Capture Card: Blackmagic or AJA?

[Gary Adcock]

[Patrick Sheffield] “I’ve got a $99 box that converts between sizes and frame rates and it does not look great. “ “Hardware doesn’t necessarily mean better, btw… “

A $99 box that creates content that looks like crap.

I would say you got what you paid for.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows for the Digitally Inclined
Chicago, IL

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/adcock_gary/AJAIOHD.php

[Patrick Sheffield]

Well, it served it’s purpose – viewing PAL stuff on an NTSC monitor…

But I wasn’t recommending it – just pointing out that the holy grail of hardware conversion is a silly classification.

Patrick

[David Roth weiss]

[gary adcock] “I would say you got what you paid for. “

Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me even if Patrick got it for free.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los Angeles

POST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY ™

A forum host of Creative COW’s Apple Final Cut Pro, Business & Marketing, Indie Film & Documentary, and Film History & Appreciations forums.

[J. Tad newberry]

finally ouputted (4) Beta masters last night! ye haw! ended up pulling out Betacam CAMERA and running the video out of it to the ref in on the deck for sync. for some reason this time the loop thing wasn’t working. any hoo, this set up allowed me to finish, played back the tapes and they look great. the only hitch now is (other than my gigantic boat anchor of a camera on the floor!) is that “non std ref” will occaisionally flash across the deck’s screen, though it keeps chugging away. i know, i know…get a black burst generator, but then i always end up hearing of a solution where i don’t need it.

Thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad-Core
3 GB RAM
http://www.bigya.tv

[Herb Sevush]

Chris

“when did black magic start doing hardware based 720p down conversion?”

They’ve been doing it for years. With the older cards it’s a setup in the Blackmagic control panel, processing tab, and it affects all the outputs. In the newer cards you can have simultaneous HD & SD playback.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Herb Sevush]

Tad –

Yes the UVW is a pig and SONY intentionally crippled it in many ways, as they do with much of their industrial product line, in order to keep selling the high priced lines. The simplest solution is to get a cheap distribution amp and send your signal thru it and then to then to both the Beta input and the Beta Sync In. Don’t need a camera for that.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions

[Hector Silva]

It sounds like it’s too late to sway you, but maybe others will read this thread.

Go AJA Kona. Unless there is a very special feature that they do not have available (like the MacBook Pro connectivity the MXO2 has). It is true that you can work quite well with Decklinks, but the difference lies in how quickly you can recover when things stop working well.

AJA’s support is unparalleled and they are quite responsive with replacement units if it is necessary. When you are up against a deadline every day saved may mean the difference as to whether or not you get paid.

The other part that I like is that you don’t have to buy all the cables for a Kona card. Most of them are included in lengths that are usable. Buying up a whole whack of cables can make up the difference in price between AJA and BM quite quickly.

[J. Tad newberry]

Thanks for the input Herb. It’s a little sad how some of these threads end up getting taken over by bickering, so your post was appreciated even more this morning!

What’s really baffling me is that the old “Y deck input looped to the ref in” worked with my last BMD card, but doesn’t want work with this card. I was really hoping the loop would work so as to safe the additional expense (which i do realize is not much, when figuring all the time it would’ve saved me so far!), but also one more thing to plug in, and one more source of heat in the cave…er, uh, the “editing suite”.

Thanks again!

J. Tad Newberry
Big Ya Productions
Mac Pro 2.66 GHz Quad-Core
3 GB RAM
http://www.bigya.tv

[Chris Borjis]

[Patrick Sheffield] “Compressor, OTOH, does an excellent job and it’s all software.”

Patrick for 1080i its ok, but 720P absolutely requires an excellent hardware
based system for sd down convert.

look at angles like a house roof. in HD 720P = nice and sharp angle.

downconverted with compressor = aliased and jaggy (even with best resize option)

downconverted with Aja Kona cards = hardly noticeable

downconverted with a Teranex – flawless.

the matrox mxo did a pretty decent job too btw.

[Chris Borjis]

[Herb Sevush] “They’ve been doing it for years. With the older cards it’s a setup in the Blackmagic control panel, processing tab, and it affects all the outputs. In the newer cards you can have simultaneous HD & SD playback.”

Herb, I have that with my multibridge extreme.

but its software only. BMD never replies to my questions of why its only doing
software down conversion on 720P. It’s completely unacceptable to me.
Overall the image is ok, but look at any angles and you have aliasing. that doesn’t cut it here at my post house.

I dunno, maybe the multibridge product isn’t capable?