QUESTION ABOUT MULTIBRIDGE EXTREME

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

Multibridge (Extreme) doesn’t use FireWire but you could certainly use the Multibridge to convert the uncompressed component HD output of the HDV camera in to HD1080 digital video which could be captured to a supported compressed or uncompressed HD1080 timeline. The same is true with the current combination of Multibridge with any DeckLink HD series card.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design

[Robin]

Makes sense, but one more thing:

I’ve just done a project shot on HDV but finishing on mpeg2 4:3 format.

This involved a lot of contortionism at the end cropping the frame and rendering out in a different format, blah blah

Now, question is, could I take the component out of the Z1 plug it into the multibridge and caputure into FCP as say… 10-bit uncompressed, or photo-jpeg, or whatever. Will the multibridge do the conversion for me?

Or do I need to capture in as HDV and then render out as 10-bit or whatever I want it as for finishing?

Hope this makes sense.

I’m just trying to make sure that the Multibridge is the piece of kit I really need.

[Luke Maslen]

Hi Robin,

The current and next generation Multibridges all work in uncompressed formats. They can convert between analog and digital, and digital and analog, but they do not introduce compression. The Multibridge is supposed to retain maximum quality and hence purely processes uncompressed video.

[Robin] “could I take the component out of the Z1 plug it into the multibridge and caputure into FCP as say… 10-bit uncompressed, or photo-jpeg, or whatever.”

Yes, absolutely.

[Robin] “Will the multibridge do the conversion for me?”

Multibridge will convert from uncompressed component analog video and digitize it in to the HD-SDI or SD-SDI format as appropriate. The nature of SDI is that it is uncompressed. You can then use a Blackmagic Easy Setup in Final Cut Pro to determine whether the video will be captured as uncompressed 8 or 10-bit or in a compressed format such as PhotoJPEG. The choice is yours.

[Robin] “Or do I need to capture in as HDV and then render out as 10-bit or whatever I want it as for finishing?”

No, you don’t need to capture as HDV and then render to 10-bit or conform before finishing. However be aware that if you have already recorded your video to tape in the HDV format, you might achieve better quality capturing via Firewire. Please see the support note How to achieve maximum quality with HDV cameras for different scenarios where this might or might not be a good idea.

Regards,

Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design