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Researching Capture Cards
I posted this in the Final Cut forum earlier today but thought I’d get everyone’s opinion here as well.
Like all of In-Sync’s loyal customers, we found ourselves completely screwed when they suddenly (but not surprisingly) closed their doors last year. Now after months of debate and research we’re finally ready to bite the bullet and switch to Final Cut Pro. The only question that remains is the choice of capture card.
We currently work with DVCPRO and BetaSP but are adding HDV to the mix when we upgrade our editor. Most of our projects are corporate and non-profit with some local commercial production as well. I don’t anticipate having to output to HDV anytime soon but we want to be able to offer it as an option.
I need a card that can capture YUV Component, Composite and S-Video, as well as HDV over firewire; real-time playback directly from the timeline using the same connections listed above (minus firewire); a card that is stable during edits that are layer/effect-heavy; and most importantly a card that won’t require my boss to take out a second mortgage.
Right now we rely on Pinnacle’s Targa 3000. It’s unstable, unreliable, and a complete waste of our money. With that being said, T3K was the only card out there that met our needs.
Any suggestions?
Ben Henson
Tyler Creative -
3 Replies
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We have two Dual G5 systems with Decklink Extreme cards. We are very happy with the speed and stability of these cards. We moved from a Cinewave to the Decklinks because of problems with the stability of this card. The Cinewave had more on board processing power and did things like MPEG encoder much faster (when it worked), but most jobs took longer in the end because of the number of reboots required.
The Decklink Extreme does not support S-Video, but does support YUV, composite and SDI I/O. YUV and composite I/O is over shared connectors so depending on your configuration this may give you some problems. Firewire is handled through the MACs firewire ports.
Trevor Kinsey,
Technical Producer,
CVP Film and Television,
Melbourne,
Australia -
you should simply buy a Blackmagic Decklink Extreme, based on your VTR requirements, and be ASHAMED that you were an In Sync Speed Razor user. Bow in shame right now (and if this offends the Blackmagic forum, please post on the Aurora or AJA forum or AVID forum, and I will shame you on these forums).
The Blackmagic Decklink Extreme is a no brainer.
Bob Zelin
ps – please remember that the HDV VTR’s have the ability to down convert to analog Y Pb Pr, which the Decklink Extreme can handle with no problems.
Bob Zelin
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I realise that you are looking at a dif OS and BM option but I have been trying to run a Black Magic Multibridge and decklink setup on a Win platform with Prem Pro for over a year now and find it unusable. I need to reinstall the drivers every time start up, there are problems with audio driver install, Prem Pro drivers, It loses video input on capture of perfectly good source.
It is so bad that I have bought a cheap DV card with an S video input to capture off my Beta SP deck and take my final edit on a removable HD to a rented suite for playout.
I loved Speed Razor and realy miss my Video Toaster.
They were both faultless without needing a degree in computor sciences.
I feel I made a big mistake buying BlackMagic and would not like you to go through what I have.
My advice is stay away!
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