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awesome work guys
You guys toss up 2K monitoring as if it were the simplest thing ever. I love that.
So, is the Multibridge similar in idea to the AJA Io?
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5 Replies
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Looks that way, except its mroe comparable to their PCI cards with a crazy breakout box.
Looking forward to hearing moe about it
Emery
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we’re going to shoot over to NAB tomorrow, I’ll go and find out. If it IS like the Io in theory, but on steriods, then it’s a really exiciting product.
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Hi,
The concept of an external convertor box attached to a computer has been around for many years but that’s where the similarity stops.
We’ve always been keen on the idea of adding as much to DeckLink cards as possible and the DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 card is a great card. However we want to add more and there are real physical limits as to what you can anchor on to a single card and slot in to a PCI slot. The current card has 4 BNC connectors as that provides totally stable HD-SDI signals over long cable runs compared with using a breakout cable. The other features (such as analog monitoring and RS-422 serial control) have been squeezed in to a breakout cable. Unfortunately one of the BNC’s squeezes against a plastic plug in the 133 MHz slot of G5’s and we’ve been looking for a solution to add more hardware features and overcome the physical limitations of PCI slots.
One of our engineers was reading through the specifications for PCI Express (PCIe) when he noticed there was room in the standard for an external connector. He realized this meant that we could essentially have an external DeckLink card and this was very exciting. So we developed the adapter card which provided an external connector to the PCIe bus and did a huge amount of testing to ensure it would suitable for the stringent standards of the HD-SDI specifications. It worked beautifully and the next logical step was to connect it to a Multibridge via PCIe and use this as a kind of external DeckLink card. This overcame all of the physical limitations and also provided a huge speed advantage as PCIe is 10Gbps which is 25 times faster than current Firewire-based solutions.
This also means that there is no need to have a DeckLink card in the computer (although you could if you wanted) as the adapter card plus the Multibridge is all that you need and this is nice as it reduces the overall system cost. Even better, if you’re working in 4:4:4, there are now enough connections to run two cables to a HDCAM SR deck, two cables from a HDCAM SR deck, and the PCIe cable to the computer for capture and playback of 4:4:4 through the Multibridge so you can simultaneously take advantage of all of its conversion options. The dual-link DVI-D output of the new Multibridges also enables digital monitoring via an LCD display and you can use single-link or dual-link DVI-D monitors including the Apple 30″ Cinema HD display.
So the new Multibridges have a lot of new technology in them and are not just a variant of something that has been done in the past. The speed of PCIe combined with SDI means the new Multibridges can even be used for 2K film work as it does not suffer from the latency issues of FireWire. The new Multibridges also work with SD, HDTV and 2K unlike other products.
We were very excited by these new developments but there was just one problem – G5’s don’t have PCIe slots. Hopefully they will in the future but, in the meanwhile, we wanted to be able to provide a solution for G5 owners. So our engineers have been hard at work developing a PCIe to PCI-X bridge card. This card fits in the 133 MHz slot of a G5 and provides and external PCIe port which you can connect to the new Multibridges. So G5 owners can take advantage of this new technology and will not be left out. There is no room in the PCI-X specification for an external connector and that’s why we’ve used PCIe.
It has been very exciting to watch the development of these products and I think Grant is aiming for a Summer 2005 (northern hemisphere) release of the new Multibridges with PCIe. We’ve done a lot of quality testing to make sure that everything is working to the highest possible quality specifications. I haven’t had a lot of sleep but I think Summer 2005 is what he stated in the press-releases. I hope this provides you with some idea of the evolution of the new Multibridges as it is always fun to know how the ideas developed in to a product.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
so, basically, it kicks butt? 🙂
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Charlie,
Lucid brevity is clearly your forte 😉
Regards
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
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