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michaelgeorge  
#1 Posted : Thursday, September 13, 2012 11:23:24 PM(UTC)
michaelgeorge

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I have a Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle connected directly and solely to a USB 3.0 port on my laptop which is a Toshiba L750 running i7-2670QM processor, Nvidia Geforce 525M 2 GIG Graphics, Win 7 pro 64 bit OS, 8 gig ram and all drivers for Shuttle & USB 3.0 up to date. I am running SD vMix so all inputs are 720 x 576

The shuttle chugs along nicely with whatever I have connected to it but every now and then it drops a black frame or two in to the capture feed. Sometimes it will run smoothly for a minute or two and then drop in a few black frames. Other times it will keep dropping in black frames quite regularly, perhaps one or two every 5 - 10 seconds.

does anyone have any ideas on what is causing this and how I might fix it? Unless I can solve this, my Shuttle is only good for use as a paperweight.

Thanks
admin  
#2 Posted : Friday, September 14, 2012 4:29:37 AM(UTC)
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Hi Michael,

My suggestion would be to look for the latest USB 3.0 drivers for your laptop as well as the intensity shuttle and see if that helps.

Regards,

Martin
vMix
h2video.nl  
#3 Posted : Friday, September 14, 2012 1:39:26 PM(UTC)
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Hi Michael,

I sometimes have the same problem. Also notice my other post about sound synchronisation. I have a feeling this problem is similar to the flickering / black frames thing.

I also use BM shuttle in combination with a laptop / USB3 port.

This is what I would recommend:

1. check the type of USB3 chip in your computer, preferably renesas / NEC. Be shure to use the latest drive (look into the manual of the MB shuttle for the website) (check the devices and then the type and make and driver version)

2. startup the computer and only after that connect the shuttle (so don't start it with the shuttle connected). Preferably use the same USB3 port (if you have 2), the one that gives a good result.

3. be shure to have all inputs on matching framerates: so the cam, shuttle settings and input settings should match. (f.i. I had my cam on 1080p but progressive had this result. 1080i on the cam gave good results - with matching capture settings)

4. And last but not least (this is a point of attention for Martin): I notice that when I set up a project and everything works OK with reloading the profile and reusing it, it sometimes results in this behaviour. Closing the computer (my laptop) starting up, reconnecting the shuttle and then opening Vmix and restarting the profile might prevent this flickering. But sometimes it doesn't work.

The only thing then is start a new project and make fresh capture connections.

There is something in the way of producing reliable, consistent results.

Let us know if this works for you!

Cheers Stefan
h2video.nl  
#4 Posted : Sunday, September 16, 2012 4:11:27 AM(UTC)
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In addition to my previous post I did some testing. It seems like there is a difference when using HDMI input (with black frames) and component input (less blacks). With component it seems there are less black-frames / flickering. But sound is seems to be a bit more tricky to keep synchronised.

In conclusion: i did a lot of testing with different settings (VMR on/off, de-interlacing on/off, hdmi and component resolutions) and with different sound settings (sample rates, input settings etc).

My conclusion is that there is something in VMIX that results in the flickering behaviour.

More importantly: if you start up a preset, do disconnect the capture device and reconnect it again. This prevents some problems.

Martin: can you reproduce the problem and do you have any idea?

Stefan
admin  
#5 Posted : Sunday, September 16, 2012 6:18:59 AM(UTC)
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Black flickering is a well known issue with the Intensity Shuttle so it is not caused by something in vMix itself.
A quick search for "Intensity shuttle flickering" shows a lot of people experiencing similar issues within many different programs.

Some solutions have been provided in the thread below:

http://forum.videohelp.c...67-Pro-Flickering-SOLVED

In my testing everything runs well on Intel based USB 3.0 but these are relatively recent and only the very latest motherboards and laptops include them.

Regards,

Martin
vMix
h2video.nl  
#6 Posted : Monday, September 17, 2012 4:54:44 AM(UTC)
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Hi Martin and Michael,

It seems I have solved the flickering with my BM USB3 shuttle device capture input.

I did the following:

1. uninstalled all BM shuttle drivers;
2. installed them again on USB3 port 1 (I have two sharing a hub)
3. disabled the BM WDM streaming driver, bluetooth and the high performance graphics card (using the INTEL on board graphicscard) - to preserve resources.
4. I then connected the Shuttle to the second USB3 port (#0002): this automatically installed the drivers.
5. tested and... no flickering !!

From there I will see what configuration is stable (enabling bluetooth and grphics card etc)

So my conclusion is that you need to have the latest drivers for USB3 and BM and install them correctly and on all USB3 ports.

I will further test and check if there is a performance difference between the two ports, to check if there is a port with more bandwidth or priority access or something. I have marked the tested port and will use the port I can rely on.

It all seems rather tricky. I tested an alternative HP laptop with the newest INTEL USB3 chips but this did not work at all... So experience varies. I updated the reneses NEC drivers as stated by BM (they include a complete leaflet with the shuttle about this USB3 driver update issue so it should be critical...)

But with regard to VMIX: there seems to be no problem there. But I recommend to alway reconnect the capture input(s) when using a preset, so all settings, ports etc are current (if you've swapped the USB ports you might have a problem there).

have a great weekend,
Stefan
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