Decklink VS competition advice please!

[Shane Chadder]

Hi Mark

I think I recognize your name from the edit forum? We are partway through moving three *edit systems to PPro and Blackmagic. Offline codecs seem to be limited to the DV codec, plus 8bit and 10 bit uncompressed formats. So far it is working pretty good for our needs. You can mix native DV and uncompressed on the same timeline and the clips play in realtime. Some FX are realtime depending on the complexity and the project settings (uncompressed or DV).

It is quite amazing when the whole SDI capture card is 1/4 the price of adding SDI to an existing Digisuite card. In some ways Digisuite did more in realtime with the realtime overlay for graphics, and real time level corection, but the renders haven’t driven us to Axio yet. If Matrox had bothered to write PPro drivers for Digisuite they would have had an easier time porting us all to Axio, we would have learned PPro already. (It is the turnkey thing that has disuaded me from Axio, the card itself seems a reasonable value.)

Shane Chadder

[Mark Palmos]

Hi Shane, yep that’s me…

For most the stuff I do, DV quality is fine for final, so I want a card with much more compression.

If you have a Component Betacam SP tape, how do you capture the DV codec? Can you capture DV codec through the Component Decklink inputs, or do you have to have some box that converts Component to firewire?

Thanks Shane,
Mark.

[Marisu Fronc]

Mark-

To convert component betaSP to DV I’ve been using the SD connect box (about $800 US) – it’s been doing a great job for me for the last few months – e-mail me if you want more specific info.

slainte,
marisu

[Mark Palmos]

Hi there Marisu,

I hope all is well with you?!

The DV thing comes up because there does not seem to be a card, other than Axio, which will allow the user to capture at various bitrates. It seems Decklink regards DV as an offline quality, and you recapture uncompressed. If you recapture uncompressed, it means you have some format which is better than DV, like BetaSP or DigiBeta etc… Also, from what I gather, there is no card which will allow you to capture to a DV codec from Component inputs, so you have to have some box to convert to DV even if you are just capturing for offline.

I dont care too much about Axio’s realtime stuff, I just would like a card that allows the user to choose the compression ratio, going all the way down to 40kbf, and that would allow capturing a 5:1 via component cables… is there such a thing, i wonder?

catch you later
x mark.

[Marisu Fronc]

Mark-

Yes, all is well here (aside from being a bit frazzled by my son’s sleep-over last night, who’d of thunk two 9 year olds could cause SO MUCH DESTRUCTION).

We aren’t using any cards with PPro at present, just the SD connect to convert the component analogue to DV (our stuff is ending up mostly as MPEG-2’s for DVD’s and on-demand systems, real and wmv files for streaming over the web and VHS so the quality is acceptable).

I can’t justify the cost or the space (even once the new SAN is finally working properly) to work uncompressed, especially since they’re shooting all the new stuff DV, so Axio, while intriguing to me personally, isn’t in the cards for our facility.

The SD connect is merely a way for me to convert footage from the 2300+ rolls of pre-existing BetaSP to DV so they can use existing assets and not reshoot. (although the NDF/DF thing really is driving me crazy – all the old stuff is NDF, all the new is DF – one way or another the logs don’t match the captured footage – AARRRGGHHHHH). I haven’t been worried about a lower quality than DV as it stands now, but if you fid a scalable card let me know as it could certainly become an issue in the future as space becomes tight.

Take care,
slainte,
marisu

[Mark Palmos]

[marisu fronc] “so Axio, while intriguing to me personally, isn’t in the cards for our facility.”

heh heh, intended pun no?

for me, something like a digisuite or T2000 with dv input would be great… maybe sometime though with drive prices pretty low there dosent seem to be a hell of a lot of people grumbling for lower-than-DV bitrates… I would certainly use them, like this week I’m editing on a laptop (have to) and only have 30 gigs spare room, so have to be very careful what I digitise… and i prefer making those selections once I have captured almost everything, and not while capturing.

later,

xmark.

[Larry Sherwood]

Hello Editors*
Mark, I am sitting in a hotel room in Toronto, editing a wedding for a friend on my laptop, with PPro 1.5.1, using a LaCie 250GB firewire drive with all my footage on it. It works really well for me as all the footage is DV25. What type of editing and effects do you need to be able to do that would prevent you from attempting what I’m doing?

LS

Larry Sherwood
Sherwood Post Production
Austin, Texas
512 219-8721
larry@sherwoodpost.com

[Mark Palmos]

[Larry Sherwood] “What type of editing and effects do you need to be able to do that would prevent you from attempting what I’m doing?”

haa haa
bloody texan!
big drives are the answer to all problems!
this is the first time I am ever doing a paid job on Premier Pro, and am using a rented laptop because mine chose last week to kick the bucket. The reason I dont have a lacie firewire drive is because I didnt think of it, and I leave for this convention early Tuesday morning, not sure if the producer will be too happy about renting external drives too now that we had to rent the laptop. 40kb/f and a good solid recap would be far better for me.
catcha later, Axio man.
mark.

[Shane Chadder]

Mark

I use their multibridge product hooked up to the Betacam in a central location routed through BMs video hub to feed SDI to the suites. You can capture SDI signals in a DV codec with Decklink.

Shane

[Tim Kolb]

[marisu fronc] “To convert component betaSP to DV I’ve been using the SD connect box (about $800 US) – it’s been doing a great job for me for the last few months – e-mail me if you want more specific info.”

The SD Connect box has an MSRP of around $1900.00 USD. It has SDI I/O, analog component I/O, and FW I/O. (and balanced audio, RS422, BB input, etc…)

It can be used to capture DV or SD uncompressed and it works well with an external monitor.

As far as laptop duty, it works incredibly well but as a 2 RU box…it’s not really something you can toss in the briefcase.

TimK,

Kolb Syverson Communications,
Creative Cow Host,
2004-2005 NAB Post Production Conference
Premiere Pro Technical Chair,
Author, “The Easy Guide to Premiere Pro” http://www.focalpress.com
“Premiere Pro Fast Track DVD Series” http://www.classondemand.net