DECKLINK SP

[Chris Poisson]

Francesco,

I have a DecklinkSP which was hooked up to my G5 2 gig and UVW 1800 for almost 2years and it worked great. The last driver I had installed was 4.8, I think. The card is now hooked up to my G4 1.42 sans any workable deck, but it still gives me another SD uncompressed station and it monitors AE in real time, so that’s cool. (I’m running the G5 with a Kona LH which is just superb, plus HD!)

Not sure about your deck, but if it has an SDI out you might want to think about a card with SDI in, I know there’s a few out there that shouldn’t break your budget, it would just give you that little bit extra. But component in with the DLSP works just fine too.

You will see a few newer driver options from BM on their site, not sure which you should use, but 4.8 worked just fine for me. Maybe time to test them or read up on them. Anyone else?

[Joe Paolo]

We were runing that exact set up in NTSC with 4 gigs of ram. There was a conflict with the BM drivers and some Motion effects. The solution was to turn off the BM desktop. Also you may have to feed the deck a sync signal. Either use a Black burst generator or have the BM card generate black and feed that to the deck.

The BM site has all the older drivers availible. I’m not sure, but I think the 5.5 or 5.6 driver package is what you need for that vintage of software.

joe

[Chris Poisson]

Good point that I forgot about, a blackburst generator is a very good thing in all this, I didn’t use one with my BM card, I did the jury-rig with the Y cable through the ref loop on my deck, which is a really cheesey workaround. Since I got the AJA card this didn’t work, so a BB generator has been a welcome addition to my setup.

[Francesco Biagini]

hey thank so much Chris and Joe, this forum is so helpful,
The deck doesn’t have SDI, and I think I ll give a try to the REF loop as a start.
I read that BM drivers can be annoying with FCP and Motion, but not about the right one for my config. I’ ll keep on searching otherwise I ll start testing them, it s just that I wont have so much time to feddle around.

One more question, would the SATA second internal drive (400GB) be fast enough only to digitize the betacam SP 8 bit and compress it for DVDSP?
Thanx a ton for the help

[Joe Paolo]

8bit uncompressed is at the edge of what a single drive can handle. I would suggest DV50. Looks just as good at 1/3 the bandwith.

joe

[Chris Poisson]

Francesco,

Yes, I think Joe is right about that single drive. Good news is there are a TON of very affordable SATA RAIDS right now, you just need an available slot on your machine for whatever card you’d need, but in a pinch, you can get a LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500 gig RAID at the Apple store or Comp USA that will go right into your FireWire 800 bus and will work just fine for a couple of 8bit tracks.

But on the SATA enclosures, take a look at some of these deals. I got a Firmtek 2 TB 4 drive RAID for less than $1500 including the card and cables. Tough to beat that.

On the Ref loop, it works, but it’s not the best solution. You can get a little Horita BBG that sends out 6 signals for around $300, well worth it.

Good luck on your driver search. But one other thing, for an extra 400 bucks you could get a BM Decklink HD Extreme, so you’d be set for any HD job that might come your way. $995 is a screamin’ deal for what you get.

[Walter Biscardi]

[Chris Poisson] “But on the SATA enclosures, take a look at some of these deals. I got a Firmtek 2 TB 4 drive RAID for less than $1500 including the card and cables. Tough to beat that.”

We’re testing a 1.5TB CalDigit SATA array right now and are extremely pleased with it so far. About 150mb/s write / read speeds and also $1,500 with the card at B&H Photo. We’re cutting DVCPro HD 1080i at the moment with it.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com
HD Editorial & Animation for Food Network’s “Good Eats”
HD Editorial for “Assignment Earth”

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Francesco Biagini]

Thanks again to all for the advise and infos, I have been thinking about the BM extreme but at the moment I don’t have so many works HD and I found a very good deal for the SP which is really what I need, I always remember mama saying “don’t buy a ferrari if what you need is a scooter!!”
Plus next february I will have to build from scratch a new editing system with HD capabilities for a partner company and who knows what the market will offer, I’ll be defenetly looking for advise here.

All the best

Francesco