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what card to get?
im attempting to get a card for my Power Mac g5 so that i can online my FCP 5 projects from Digi-Beta. Is there a particular card that is best? Also, can i use regular Lacie Hard Drives or do i need to get a Raid or something. I am also displaying on SD 19″ monitors…
thanks in advance,
carey
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2 Replies
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There are a number of good, reliable SDI cards available. The cheapest is probably the Decklink standard card, which is very cost effective (a few hundred dollars) and will allow you to capture embedded audio as well as SDI and then lay back to digibeta. If you think you may need a card that allows analogue/AES audio inputs, or analogue video in/out (particularly YUV or composite output for an analogue monitor) then consider a more expensive Decklink card (see http://www.decklink.com).
The Kona cards are excellent as well, particularly if you want to do HD work in the future – see http://www.ajavideo.com for more details. AJA also offer an external capture solution, the IO, which has one key advantage of being useable with a laptop to capture SDI.
To capture SDI, you will need a faster disk array. The cheapest option (and a robust and reliable one IMHO) is a firewire 800 drive, such as the excellent G-raid from http://www.g-technology.com – This will easily and reliably cope with 10-bit uncompressed. Other drives are available, obviously, and many recommendations are available on this forum. More recently SATA arrays have become popular – They are fast arrays, and have a key advantage of using cheaper SATA drives than SCSI Arrays.
If you want a faster solution, use a SCSI or Fibre-Channel RAID array, which will give you more speed, and the potential to have redundant drives or mirrored solutions for safety. They require a SCSI or FC card for your G5, such as those from Adaptec. Well regarded makes for SCSI/FC arrays include Huge (now Ciprico??) or Medea and many others.
Find a good reseller, and good luck!
Ben
Editec Broadcast Editing Ltd
EVS and FCP specialists
Current Mac systems All Dual 2.7Ghz with Kona 2 and Digital Voodoo cards, 6Gb Ram, Sapphire, SCSI320 Medea and Huge Arrays.FCP projects include Sky TV coverage of the Ryder Cup and US Open Golf – Live OB specialists. Edit/slomo vehicle.
http://www.editec.co.uk -
thanks alot ben for the thorough advice!!!
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