I´m a newbie in this kind of communication platform so please be patient.
I´m representing a Nuendo 10 user who is experienced in Midi Production, mixing and post production audio products from Steinberg for many years, but is not very fluent in English, so I will try and help him with some doubts about a new feature to him he would like to take advantage of, regarding the program´s video features.
He is at the moment making film dubbing and he would like to have a system where he can use a 3 monitor setup at his desktop (One reserved for his video preview in a scalable window), but at the same time he wants to playout the video monitoring output via a dedicated video card such as Blackmagic, whom I believe are the cards that Nuendo 10 works with.
Is this possible? Does anyone have Nuendo 10 installed for this kind of workflow?
Any kind of solutions would be very welcome. Thank you all!
Yes, I use a Blackmagic Decklink MiniMonitor 4k for the film feed.Works very well on both Windows and Mac OS. Not three monitors but two here: the main DAW screen is a Dell U3419W (wide & curved) the other reference monitor is a BenQ. I switch these as needed between the Blackmagic card and between computers (Dell T7910 workstation & Mac Pro)
Nuendo can use ether the OS & GPU for video display in an OS window (not bad for general audio editing & where you may want other widgets /panels on both screens); or, Nuendo can select the BM card directly, along with setting a preferred resolution for that image. The BM card of course has dedicated color science & which bypasses the OS when one is looking for accuracy /grading etc.
Many others also like to use a quality HDMI TV in the mix as well, eg: computer GPU runs 2x displays for the Apps, the BM card feeds a dedicated large TV mounted on the wall. Have used this in the past, works fine. For me, the main benefit with the BM card is for colour grading in DaVinci Resolve because I do both film and music composition.
If you have no need for grading or colour accuracy, then the need for the card is moot: many modern GPUs will set up & have the grunt to run the three screens you mention and without ‘wasting’ a PCIe slot which could be of more use for dedicated DAW hardware.
Thank you so much for your detailed explanation!
I will go now more confident and ad a 1,5G Decklink MiniMonitor card, because I don´t need the 4K resolution.
Profdraper, have you got any lag in video with your MiniMonitor 4k? I got ones on my MiniMonitor, so I’d like to know if I should upgrade my card (in case of its fault) or not to get rid of these lags. Thanks.
If I understand Miguel right he asks for a system with video out on 2 screens at the same time, on screen AND video out through BM. What Nuendo gives is the “or” version. --How could it be done?
McSound: I think you will allways have a sync offset between On Screen Video and Video out (BM) on whatever TV or Beamer you use. Its not only the video card, but all of them. Thats threreason you have the option to insert a offset in Nuendos video window.
Oswald
I’m sorry, I wasn’t clear enough) I surely set correct sync offset (with CatchinSync app on ipad) and there’s no problem with sync. What I meant by lags (actually it’s not just lags) is: video plays ok on start-stop for saying two times but on third one it plays twitched-glitched like 15 fps, not 25 fps as usual. And it cycles again two maybe three playings ok, next one-two glitched. No matter you have or not pluguins in project, any BlackMagic driver for my Decklink MiniMonitor card, any video format (Mp4, DNxHD, Prores - I have VideoDecoder DNxHD). I just can’t get rid of the issue for several years already. The same configuration behave on ProTools with no such problem with the same video. I tried this in other studio which has BlackMagic Intensity Shuttle with Thunderbolt. And it happend again - the same issue in Nuendo, everithing’s fine in ProTools. So I’ve got in my mind that maybe more modern cards like MiniMonitor 4k or Intencity Pro 4k could help solving this problem. Something tells me that there’s something wrong on Nuendo side. BTW It’s ok in Davinci with MiniMonitor as well. So I’m in active search of flawless card for Nuendo.
Ahh sorry. I understand…
I dont know that behavior, it be then with H264 or mp4 with hight compression. - Is it the same with On Screen Video? - After a playback starts with “lag” does it stay that way or find the right speed after a while?
