decklink intensity pro or studio for FCP

[Chris Borjis]

Jonah, the decklink cards do not do a very good hd to sd down conversion.

the image is soft and washed out compared to what my decks do for down conversion.

I have repeatedly asked black magic why this is as well as why they do not
support 720P down conversion…..I never get a response from them.

Do your self a favor and just get a Kona-LHe card. It will do everything you require
and can be found for under $ 1,000 USD.

[Jonah Kaplan]

Thanks for the heads up Chris. That’s a major shame that the card does such a bad job at one of the very few things I need it to do more than anything else.

Also yeah, I’m not sure I get the format limitations on the intensity. I’ll start looking at price options for the Kona. it’s a bit steep.

thanks for the honest advice
jk

[Robert Depalma]

Hi Chris, I’m configuring a system as well and got some great suggestions here on Creative Cow, one of them being a Kona card. I noticed your post said the Kona-LHe can be found for under $1000 here in the US. Any idea where? The lowest price I found was around $1400.
Thanks in advance for your time!

Robert

[Jonah Kaplan]

I have a quick question. Your saying that the downconvert on the Studio Decklink is lousy? or just the intensity?

I’m starting to think I should wait on NAB (if I can) to see what else comes down the pipe.

thanks again.
jk

[Chris Borjis]

[Jonah Kaplan] “I have a quick question. Your saying that the downconvert on the Studio Decklink is lousy? or just the intensity?”

on all black magic products.

it was recently brought to my attention that the DACS and other
circuits used on their hardware is of a lower grade.

I’m not bashing BMD just being honest of what you can expect.
They are not the lowest-cost-cards just to be nice to everyone.

I bought my Kona-LHe right here through the cow classifieds.

put up that your wanting to buy and offer $ 900

there are also several on ebay right now.

AJA honors the warranty even if you buy used.

[Mario Rubertis]

Jonah,

I would like to give you another option. My Matrox MXO2 serves me well and I think it can do the trick for you as well. Here is my reasons why:

[Jonah] I’m upgrading my G5 to a macpro next week, so my decklink SP is history. The main thing I can’t get straight is what exactly my limitations would be in terms of monitoring out to a tube sony PVM style monitor.

For an input and output option that will probably give you many years of use I see the MXO2 better than any “cards”. I, like you have a MacPro and use my MXO2 for monitoring to my HDMI output. It comes in handy when I need to edit material from my Sony EX3. The reason why I chose to go with the MXO2 vs a card is that I want to buy a MacBook Pro in a few months, and you can`t stick a card in a MBP 😉
Oh and by the way the analog out of the MXO2 would feed your PVM just beautifully.

[Jonah] From what I gather, the Intensity pro is limited to specific codecs that it can output/monitor. So if I had, say, 24p footage I could not monitor. This would include any HD footage that wasn’t in 60fps format and only prores hq.

I don’t have experience with the Intensity pro but I can tell you that the MXO2 has no limitation when it comes to codecs. It works with everything and the best part of it is that it does not force me to work with ProRes. I can use my XDCAM footage natively.

[Jonah] Also, and lastly, does “down converting” mean what I think it means? Can I play HD out to an SD monitor for monitoring purposes only?

That’s exactly what it means. However, beware of the BMD scaling, I’ve been reading the forums and the word on the street is that the quality is poor. The reason I am seeing out there is that BMD decided to use sub par components to meet a low price…
All I can tell you is that I love the quality of the MXO2 downscale. My XDCAM material looks awesome on my old SD monitor.

Lastly the reason I decided to go with MXO2 is the need to connect to old legacy equipment won`t go away and I won’t refuse any job that comes my way…
Do yourself a favor check out the MXO2.

I hope I was able to help you in your decision process.

Good luck.

An Artist At Heart.
Life is made of moments…

[Jonah Kaplan]

thanks. i’m gonna look into this for sure. Another problem I just learned is that the HD downconvert is for SDI only..? meh.

Thanks so very much!
jk

[Jonah Kaplan]

I hear ya. I’m looking at kona more seriously now.

thanks again!
jk

[Chris Borjis]

Jonah I can vouch for Mario on the MXO2 product.

I owned an MXO before the Kona-LHe and it worked really
well and the down-res was just as clean and crisp as the
aja card. I needed capture capability though and the original
MXO was for output monitoring only.

If you don’t require capturing and don’t have a slot free
the MXO is perfect solution. I suspect they are selling
for around $ 700 now.