.

I will concur that Media Express seems a bit clunky to me. I only used it for testing, but I have no desire to go back and use it ever again, even if its feature set may be well-suited to some of our projects.