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Best new gear for hooking up decks
My ancient Sony DV converter box is acting up. The folks at Sony laughed and said to junk it. I am sure it is time for an upgrade. I am not ready to spend the money to make my system an online system at this time. What type of reasonably priced gear can I get to connect up the various decks I use for inputing & exporting media? Taking into acount Digi-beta and such. Also, I don’t use an external mixer now so I need to take into acount the hot audio that usually needs to be padded down when inputing from digital sources. Any suggestions?
Thanks
Mary Ann -
5 Replies
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You should be looking at capture cards now. AJA I/O for SD work, AJA Kona series for SD work. Or the offerings from Decklink. Might be wise to get an HD capture card, as it does both HD and SD, and you are future-proofing yourself.
You might want to get a small mixer, little MOTU box or 4 channel Behringer for around $100.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
Is there a typo in your first line or do both cards do just SD? Do these cards have various inputs? Also I like to have a third client ntsc monitor so do these cards have an extra output jack for that with a BNC or super vhs or RCA?
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TYPO…. I meant “HD.”
The AJA I/O connects to your computer via firewire (making it a portable box for mulitple systems) that has many connections. Component, Composite, SDI…IN and OUT. All of them. And XLR in and out…RCA you’ll need adapters.
The Kona LH is a card that installs in the mac, so not so portable. But it is an HD card that sports HD SDI/SDI, Component, Composite IN and OUT…analog and digital. And it works with both HD and SD.
The AJA I/O HD is due very soon, and does all the SD in and out that the original I/O does, but also works with HD. It too connects via firewire (FW800 as opposed to the SD version that is FW400), and sports more connections that you can shake a stick at. (www.aja.com). BUT…it doesn’t do uncompressed HD. It does, however, have an on-board hardware compressor that compresses to ProRes 422, which has the same quality as unocmpressed HD, but much smaller data rate.
And not to leave the competition out, the Decklink Extreme HD has all the connections as the Kona LH, and the Decklink Eclipse also sports many many many options.
Look at them all and decide for yourself.
Just know that Apple and AJA work VERY close together.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net -
[Shane Ross] “Just know that Apple and AJA work VERY close together.”
Shane, I’ve heard this said a bit, but what does AJA offer via that collaboration, that BlackMagic doesn’t?
I have to decide on this choice in the coming months, and sometimes its hard to differentiate between genuine information and sales pitching.Neil.
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Neil Ryan
Post Production
The Pod Multimedia
http://www.the-pod.com.au
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ProRes 422 hardware encoder in the AJA I/O HD. Decklink will not have this. AJA and Apple and RED are working together closely on the RED codecs, so when that camera is released, there’ll be better support on the AJA side.
That is about all I know in terms of their collaboration. And I don’t mean to knock Decklink, because they make great cards that work just fine, their codecs are very good and they are inexpensive.
Shane
Littlefrog Post
http://www.lfhd.net
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