Blackmagic Forum

Any information or help on why the Decklink Extreme 9pin deck control port won't work over a moderate cable run?
Like many post houses we have our VTRs centrally located and not next to the CPU so the 9 pin cables are routed via a patch panel to the VTRs. With all the other NLE systems we have including FCP legacy Avid and others that's always worked fine. But on our Z800 (and later tested with a new decklink card and a Z400) the decklink 9 pin port refuses to control or see decks not connected locally.
I suspect the voltages being used maynot be to spec or it's not using a differential send recieve signal.

Is this a known limitation? can it be fixed?

The computer type itself should not matter as the RS422 port is on the breakout cable of the card. So it should be governed by the card and the driver not the computer.

Are you suggesting that the same decklink card works in a different system?

Does your patch panel handle the crossover for the RS422 cable? I think if you patch two RS422 cables together they will both crossover and uncross themselves. On our routers it is handled for you, so all you need are two patch cables, one to the card and one to the deck. But you mentioned a patch panel. I'm wondering if you are ending with a straight though connection which would effectively connect the Tx to Tx and Rx to Rx.

No tried all those options Joshua.
Basically on my Z800 Media Composer can see 2 ports to control decks by. One is the onboard RS232 port converted to RS422 via an external box as supplied by Avid and the port offered by the Decklink card. The port on the decklink card will only control a deck if it's very local to the computer and has a short cable run. Extend that cable by 10 metres or more and control stops. However via the Z800 onboard port and external adapter it will work fine over very long runs.
This is in a post house with dozens of FCP and Avid systems running PC's and Macs and the remote routing setup has been working fne for well over a decade.
The first decklink card to show this issue was just assumed to be playing up but when a second decklink card was purchased on a seperaste machien and behaved the same it indicated an issue.
The big killer is Da Vinci can only control a deck via the decklink remote card and ignores the Z800 onboard port so effectively Da Vinci is crippled by the lack of distance the decklink cards RS422 port can work over. Sympony or Media Composer on the same machien using the same remote cabling but suing the Z800 onboard port works fine.
This is an issue with the decklink card and when I get a chance I'll drop a scope on the output signals to find what's going on...

Is it possible to get a pinout of the 9pin port on the decklink card?
Our tests have now shown that a locally connected DV deck works with 9pin but a locally connected Digibeta deck wont; work. So this isn't a cabling issue.

Here's the entire pinout for the Decklink HD Extreme 3 (series including 3D and 3D+)

Thanks Joshua
Really helpful. I can get my scope and and see what's what.

Hi Pat,

What is the model of the Digibeta that you have, It is Sony DVW-A500P? I encountered the same problem in which other VTR deck works properly the remote but only in this model of VTR the remote didn't work.

alhann126878 wrote:Hi Pat,

What is the model of the Digibeta that you have, It is Sony DVW-A500P? I encountered the same problem in which other VTR deck works properly the remote but only in this model of VTR the remote didn't work.

Yes I have a Sony DVW-500AP and the Thompon equivalent as well as an M2000 HDCAM deck.

It didn't work with either Digibeta haven't tried the HDCAM deck.
But for me I also have a DSR1500 and that worked locally but not when hooked up in my machine room via 20M remote run.