Decklink Exrteme or Multibridge Pro?

[Chris Borjis]

how about a multibridge extreme instead? (just kiddin with ya)

Though I do have a multibridge extreme and I’m quite pleased with it.

I like pc’s for just about everything EXCEPT editing.

It’s interesting to note that I see posts about problems with various black magic product and 90% of the time the user says “running on a pc.”

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

You would be fine with any of the DeckLink HD Extreme, Multibridge Pro or Multibridge Extreme. They are essentially the same products as each other but with different combinations of inputs and outputs. The DeckLink card is obviously a PCIe card that is hidden away inside your computer whereas the Multibridge Pro and Multibridge Extreme are external boxes that connect to the computer via a PCI Express cable and a small adapter card. So your first decision will be whether you prefer an internal or external solution.

The second feature to consider is monitoring. By the sounds of it, your facility has not been working in HD in the past and that would probably mean that you don’t have any HD displays for monitoring video. The DeckLink HD Extreme has both HD-SDI and HD component analog outputs which you could use for monitoring but HD CRT monitors can be expensive especially if they have an SDI input. The Multibridge Pro and Multibridge Extreme provide low cost HD monitoring solutions. The Multibridge Pro has an HDMI output which you can use with plasma and LCD TV’s which is great if you need an inexpensive but large display. The Multibridge Extreme can connect via DVI-D to 23″ and 30″ LCD computer displays and also provides a HDMI adapter so you can use HDMI TV’s. Most HDMI TV’s are not full resolution 1920 x 1080 displays even though they accept that signal on their input. That’s where the Multibridge Extreme can be useful as it can output HDTV 1080 video to a full resolution LCD display such as the Apple Cinema HD 23″ display or the Dell 24″ display. Both of these displays have a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and are perfect for pixel for pixel mapping of HDTV1080.

The Blackmagic drivers are mature on both the Mac and PC platforms. Clearly there are many more variations of PC’s than there are models of Macs so we do tend to see more issues on PC than on Mac but I think that is a function of the many differences in components used in PC’s having an impact on how easily they handle uncompressed video processing and data rates.

Dell Workstations are not certified for use with DeckLink cards and are currently unsupported. This is mentioned on our list of Certified DeckLink

[Chris Knight]

Are there any other PC brands that you recommend? I’ve looked at the HP workstations, which seem to be a good choice (although far more expensive than Apple’s comparable models).

It seems turnkey solution providers are both over-priced and using CPUs from 2 or 3 generations ago. I would rather be using a current generation CPU, as the system will be in place for 3-5 years. My reasoning for always looking at Dell first, is because they tend to offer a new system within minutes of Intel announcing a new CPU, and they have always worked flawlessly for DV and HDV editing (not having used Decklink hardware, I can’t vouch for their stability in that regard).

Thanks for the advice.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

If you’re wanting to build an inexpensive system, then you could use one of the certified motherboards listed in the DeckLink Minimum System Requirements for Windows. If the Apple is much cheaper then that speaks for itself and would be worth considering. That might even become more interesting once Mac OS X Leopard is released and Apple’s support for Windows reaches release status unlike the current Bootcamp beta software.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Steve Wargo]

First, Please do not confuse HDV with HD. There is a very good reason it’s called HDV. It’s DV with more line of resolution. But, this probably isn’t the place to go over that.
Second, Premier Pro is for short form only. Everyone I know that is trying to cut anything HDV over 30 minutes long is having a problem.

Steve Wargo
Tempe, Arizona

It’s a dry heat!

[Zak Mussig]

Just because your video equipment is HDV doesn’t mean that you have to edit HDV. Assuming you have the drive space (SATA has gotten so cheap) you could capture as DVCPro HD as avoid the many pitfalls of HDV editing. I’m pretty biased on this one since I’ve been on FCP since version 2, but I say go for the Mac Pro and FCP. I understand that you might not really have a choice in which platform you go with, and it certainly isn’t worth going down in a blaze of glory over, but these new Apple workstations are real champs, and incredibly stable.

Just my 2 cents,
Zak

[Chris Knight]

After spending a day pricing stuff out, it amazes me how much cheaper the Mac Pro systems are ($500 cheaper than the Dell 690, and over $1000 cheaper than an HP workstation).

Here’s a question – can you run the Multibridge on a mac, running Adobe Premiere in Windows XP? That would be the perfect solution for what I need.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi,

While I am aware of customers running Multibridge Extreme with Windows XP on the Mac Pro with no reported problems, it is not yet a supported configuration as the Bootcamp technology provided by Apple to run Windows is still in beta. This means that Windows support could break at any time if there is a change made to Bootcamp. It’s a very tempting option but I don’t expect we will support it until Bootcamp reaches release status as part of the next big Mac OS X release codenamed “Leopard”.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Gunleik Groven]

And you could ofcourse circumvent this problem through not updating bootcamp, once you have that running…

Gunleik