The Best Dollar for Dollar Decklink card

[Bob Zelin]

How can anyone answer this, if you don’t state your requirements. What will you do with the Quad, if you need analog inputs ?

Your question can only be answered if you state your requirements.

Bob Zelin

[George Sey]

I am at the moment using Intensity Pro on Five(5) Workstations doing everything video job worth doing. Sometimes the job takes longer and crashes but not bad. I am upgrading from Quad 9550 to Core i7 975 and want to try the high end or mid range cards. I want to know the advantages in using the high end cards. Do you get a higher quality, faster rendering and smooth playback without drop frames
Mercury Playback is cool but very limited in handling graphics and I rely more on the Intensity for my playback to BetacamSp

[Bob Zelin]

Do you get a higher quality, faster rendering and smooth playback without drop frames

REPLY –
if you use HD-SDI instead of analog component, you will get better quality. But some analog CAV HD signals look teriffic. It depends on your source. Faster rendering – no – FCP does not render fast, it currently does not use all the cores of the CPU. And smooth playback without drop frames has nothing to do with the capture card – that is your drive array. Do you have a fast RAID array ? If your drives are too slow, you can’t play back a complex sequence. It all depends on the resolution you are working at, how many streams, and the drives are your “bottleneck”. Not the capture card.

Bob ZElin

[Paolo Castellano]

Hello George,
the Intensity Pro is not a professional product; it can be used for betacam SP I/O, but its video quality is not its best feature, and it lacks of RS422 and balanced audio.
The best product for your needs may be the Decklink Studio 2, that features all connections you may need, at a very nice price.

If you get crashes and frame drops, they are not due to the Intensity Pro. It works very well. They are all due to your workstation and/or editing software.

Q9550 is very old, but Core i7 975 (Quad core) is not so new too. It was replaced by Ci7-X980 more than a year ago, while current high end CPUs are two six core models, Ci7-970 and Ci7-X990.

Best Regards,

Paolo Castellano
https://www.ivsEdit.com

Paolo.Castellano@ivs.it
———————–
“Post Fata Resurgo”

[George Sey]

Hello Paola and Zelin
Thanks a lot for your advice. I got the Ci7-970 with 16gb in an ASUS board and will order the Decklink Studio 2. But I can not find that card. Is it the DeckLink Studio – $695 or DeckLink Duo – $495

Thanks again

[Bob Zelin]

Decklink Studio $695. That is what you want.

Bob Zelin

[George Sey]

Thanks Bob
It is even on sale now 629.00