Black Magic Videohub – Can I sleep easy with it installed?

[Baz Leffler]

Hey Chris – I have had a videohub installed for almost a year now and it is the best investment I ever made!
I have 4 edit suites and an audio suite connected to it along with 4 digibeta decks and 2 HDCAM decks. Also I have both PC’s and Mac’s as controllers which all work fabulous although the Mac’s takes longer to log onto the hub.
The built in downconverter is also great for SD monitoring of HD machines and the rs422 routing is to die for! No I am not a salesman; just telling it like it is.
Just a word of warning … be careful with your workstations because while outputting back to a deck you don’t want someone changing your input!.

Baz
ps. we recently did a major sport compile here where all the vision had a network bug (id) in the top right corner and we used the workgroup hubs built in keying framestore to overlay a new ID over the old one so we didn’t have to tie up valuable edit suite processing to add it to the timeline as we put it over all captured media – yet another bonus!)

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Baz,

Thanks for the great write-up for Workgroup Videohub.

Videohub enables you to lock your routing configuration so that others cannot accidentally change your routing in the middle of a job.

Videohub clients can prevent other clients from interfering with their routing and the master control on the Videohub Server can override all settings in case one of the clients has forgotten to unlock a router setting.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Baz Leffler]

Hey Luke – credit where credits due!

I knew about the lock feature but get too lazy sometimes to set it.

BTW. is there any reason why my Mac’s take about 5 mins to log into the hub when my PC’s are instantaneous?

Baz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Christopher Lowden]

Thank you for this very encouraging write up. I think we will go with this solution. In terms of power supply, is there an auxillary one, are they interchangeable, do you use an APC?

Does anyone else have a 5min mac login time? I am exclusively mac.

[Baz Leffler]

Chris – just in case you may have mistaken what I said about the Mac ~5 min log on time; that is only applicable to any network mac logging into the host controller via the ip address (which in my case the host controller is an old PIII PC). If a Mac IS the controller eg the Workgroup Hub is connected USB to a Mac, the connection is instantaneous.
My problems are based on the Mac’s being slow to detect the ip address and may very well have something to do with my own network.

As far as the power supply is concerned are you worried about redundancy? There is no provision for that with this device but it does operate off a 5 volt plug pack so I suppose a nicad battery pack could be implemented!… but I have never had the need because if I had a power failure the whole lot would go down anyhow.

Baz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Baz,

[Baz Leffler] “BTW. is there any reason why my Mac’s take about 5 mins to log into the hub when my PC’s are instantaneous?”

No, I haven’t seen this and the Mac clients should be able to connect instantly. Are your Macs also slow to detect other devices on your internal network?

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Chris,

The Workgroup Videohub just has the one power supply. We would certainly replace it under warranty if it died. Spare power supplies are also available for purchase.

The Broadcast Videohub is nearing release and it does include two power supplies but is a much bigger unit with many more connections, ie 72 inputs, 72 outputs and 72 monitoring outputs.

I’ve not heard of the 5 min login time problem before. I quickly checked around and couldn’t find others with the same problem so I suspect it is a networking issue on Baz’s network, but why it only affects the Macs is a puzzle.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Baz Leffler]

[Luke Maslen] “I’ve not heard of the 5 min login time problem before. I quickly checked around and couldn’t find others with the same problem so I suspect it is a networking issue on Baz’s network, but why it only affects the Macs is a puzzle.”

Hey Luke – problem solved with the Mac’s logging onto the workgroup hub!

Just sling me a coupla hundred bucks and I will tell you the solution…

nah just kiddin’ – I will tell you for free; you have to assign the Mac’s a fixed IP address and then it logs onto the workgroup hubs host computer instantly… so its all good here!

Baz

What would I do without the ‘UNDO’ button!!!!

[Jon Ackerman]

How would this perform in a live studio setting? I am curious because if it works well, then it would replace $100,000 routers from Evertz and others. Thanks for always coming out with amazing equipment Black Magic!

[Kevin Johnson]

Any update on this? Anyone using this in a full post production facility with studios? We’d likely need the 144×288, but would like to hear if anyone has had any serious problems with it?

FCP Editor
Washington, DC