-
Decklink HD Extreme vs Kona LHe
I am looking at purchasing a new setup for making home videos, wedding videos and hopefully one day a music video.
My current set-up are consumer Canon HV30 and Canon Optura cameras and a MacBook Pro. I am looking at buying a Mac Pro 3.0 with either 4 or 8 GB RAM, Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme or the Kona LHe plus mini-converter for HDMI input, a Sony XDcam EX-3 and a JVC DT-V20L1U or DT-V17L2DU for color grading.
From reading the forums, it seems like the Kona is a favorite with Final Cut Pro users. Is the Kona LHe plus mini-converter that much better than the Decklink HD Extreme ($1000 more) ?
I would be using Final Cut Studio 2 (FCP 6 and Color) Apple ProRes codec and output mainly to DVD.
Any advise would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you.
Shaun
-
5 Replies
-
Hi Shaun,
The DeckLink HD Extreme sounds perfect for your needs. It has both professional and consumer breakout cables so you can connect to almost any video and audio equipment.
It includes both HDMI input and output so you can capture from the HDMI output of your camera, and from HDMI-equipped decks, and then play out to large LCD and Plasma displays or video projectors.
The DeckLink HD Extreme includes the latest 3 Gb/s SDI technology so you can even work with full resolution 2K video in real time so the card is future-proof.
We include a diverse range of easy setups for Final Cut Pro so you can use the standard Apple codecs including Uncompressed 10-bit, Uncompressed 8-bit, ProRes, HDV, DVCPRO HD, PhotoJPEG, DV and others. We include support for native frame rates as well as Varicam frame rates.
The DeckLink HD Extreme card can also be used with the other Final Cut Studio applications such as Motion and Color, as well as Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro and many other applications which use QuickTime inputs and outputs.
If you’re working with Macs and PC’s, you can also use the DeckLink HD Extreme with Windows PC’s as driver software for Macs and PC’s is included as standard so you don’t have to buy a different card if you’re moving between platforms.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
You should search this forum for “slowdown” and find out if this issue has been addressed with Final Cut 6 and the Decklink cards.
It is an issue where after a period of time (as little as half an hour to an hour), the performance of final cut with simple editing, shuttling, etc. begins to degrade dramatically, forcing the user to restart the computer to regain normal responsiveness.
It has been around for a long time and all the users who have experienced it have found that switching to AJA was the only solution. I have yet to read any kind of response from Blackmagic about it.Lu Nelson
Berlin, Germany -
Hi,
This issue has been addressed in the Quicktime 7.5 update and is not believed to be DeckLink specific. We issued a bug report with Apple as soon as we managed to replicate this.
regards
Kristian Lam
Blackmagic Design -
Well if that’s the case then I retract my comment, though I will still prefer to test it myself —
can anyone else who had the problem confirm that it is solved?
In any case, why did those particular threads go unanswered from Blackmagic for so long?
Lu Nelson
Berlin, Germany -
Hello I wanted to know if this card manages DVCPROHD well as work with Panasonic HVX-201A?
It ‘true that there are slow-moving system when using this card?
Thank you.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up