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Declink, ExpressCard and MacBook Pro, Luke?
Hey, all.
I’m writing this message, with all respect, after the suprise of reading Luke’s comment on ExpressCard for MBPs as something they haven’t considered seriously yet. I must admit that, given BMD’s track of innovation, I imagined this product as something surely well advanced in the development stage. The IBC news dissapointed me a bit, I have to say: the holy grail of moving to a laptop as the main production machine is now here with Dual Core processors, more or less acceptable graphics cards, etc. The missing link is the I/O device!The AJA IO is not a good option, being SD only. But if it remains the only existing solution we might have to consider it.
Luke’s comment suggests some doubts about whether ExpressCard has the bandwidth, and also about the practical aspects of hard disk speeds, etc. Again, as a Decklink user for years, it dissapointed me a bit to learn that not even basic research has been done on this. Especially when an OEM developer announced they are finishing an SD/HD SDI product of this kind:
https://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.htmlUnfortunately, while they say it is compatible with FCP, it doesn’t have Decklink’s top notch support for AE, Motion, Photoshop, etc. But that’s software, not hardware. Also, a small BOB would be needed for us mortals who don’t have SDI inputs on our monitors, right?
Let’s see. AFAIK, ExpressCard *IS* PCI Express. A full 1.5 Gbps pipel on a small form factor. So, I understand that 4:2:2 SD/HD is doable. Maybe not 4:4:4, but seriously, most of us could live without that on a laptop. Sometime ago I wrote a message to Decklink support about whether an ExpressCard Decklink would be possible. “It’s doable”, was the reply that estimulated my imagination. I thought that reply meant: we’re working on it. Maybe it was just that: “it’s doable” 🙂
It’s true that storage for uncompressed SD or HD is a problem. BUT…. something that could offer DV50/Uncompressed SD/DVCPRO HD monitoring on a laptop would be a dream. And that’s totally doable, in terms of disk power. Also, many of us, use Decklink produts to monitor motion graphics and compositing applications (AE, Combustion, Shake, Motion) . These usually play previews from RAM, not the hard disks. So, in this case, uncompressed SD/HD monitoring is completey possible.
I imagine there’s a huge market for this product.
Any comments?All the best!
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
5 Replies
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Adolfo –
This product does not currently work, and unfortunately, we have to make a living. Blackmagic has been a HUGE innovator for years now, revolutionizing the price structure of our industry. Remember, even AJA had nothing until Grant came along. And we all used to buy AVID’s before FCP. And none of us would have taken FCP seriously, had it not been for Grant and Digital Voodoo, which led to the AJA Kona SD card, which led to Blackmagic and AJA, where they currently are today – revolutionizing our industry. And they are not innovative ????????Adolfo – you have great ideas – I think that YOU should go into manufacturing, and help release this product. You will become rich, and help all of us with our future products.
Bob Zelin
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I heard Griffin Tech was about to release an SDI iPod adaptor to capture video directly from digibeta! ; )
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Two things I don’t understand: 1) The (rough) irony and 2) the not needed defense of Decklink and Grant, for whom I have complete gratitude. I mean, my whole post can be read as an energic request for a company I love. You are defending but nobody is attacking! I was more like saying to a friend: “come on”!
You have a situation where customers are asking, and the technology is there, so being Decklink such geniuses with innovation and non walked paths, I believed 1+1=2. Again, the irony (near agression) is really not needed. And neither is defending people I like and admire so much.
All this for Bob, who (while in a bit rude way), has his points. The other comment is plain silly. What’s your point, Paul? The Kona SD was in a not distant past attached to 800 Mhz G4s with dead slow, plain PCI and you ridiculize the idea of connecting a Decklink to a Dual Core, Vector accelerated 2 Ghz computer with a portable PCI Express bus?Interesting note for your bad irony pleasure: The kind of H.264 video the iPod plays would have caused a 800 Mhz G4 (the one with the Kona SD) a hard time, but an iPod plays it wihout coughing nowadays. Keep laughing at that.
Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com -
Hi Adolfo,
Thanks for your encouragement and we do hear you 🙂
We receive a lot of great suggestions from customers and our engineers have a lot of fun turning some of these ideas in to reality. We’d like to make them all today but development takes time and sometimes we are aware of technology changes in the near future which influence the order in which we develop products.
We’ve received a few similar requests to yours from other customers but we’ve also received many requests for other kinds of products too. It’s going to be fun sorting through the requests and working out what to do next. However right now we just want to release the Intensity and DeckLink HD Studio and then we can move on to new ideas 🙂
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Thank you so much for your reply, Luke! There’s a MBP here for a Decklink product 🙂
All the best!Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires – Argentina
https://www.adolforozenfeld.com
adolfo(AT)adolforozenfeld.com
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