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which decklink to buy??
Hi, Im looking at buying a decklink card for my DP 1.8 G5. There seems to be many choice / variations of these cards.
I will be editing TV commercials in SD. I will be needing to record the finished product to a digital beta deck for the local TV station. The commercials will be shot with on dvcam at this early stage, and future productions using either the sony HDR-FX1 or the panasonic DVX100. I am on a budget at this stage, but need advice on the right model. I want to be able to monitor in real time, my work in after effects on a tv monitor directly from the decklink.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can give me some good advice. I am fairly new to the DV world and spend many nights on these forums lately, so thought I’d try my luck. -
4 Replies
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So long as there will be no analog sources, you should get the plain vanilla Decklink card, which should be all you need. UNLESS, you need analog out for monitoring on a non-SDI monitor, then get the DL Pro
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You can’t use any of the DL cards with the 33MHz PCI bus on a DP 1.8GHz G5. This bus configuration has compatibility issues with several video I/O cards. It’s an Apple problem that probably won’t be fixed because of the new, improved PCI-X specification that will eventually replace PCI. I just found this out with my newly purchased DP 2GHz G5 and a DL SP card. You must use a G5 with PCI-X slots. Read this from the Blackmagic website:
The following configurations should not be used with DeckLink systems.
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My G5 is (im told) one of the ‘first revision’ DP 1.8s.
It is supposed to have the PCiX slot and it does have the extra ram slots as in the DP 2.0 and up models, that can take upto 8 gig.
So am I right in thinking a DL will run in my PCi x slot ok? I have the higher model G5 video card as well that was in the DP 2 & 2.5 models. Will this card interfere with the decklink?
OR, should I be looking at a different card altogether?Thanks again.
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Hi Jody,
Adam and Franklin have given you good advice.
It sounds as though your G5 has PCI-X slots so you should have no problems using DeckLink cards. If you want to make sure, please see the following technical note:
https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=76As Adam mentioned, if you simply need to connnect to a Digibeta, then the base model $295 DeckLink card is all you need. It also has a spare SDI monitoring port which you can connect to an SDI monitor. These monitors can be expensive and many people prefer to use low cost analog video monitors. That’s why we make the $595 DeckLink Pro which is similar to the base model DeckLink card. It can connect to your Digibeta but also has analog video monitoring output. This can be switched between YUV component and composite analog video output. This card also includes genlock in case you need to lock to an external reference signal. My guess is this would be the card for you.
Your Mac is also capable of HD work. If you are going to work in HD, then the equivalent HD cards are the $595 DeckLink HD and the $1495 DeckLink HD Pro 4:2:2 respectively.
In regards to potential interference from your graphics card, this is not an issue for digital connections such as the SDI connections between the DeckLink card and your deck. It is only an issue for analog components and could potentially affect the analog video monitoring output of the DeckLink Pro card. Graphics cards from NVIDIA are shielded and do not cause interference with analog components. There is a technical note about this at https://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=66 which should help you to avoid any such issues.
Regards,
Luke Maslen
Blackmagic Design
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