Thanks for answering, Oswald! It’s not about compression bitrate or video codec. It’s just the same with MP4 or DNxHD or Prores.Once started this stutter behavior never cures all the way until stop playing. And everything’s fine with OnScreen video but It’s more CPU-intensive and less video quality. I feel like I’ll end up going to nearest Blackmagic sales office to try all the cards for this issue)
Recently I tried MiniMonitor 4k - exactly the same issue! I read somewhere here on forum that SDI out port works good on these cards and decided to give it a try. I’ve bought not expensive SDI to HDMI converter on aliexpress. Can’t wait to try it, hope never dies)
We have this issue on all our Win10 Machines. Right now I am using a BlackMagic DeckLink 4K Extreme 12G, so unfortunately no… That does not solve it. To add to the problem, actually during playback after a random time this “stutter” appears also, but goes away after like 30 seconds or so.
I have been in contact with some Steinberg folks. They are aware and were able to reproduce the problem.
That said the first time was 2 years ago and there is still no fix on the horizon as far as I know.
Because the issue was unbarable for me and especially the clients I was mixing with (not to mention my embarrasment) we had to fix it somehow.
Our “fix” was to set up a second Nuendo machine (MAC) and connecting those with VST Systemlink. Videoplayback would come out of the Mac where the problem did not appear. There I have an occasional dropped frame every couple of minutes, but that is still better than the alternative.
Yeah, it’s been a while)…But the issue still hurts my eyes, my clients nerves and my reputation of “stable and reliable studio”. “The good news” hasn’t come. I wish that devs would fixed ALL the bugs, at least MOST of them instead of Nuendo 11 with the new ones)
Today I’ve got my parcel from Aliexpress with cheap SDI to HDMI convertor. Plugged it to SDI port on my Decklink Mini Monitor and loaded heavy project with 25 fps. I was jumping on timeline for 15-20 minutes and it was only once when the issue of glitched playback appeared. I don’t know what do think. On one hand the issue became less frequent(maybe it’s just because of my recent memory upgrade) but on the other hand it’s still here. Developers do something already please )
Reading this forum made me afraid to buy BlackMagic. Also on the BM website, in Intensity Pro 4K info, they removed nuendo and cubase from the list of “Use the video software you know and love.”. Any encouraging news on the forum to help me decide on 2024? Another silent board for two monitors that you recommend?
Haven’t read through everything, but this is a first for me.
I have never known otherwise that the Blackmagic works perfectly.
In fact, we are running 7 machines with a Blackmagic card (Decklink Extreme 4k - and earlier versions) and on top of that we using a Blackmagic router. Solid as a rock for more that a decade.
I’m with Fredo (for it worth), been using Blackmagic hardware since 2006 and never had a single issue over the years. It’s rock solid, reliable, and extremely comfortable.
But I must emphasize;
A. We do sync calibrations once a month or every time we install a new Nuendo/Cubase build (using Catchin’ Sync by Quiet Art).
B. We always convert every single video media we get from our clients into ProRes Proxy before importing it into the DAW. You may use DNxHD-36MB as well and get even lighter media files, but we sometimes get odd, non-standard video dimensions media, and DNxHD is very limited in its dimensions support.
Either way, both ProRes and DNxHD are Intra-frame codecs, as opposed to h264/h265 and all other advanced video coding methods that (from our experience) will always start to stutter at some point.
I use a BM Infinity 4k via VST System Link on win10/N11 with i7 3930k older machine as slave. My DAW machine is win11, N13.
Very happy with it as a slave setup. It works brilliantly via VST System Link, including frame accurate chasing during jog, shuttle, drag n drop, nudge etc. Either slave or on main machine I recommend anyone working with vision to get a BM card, playback is so much smoother.
Response is ultra quick and the best thing is no cpu or drive resources are taken from the DAW to run video. So I can make it a higher res prores or dnxhd for inspiration.
I use CatchinSync to calculate the delay. Most of the delay in my setup (240ms+!) comes from the TV, even when its in game mode (I prefer Cinema mode), plus my HDMI matrix adds a little.
There’s one thing that’s disappointing - Steinberg dont seem interested in fixing the bug that neither internal graphics card or BM card via Nuendo can run 4k frame size codec, the maximum is 2K Scope even though their info implies it can run 4k.