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Activity Forums Blackmagic Design 3 Decklink Duo

  • Bob Zelin

    May 11, 2011 at 2:00 pm

    you are dreaming.

    You would buy the NEW Blackmagic QUAD card. You need software to run the Duo or Quad. Specifically, Softron Movie Recorder.

    To accomplish this, you will need a 12 Core (not your old cheap Quad Core) MAC Pro with 16 Gig RAM. You put in the Blackmagic QUAD interface card ($995) and run FOUR seats of Softron Movie Recorder ($1100 per channel – total price $4400). This will allow you to run 4 HD-SDI ProRes422HQ streams into your system at one time. So, what if you put in TWO QUAD cards – the MAC is not fast enough to do more than 4 streams of HD at the same time. If you put in two of these cards, you can do 8 streams of STANDARD DEF, but not HD. And of course, you need a drive array that can handle recording this much data at one time. A $200 Firewire drive won’t cut it.

    So your costs are –
    MAC Pro 12 Core with 16 Gig RAM
    Blackmagic Quad interface card
    4 licenses of Softron Movie Recorder
    A big drive array.

    Want to do 6 streams – buy another duplicate system.

    Bob Zelin

  • Elendill Elendill

    May 13, 2011 at 12:21 pm

    I paste you one of the answers someone’s just given me in the Wirecast forum (I want to use these streams in Wirecast)

    [QUOTE]
    I have 2 decklink duos in a MacPro and Wirecast sees 4 cameras. I’m guessing if you add a third card, you could add 2 more cameras.
    I’m using a 12-core for this seup and it’s running at 400% so by that logic you’d need at least 8 cores to be safe.
    [/QUOTE]

    Whos right ? ^^

  • Mike Mcpherson

    June 10, 2011 at 5:12 am

    $1100 per channel – ouch. That sounds a bit steep considering the entire Final Cut Pro suite costs $999 and so does the Quad hardware. I am too looking for a solution to utilize the Quad to capture at least 3 HD SDI streams simultaneously. Are there any alternatives to the Softron product?

  • Ian Liuzzi-fedun

    November 25, 2012 at 10:15 pm

    Bob and Softron are playing it safe. You can get away with less than 12 depending on settings.

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