Hardware accelerator

[Harm Millaard]

In CS3 up to 16 cores are supported. Matrox RT or Canopus are no options. AJA is an expensive option but OK if you use HD-SDI ingest at 10 bits.

[Blast1]

There is a third option if you BlackMagic Design codecs and that is Intensity Pro which will give HDMI and Analog I/O with realtime preview on your ext video monitor

[Jimmy Brunger]

If it is a ‘hardware accelerator’ you’re after then the obvious one would be Matrox’s Axio products…I think you have to buy them as complete systems, but they are/were based around HP x8400 workstations and are blisteringly fast from what I’ve heard, but expensive when compared with a standard PPro system. You may be able to buy just the Axio box to add to your system – give them a call.

If it’s just a way to ingest/playout footage to tape and broadcast monitor previews you need then AJA/Blackmagic, etc are your thing. Like someone said above, if you use their codecs there are some realtime effects gained. But if CS3 can use upto 16-cores (is that right?!? What does CS2 support/utilise btw?) then just get yourself a top-end 8-core HP box with a fast RAID and you’ll be flying.

*Production Studio Premium CS2 / *Combustion 3 / Mocha v1
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Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Roland DS-5 monitors / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / Wacom Intuos 3 A4 / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Robert Hallion]

Thanks everyone for the comments, and Harm for yours here and on adobe.com.

It looks like just upgrading the actual system would be the way to go. I really don’t want a turnkey system from anyone, but maybe a newer HP would work out great.

Thanks again.