• Blackmagic Design

  Decklink SDI for monitoring

  Posted by John Sutherland on January 12, 2010 at 6:23 pm

  Hi,

  I shoot mostly HD 720/30PN on my HPX 300, editing on an eight core Xeon Mac Pro (2008?). Shooting on AVC Intra, and once off of P2 editing in Pro Res. My output is usually to file, occasionally to tape. I have the Panasonic BT-LH 1710 LCD, and I’m looking for a real time HD monitoring solution. I’m not doing color grading per say, but I do make tweaks as needed.

  Occasionally I may need to input DVCam via SD-SDI. I may want to upconvert on the way in. When I lay off to tape I need to downconvert on the way.

  Any issues using the Decklink SDI with this set up? How is the down convert, is it soft? If so is it better to drop the material into a SD timeline and render away?

  For the price it’s the least expensive monitoring solution going. I still have a Decklink card in my older G4 with SDI only, it was a real workhorse, still is!

  Thanks for the input.

  John Sutherland

  John Sutherland replied 16 years, 7 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Peter Tours

  January 14, 2010 at 2:35 am

  We have a HPX500 so we can only capture P2. I recently had the opportunity to view down-converted DVCPRO HD thru a Decklink card and then a Kona card in my system (Mac Pro early 2008 dual quad 2.88) on a Sony broadcast monitor, and the Decklink was noticeably softer than the Kona. Startling, actually. I am monitoring analog component, not SDI. Hope this helps.

  Peter Tours
  TnT Video Services, Inc.
  Fort Lauderdale, FL
• 

  John Sutherland

  January 14, 2010 at 11:02 pm

  When I bought my 300 I also bought the 1710, so I’m mostly concerned with HD SDI. I had heard the down convert was not so good as it’s a software solution. The AJA’s are hardware driven.

  John

  John Sutherland
  MDD G4 dual 1.25
  1.12 gb ram
  Atto UL3D
  Huge 1.2TB Dual Max
  FCP 6.0.4
  OSX 10.4.11/QT 7.5.5

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