@mark_m At least your pixellation is more subtle than mine 

Thanks for all the info and images! Is it possible for you to share also your General tab options?

I can see a clear difference between capturing an image from Isadora, and capturing from BlackMagic Media Express.

Please see photos below. The images captured from Isadora definitely show a pixellation.

1080p50 source.
Isadora 4.09
Windows 11.


Live capture setting like this:

Isadora preferences like this:

Capture Stage from Isadora like this:

Resultant file is this:

Capturing from BM Media Express gives me this:

If I compare the two files in Photoshop you can see this:

and at 300% you get this:

@woland Latest Isadora 4 version, latest Blackmagic drivers, updated Windows 11 (I suppose this card it's not compatible with Windows Media Foundation?):

The video capture works with the Blackmagic driver, but with the "pixelation" effect.

@d8bit said:

Could you tell me, in that production with so many UltraStudio, what configuration were you using? Target frame rate, Display Refresh (only in Mac), General Service, Video Image Processing Default Resolution, option in "when combining videos", OpenGL options, etc?

 I can't tell you that information unfortunately because I don't have it documented. I wasn't the projection designer, just a consultant.

@d8bit said:

Also, in Windows, the Windows driver is not working for me with the UltraStudio, I'm getting and error.

 Only in Isadora 3, or in Isadora 4 as well?

@woland In terms of drivers, the delay with Apple is a little bit higher (around 30-40ms extra), and the % of load indicated is also higher. That's why I was thinking that maybe the Blackmagic driver inside Isadora somehow sacrifices a little bit of image quality in order to improve performance. Also, in Windows, the Windows driver is not working for me with the UltraStudio, I'm getting and error.

Could you tell me, in that production with so many UltraStudio, what configuration were you using? Target frame rate, Display Refresh (only in Mac), General Service, Video Image Processing Default Resolution, option in "when combining videos", OpenGL options, etc?

@joshuawg said:

@woland thanks for the response! I think you may be right about hardware limitation. I did get it to work though! I am doing the live delay that I posted about previously, which is why I ended up shifting to a three computer setup. Now the macbook pro does nothing but process the live video delay and send out a single 4k NDI stage (I had previously be sending out several different stages to the Mac Studio) with all 9 stages to the other two computers. Working pretty well actually! 

 Awesome to hear! Yeah, distributing the work based on which computer(s) are the beefiest is one of the best ways to optimize performance when running video between multiple computers.

@woland thanks for the response! I think you may be right about hardware limitation. I did get it to work though! I am indeed doing the live delay that I posted about previously, which is why I ended up shifting to a three computer setup. Now the macbook pro does nothing but process the live video delay and send out a single 4k NDI stage including all 9 stages (I had previously been sending out several different NDI stages to the Mac Studio) to the other two computers, which then uses the chopper tool to output to the video wall. Working pretty well actually! 

@d8bit said:

I'm attaching two images, just capturing my own computer running Isadora. In the first image, I'm using Blackmagic drivers, getting this distortion. On the second, I'm using Apple drivers [...] 

Wait, looking back at this, it seems you have a somewhat viable workaround in that just using the Apple drivers instead looks fine, no? (Even if the performance and video delay are not as optimal, it is at least functional.)

@d8bit said:

I would like to use Blackmagic drivers for the UltraStudio of course, as I get better performance and lower video delay.

Can you describe the difference in terms of performance and video delay in detail?

This is also quite strange as I worked on a production a few months ago where we used Isadora 3 and six or more BlackMagic UltraStudio Mini Recorder 3Gs without issue.

@d8bit

The problem is that when we updated the show from Isadora 3.x to 4.02 we also updated a lot of the components, including cables and the projector for this particular stage (which has a different resolution to the projector we built the show for), so with so many variables it's hard to pinpoint the exact issue, sorry.