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BLACKMAGIC DECKLINK EXTREME vs. AJA IO LA
Hello,
I am looking to make a purchase primarily for getting footage in and out of my UVW-1800 Beta-SP deck for editing in Final Cut Pro. I am currently looking at two products that cost basically the same amount.
AJA IO LA looks to do this function well via the FW400 port. The advantages over the Blackmagic card are that it can be plugged into anything with a FW400 port and it has full component, composite and S-Video ins and outs via a breakaway box. The disadvantages are that it doesn’t have anything digital and it is an extra source to power on and off.
BLACKMAGIC DECKLINK EXTREME is a card (with breakout cables) that plugs right into the G5. The advantages are that it has component ins and outs but a disadvantage is that it has no composite nor S-Video (although I suppose these sources can be demoded in and out via my Beta-SP deck and input component) ins and outs. Other advantages are that it adds SDI IO and it’s one less thing to power on and off.
Any help from your experience or from what you’ve heard with choosing one unit over another would be great. Also, does anyone know if Blackmagic Decklink Extreme is available for the new PCIe Quad (I couldn’t tell from their website)? If it’s PCI-X only, I guess the AJA IO LA is the winner by default since I’ll be buying the Quad next week!
Thanks in advance for your input!
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2 Replies
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I have no experience with the AJA device, but we have two dual G5s running Extreme cards. We also had a Cinewave card in a dual G4 and this gave us lots of grief. The Decklink cards have worked extremely well with almost no problems and good support from the Blackmagic team (it might help that they are just down the road in Melbourne, Australia). The Extreme card does have composite I/O as well as component and SDI. Composite is done via the Y in and out leads; you reconfigure the format from the Mac system preferences.
I can thoroughly recommend the Decklink card.
Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia -
“Also, does anyone know if Blackmagic Decklink Extreme is available for the new PCIe Quad (I couldn’t tell from their website)?”
Yes, it’s available in a PCIe version. We are running five machines with the Extreme cards, and are very happy with them. There are some limitations there that you sometimes need to work around, but for a product under the 1000$ mark, it’s outstanding. Service is good, drivers are generally very reliable.
We had a lot of problems with our AJA Io initially, but firmware and drivers seems to work ok now. I can agree that having a FW400 device brings some portability and flexibility to the table, but I’d choose the realiability of a PCI slot over that any day.
Geir Ove Thorsveen
TV Systems Engineer
Lillehammer University College
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