Upgraded Capture Cards for FCP

[David Roth weiss]

Either the articles your read are wrong or you may have misinterpreted them. The Kona and BM cards are not hardware accelerator cards, they are capture cards. They cannot “help process more layers and or effects in Real TIME.”

However, they can be used to convert video to various formats on the fly while capturing that may, in some instances, give you better realtime performance, and that can enable you to edit more streams or layers. For example, you could capture uncompressed SD DVCPro50 or uncompresssed HD to DVCPro100, thereby substancially diminishing the system overhead necessary for those uncompressed formats and thereby substancially increasing layers and realtime capabilities.

Hope this helps…

DRW

[Walter Biscardi]

[1Videomilkman] “Would upgrading to a Kona 3 or BlackMagic Card in my G5 actually help process more layers and or effects in Real TIME?”

With MiniDV, no. With DVCPro HD and HDV, the Kona 3 can help as it takes the video scaling process off the processors which will allow a bit more real-time depending on the speed of your drives. This is what they mean by accelerated performace for those two formats and it does work.

The only way to improve the performance of straight DV editing is to increase the speed of your hard drives and processor, but especially the hard drives. Run a Fibre Channel array at 375MB/sec and you’ll see a tremendous RT boost over a FW 800 drive running at 100MB/sec.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[Gary Adcock]

[walter biscardi] “The only way to improve the performance of straight DV editing is to increase the speed of your hard drives and processor, but especially the hard drives. Run a Fibre Channel array at 375MB/sec and you’ll see a tremendous RT boost over a FW 800 drive running at 100MB/sec.”

here here!
Not to mention that it is even more important when working in HD to have the fastest storage hardware available.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Chicago, IL

[David Roth weiss]

[walter biscardi] “With DVCPro HD and HDV, the Kona 3 can help as it takes the video scaling process off the processors”

Walter,

What scaling is necessary for DVCPro HD?

DRW

[Gary Adcock]

[David Roth Weiss] “What scaling is necessary for DVCPro HD?”

DVCPROHD ( and HDV) are both horizontally scaled so that you get the most info passed onto the tape.
The analogy that i use is “digital anamorphic” where in wide screen film to get the 2.35 aspect ratio you added a lens on the camera that “squished” the widescreen to fit on 35mm film stock (what is basically a 4:3 frame size) then rotated 90degrees on the projector to play out that image to screen.

HD formats all do this when they lay to tape in camera, except that in a digital world that “anamorphic” is handled by changing the aspect ratio of the pixels instead of adding a lens to do the job. It is NOT physically increasing the image size, and this is done in all DVCPROHD, HDCAM, and 1080 HDV formats.

Only the Kona cards do this aspect ration correction (scaling) in hardware every other card does this in software and that reduces the number of real time layers you can work with.

gary adcock
Studio37
HD & Film Consultation
Post and Production Workflows
Chicago, IL

[Walter Biscardi]

[David Roth Weiss] “Walter,

What scaling is necessary for DVCPro HD?”

Ditto to what Gary said. For example, 720p DVCPro HD is 960×720 and is scaled up to 1280×720 during playback. The Kona takes the scaling opertion off the G5 processors so you get some additional RT.

Walter Biscardi, Jr.
https://www.biscardicreative.com

Director, “The Rough Cut”
https://www.theroughcutmovie.com

Now Posting “Good Eats” in HD for the Food Network

“I reject your reality and substitute my own!” – Adam Savage, Mythbusters

[David Roth weiss]

Thanks for “splaining” that fellas. I’m getting a film tomorrow that has been telecined to DVCPro100 and at least I’ll know a bit more about what’s happening under the hood, even though my BM card won’t be assisting in the operation.

DRW

[David Cooke]

Thanks a lot for all your helpful comments. For now, it’s time to save some money
for faster drives!