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Tuesday, February 07, 2012

Connecting Panasonic HD Video Camera via HDMI to Macbook Air using Thunderbolt via BlackMagic UltraStudio 3D

Connecting Panasonic HD Video Camera via HDMI to Macbook Air using Thunderbolt via BlackMagic UltraStudio 3D and live streaming on Ustream via Telestream Wirecast 4.

Telestream Wirecast 4: HDMI via UltraStudio 3D
Image: Telestream Wirecast 4: HDMI via UltraStudio 3D

CABLE CONNECTIONS
Panasonic camera > HDMI > UltraStudio 3D > Thunderbolt Cable > Thunderbolt Monitor > MacBook Air

This gets tricky if you have just one setting wrong. I've had this working, then moved to a remote location, and couldn't get my camera to be recognized. In the end, it's a matter of standardizing on your settings and procedures. A checklist might be a good idea.

First of all you need to make sure that the Macbook Air sees the Blackmagic Ultrastudio 3D box.



Note: I'm using this box to test until the new Intensity Extreme ships. I'll also be interested in learning more about the Intensity Shuttle.

You can quickly check that by going into the APPLE Menu > System Preferences > Other: Black Magic Design

It's important to get the "Set input" field to match your video input, in this case "HDMI Video & HDMI Audio".

Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 9.0 Apple System Preferences
Image: System Preferences Display

If you've got something wrong, the display won't even let you change the settings. That's a basic connection issue. In my case it might have been the Thunderbolt cable. I replaced a generic one with an Apple Thunderbolt cable and it worked.

But only after I also matched the setting on for the camera type.

You do that in Wirecast under the SOURCES > Show Sources Settings... menu item.

Here's the setting in Wirecast I changed:

Wirecast Source Settings by stevegarfield
Wirecast Source Settings, a photo by stevegarfield on Flickr.

Next up is the Processing menu.

I'm still looking into how to set this up to take advantage of the processing on the UltraStudio 3D to reduce processing load on the Macbook Air.

Blackmagic Design Desktop Video 9.0 : Processing

Updates will follow. This is a living blog post. Comments and discussion appreciated.

Disclosure: http://CMP.LY/4 ;-)

Update:

Looking into saving a local high quality video file while streaming.

My friend Phil Campbell was nice enough to have posted the setting he uses on flickr:

wirecast 4 and my encoding issues resolved finally
Image: Wirecast 4 Local Video Settings

Update II:


Video walkthrough of the physical connections and a quick look at my Wirecast 4 Multi-Camera setup.

I recorded this with Wirecast 4 in 'Save to Disk' mode. It's a very cool way to produce a multi camera video with live switching.

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