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throwing out the Matrox card – time for DeckLink
Hi guys. I’m a motion graphic designer who has decided that’s it’s finally going to happen. After 2 years of struggling with the Matrox RTX.100 I’ve decided that it’s time to just throw it out. I’m tired of the constant weird/buggy/unstable/crashshing/workspace corrupting behavior that this card has displayed, and the the utter lack of support by Matrox is something I will never forgive. If you’ve ever been over to the “Cone of Silence” Matrox likes to call it’s support forum you’ll know what I’m talking about.
So here’s the thing. I use AE 6.5, Photoshop CS2, Audition 1.5, Encore DVD 1.5, Combustion 4.0, 3DS Max 7.5 as my main apps that would ever need to interact with a video in/out card. I also use a Sony DSR-20 and a Sony NTSC Broadcast monitor. I run Windows XP, on a P4 3.2 with 2gb ram. Currently the Matrox card will give me a firewire out (which plugs directly to my deck)and a breakout box which has S-Video in/out and composite in/out.
I’ve always been curious about the DeckLink cards and after finally reading the amazing support responses in this forum, I’m left with no doubt that Black Magic Design is the company I will invest my money into. So now the question is which card and what about the Multibridge? At the moment I only capture DV and analogue as that’s what my deck and VCR/DVD player will output. I’m about to rent some office space from a client who is a large producer here in Ottawa so I will always have access to the edit suites if I need any HD captured. From looking at the specs sheets, it would appear that the DeckLink SP is what I need. If I’m making a mistake with this assumption can anyone enlighten me as to why?
Sean Cusson
Q media designWould this
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5 Replies
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Ditto my experience with Matrox. This goes back several years ago and I finally made the same decision you came to. I’m currently looking at one of the Multibridge products. They won’t be out fro a few weeks but it provides both SD and HD monitoring at the same time and will do some HD/SD downconversion as well.
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I too have been frustrated by Matrox and I love the Decklink products- but they might not even be necessary for your purposes. You probably want to continue to ingest and output using DV, so the Decklink would only be used for preview purposes, right? Couldn’t you just take advantage of the live firewire output features of Premiere, AE, & Photoshop and use your deck as a DV to Analog converter connected to your preview monitor? I don’t know about 3DS Max’s capabilities (if it has a similar firewire output) but I’m pretty certain the Decklink products won’t help you with that either. Assuming you don’t already have firewire built-in, a 1394 card is a lot more stable (and cheaper) than a Decklink card.
My 2 cents
Sean
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Hi Sean,
I’m glad to see you are looking at DeckLink cards. The DeckLink SP will enable you to connect to analog hardware via either component or composite analog video (not S-video). It also includes XLR analog audio connections. In addition, DeckLink SP provides an SDI monitoring output (video + audio) which you could use with an SDI monitor or for output to an SDI-equippped deck.
If you need to connect to some SDI (digital) and some analog decks, then the DeckLink Extreme would be worth considering as it includes both kinds of connections.
Having said that, all your work appears to be via Firewire and I’m not sure that you even need a capture card. Presumably you were using the Matrox card for previewing on a broadcast monitor after capturing material via Firewire and you could certainly do that with the DeckLink card. DeckLink cards do not use Firewire but Firewire PCI cards cost as little as US$30 (eg LaCie 3 Port FireWire PCI Card) and you can use one of those for DV capture and playback.
You should also be able to capture and output to the DSR-20 deck via uncompressed composite analog video but I don’t think that would be worthwhile as you would lose quality with the compression/decompression cycles between uncompressed and DV as well as going from DV to composite analog and back again.
The current Multibridge SD includes a DeckLink Plus card so you don’t have to buy a DeckLink card. The Multibridge does the conversion between analog-digital and digital-analog and should connect to your DVD and VHS VCR. The DeckLink Plus allows you to capture and playback the digitized material from these analog devices. The Multibridge SD will enable you to connect to a whole range of SDI and analog hardware. It has more inputs and outputs than any one DeckLink card and is a great solution when making the transition from analog workflows to digital and back again.
The new Multibridge units with PCI Express have many addtional features and will not use a DeckLink card. They will instead plug straight in to the PCI Express slot of a computer which keeps the price down. They might be more than you need for now unless you are moving to HD and a DeckLink SP or DeckLink Extreme might be perfectly adequate for your needs.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design -
Thanks to everyone for all the replies. I agree that for most of what I do, the firewire card would be fine (which I have) but I also want real time editing within Premiere. As well, what I don’t want to do is give up the flexibility I currently have with the Matrox card. Quite often I have to capture from a DVD player or VCR (groan), so I need the composite input option. I also need the option of printing to tape. One thing I wasn’t aware of was that the DeckLink cards do not have firewire support. That may be a problem since the Sony DSR-20 only allows for composite, S-Video and firewire (which is exactly what the Matrox card has). Another feature I have gotten used to is the Matrox Workspace option in Premiere Pro. If I start a new job in Premiere Pro, I choose the Matrox work space which then uses the Matrox real time effects as well as capturing using the Matrox codec regardless of wether it’s captured from firewire or composite. How would this workflow change using the DeckLink card? Since I would still need to capture from Firewire (as it’s a better quality than composite) but want the real time effects in Premiere. If I start a DeckLink job and capture through Firewire, will it still recognize the DeckLink codec or do I have to strictly capture from the card to have this option? How about exporting? The Matrox card will export real time AVI and DVD. Does the DeckLink do this?
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Luke, in the Multibridge manual it says you add a Decklink card for the world’s highest quality editing sytem. In your post you say the Multibridge with PCI-X will not use a card. Are these two different units or do you need a card to work with the Multibride?
Jim McNally
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