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I/O Card + Deck? Need advice.
Alright, so I’m looking to buy a new I/O card and a deck. Here’s the rundown (a long story short):
I’ve got some footage that’s about to be broadcasted–but my company doesn’t want to spend so much money constantly sending our footage to third-parties that convert our footage to Beta tapes and do closed-captioning, so we’re looking to buy our own equipment.
I’m still a little new to Beta tapes and all of that stuff so my questions are:
– What kind of I/O Card do I want (or need)?
– What or which kind of deck do I need?
– Any other little thingies I need?Some hardware specs of my machine:
iMac
Intel Core i7
3.7 Ghz
16 GB RAM
[1GB] AMD Radeon HD 6970M (PCIe)Any help would be appreciated!
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16 Replies
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If you’re gonna work with beta cam you’re very lucky since they were phased out by digital beta cams decades ago so you won’t have a plenty of choice of them on the market. You need the one capable of recording VTC. Without this function you won’t pass QT.
As to I/O card, again, on iMac you can use only those pluggable via FW so your choice is not that great.Sony PMW-EX3, Canon Mark II 5D, FCS3 in Moscow
http://www.mokaeff.com -
Like I said, I’m still quite new to all this.
Do you know of any Firewire compatible cards? I’ve been looking at some Blackmagic cards.
As for the tapes, The studio requires either Beta SP, Beta SX, or Digibeta. I’m trying to find some hardware that will allow me to get my footage onto -any- of these three formats.
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Out of three you mentioned Digibeta is most expensive. I can’t say much about I/O cards because I work only with aja and so far so good (the last 5 yrs). AJA markets external io card but I personally find the price tag not that attractive.
By functionality aja, matrox, and black magic give you approximately the same level of confidence. I think you must justify your decision by sheer economics and your personal likes or dislikes.Sony PMW-EX3, Canon Mark II 5D, FCS3 in Moscow
http://www.mokaeff.com -
You’re on an iMac? Sorry, nothing will work for you. There is the AJA IO HD, that connects via firewire, but takes over the firewire bus. Meaning you cannot use firewire drives. And without firewire drives, you cannot capture on an iMac. USB doesn’t work for video….the internal hard drive won’t.
YOu need a Mac Pro or a MacBook Pro (17″ with Express34 slot) so you have the slots needed to add a capture device.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Shane,
With all due respect I disagree.
On iMac he can use internal drive for capture.
Secondly, he will output material, not capture, so your whole point about FW gets irrelevant.
Thirdly, I can capture on external drive connected via USB, it works without issue for years on my mac pro. I’m sure it’ll do the same way on iMac.Sony PMW-EX3, Canon Mark II 5D, FCS3 in Moscow
http://www.mokaeff.com -
[Everest Mokaeff] “On iMac he can use internal drive for capture.”
Not reliably. SOme people can capture fine without dropping frames. Others cannot. It is about 35% reliable…meaning 65% of the people who try cannot. I cannot. Even with a 7200 RPM drive. Because it contains the OS, and the computer constantly accesses the OS. When it goes looking for a system resource, it will pause capture and BOOM, dropped frames. It can be done, but not reliably. And I demand reliability.
[Everest Mokaeff] “Secondly, he will output material, not capture, so your whole point about FW gets irrelevant.”
Wrong. Again, even with output, the system drive is not a good option. It will still drop frames even on output if it needed to access a system resource. Not fun when you are 19 min into a 22 min output. Again, not reliable.
[Everest Mokaeff] “Thirdly, I can capture on external drive connected via USB, it works without issue for years on my mac pro. I’m sure it’ll do the same way on iMac.”
You are rare. How many posts on the Cow do you see with people who cannot capture without dropping frames, and they are using USB drives. It might work for some, just like the system drive, but not for everyone. This one is even worse than System drive. Only about 10% of the people can get this to work.
When doing professional outputs…captures…I demand relibility. iMacs do not offer that with an IO device. They can edit fine, but not capture/output via capture card 100%.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Obviously you’re pretty good at math but I don’t see where your statistics come from. Please provide a link if you can.
I stick to my guns: You can use iMac for outputing to deck. Even with HD footage on boot disk you have enough leeway to do that. Though I would not recommend using iMac in full circle production.Sony PMW-EX3, Canon Mark II 5D, FCS3 in Moscow
http://www.mokaeff.com -
My math comes from YEARS of experience on these forums, plus troubleshooting for post houses and various productions. Seeing what people are writing in with issues about. It’s all a rough ballpark, but know that it isn’t 100% with internal drives, or USB drives.
[Everest Mokaeff] ” You can use iMac for outputing to deck. Even with HD footage on boot disk you have enough leeway to do that. “
I’d never trust my final outputs for this. Have you tried? Beyond HDV/DV? Didn’t work with DVCPRO HD for us… and I did have a client with the IO HD and an iMac. Nothing but issues. moved to my MacPro, all went fine.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
I’m arrogant bastard – never touched iMac or mac mini for work.
Final output doesn’t require a leap of faith – if you dropped frame while editing to tape process will abort. Other things like field issues, for example, have nothing to do specifically with iMacs or Mac Pros.
I read lots of posts over here and some other places – people always have problems there where I never have had a single issue of that kind or magnitude.Sony PMW-EX3, Canon Mark II 5D, FCS3 in Moscow
http://www.mokaeff.com -
[Everest Mokaeff] “Final output doesn’t require a leap of faith – if you dropped frame while editing to tape process will abort.”
Which means you have to start over. And that is no way to work. What if it drops frames a lot? that means outputting over and over and over again. Not the best plan…horrible in fact.
[Everest Mokaeff] “Other things like field issues, for example, have nothing to do specifically with iMacs or Mac Pros.”
No one mentioned field issues.
[Everest Mokaeff] “I read lots of posts over here and some other places – people always have problems there where I never have had a single issue of that kind or magnitude.”
You’re special. That’s you. But you see that it is a HUGE problem for other people. I don’t have issues with my system drive either. But I don’t recommend it because it is very unreliable for most people. It’s horrible practice to say “Hey, do this. It works for me…not for a LOT of people, but it does for me, so you could be fine. Or not. But it works sometimes…for some people.” No…gotta recommend what is rock solid. Reputation is everything.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def
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