• Blackmagic Design

  2 Blackmagic Cards in the same G5?

  Posted by Christian Remde on July 7, 2005 at 6:06 pm

  Hi,

  We own 2 Blackmagic cards, the Decklink SP (for analog) and the Decklink HD (for SDI)…

  We currently have them both running in separate G5’s and I was wondering if it would be possible to have them both running in a single G5. Would Final Cut Pro be able to access both cards for input/output, etc…or do I have to upgrade to the bigger card that does both analog and SDI input…

  Thanks,

  Christian Remde
  https://www.christianremde.com

  Amund Lie replied 20 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Trinity Greer

  July 8, 2005 at 6:19 pm

  Only one at a time. I tested this myself.
• 

  Amund Lie

  July 10, 2005 at 10:37 am

  Not quite the answer you are looking for, but for what it’s worth:

  I have both a Decklink HD and a Cinewave card in the same G5. The Cinewave has both analogue and SDI breakout boxes, and I alternate between using Decklink and Cinewave depending on project. Most of the time this setup works almost flawlessly, but for bandwidth-demanding stuff like HD capture I usually temporarily remove the Cinewave drivers (or vice versa). On FCP startup Cinewave will always warn me about another Quicktime card and driver being present, but still this doesn’t seem to cause much trouble on SDI and DV projects.

  Since Cinewave cards are now officially discontinued by Pinnacle, you might be able to pick one up at a very good price. The card still works fine under 10.4 and should remain doing so up until (and perhaps beyond) the next major upgrade of OSX and/or FCP. Decklink cards also play back Cinewave files in realtime with no conversion, so you’ll find the two working together quite well on the same machine.

  Amund

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