Blackmagic Decklink HD Extreme?

[Shawn Nelson]

Okay, some days you have to break out the stupid questions…

Can someone tell me, or point me to a resource so I can read, what advantage would my post workflow have if I bought a DeckLink HD Extreme and had no interest in capturing or exporting? That is, I have no need for connecting to decks or capturing or anything. I talked to the guys at the Blackmagic booth at NAB with this question and they did a bad job explaining it. (Side Note: Was it just me, or were a lot of the booth operators at NAB extremely unknowledgeable about anything except being an audible form of the brochure?).

I dug around at the Blackmagic site and it seems that FCP would work faster in HD effects and that somehow monitoring, via their HDMI out port to a consumer monitor, is better than just going out another graphics card.

Can anyone share their thoughts about how this card would impact a workflow that involved using FCP, Color, Motion and external monitoring using a consumer 1080p 42" LCD? Much appreciation.

[Steve Sherrick]

Shawn, I just sold this card a couple of weeks ago. Would have given you a great price on it. I upgraded to Kona 3. Here is why.

1. Monitoring. Dual HD-SDI outputs, component, composite, and SVideo outs. For being able to send to client monitors, color correction monitors, etc. Sure you can get something like the Matrox which will use your DVI port on your graphics card, but the Kona is way more flexible.

2. Cards can help optimize certain codecs in terms of real time playback. For example, the Kona 3 offers Dynamic RT hardware acceleration.

3. Capture from any source and output to virtually any broadcast deck. If you do enough post production for the broadcast industry, this is a must. You don't need to own the decks (rental) but you need a way to get stuff in and out.

4. The Kona 3 offers additional functionality like up and down conversion. Take SD up res to HD and vise versa. A very flexible solution.

Also, the Kona 3 does those conversions via hardware as opposed to BM which uses software.

So, those are just a few of the benefits.

[Steve Sherrick]

Can anyone share their thoughts about how this card would impact a workflow that involved using FCP, Color, Motion and external monitoring using a consumer 1080p 42" LCD? Much appreciation.

If you are after accuracy, I would suggest avoiding this combo. Consumer TVs have filtering in their path. If budget prevents a true broadcast solution such as a Sony BVM or ECinema style LCDs, then you will need to work really hard to get that consumer tv calibrated so you can make judgements in confidence. This is the piece of the puzzle that can get really expensive. Color correction requires a calibrated high end monitoring solution, proper lighting and wall colors in your room, and experienced eyes.

But, you can give it a shot. We're all in the same boat. We have limitations to what we can afford. So we do the best we can and make it work. Whatever you do, just try to come as close as possible to geting your monitoring correct because just as a bad mix room can lead to inaccurate audio downstream, same goes with color correction.

[ThomtheEditor]

Not to kick a dead horse, but our shop has one of each (kona3 and a blackmagic breakoutbox) so that post-savy clients can request either for their capturing and output needs. Both have their advantages and disadvantages as compared to each other (the HDMI on the BM is a nice feature but hardly ever used as we monitor everything via SDI).

As someone that uses both regularly i would have to say the kona is a beter card; however the BM is def the way to go in your specific situation Shawn. If you are doing no importing or exporting and just using the card as a monitor output AND that monitor is consumer grade (i.e. highest input capable is HDMI) then yes BM is the way to go for you. If however you foresee yourself doing your own deliverables and layoffs down the line then i would save up the extra money, get a professional grade monitor and go with the kona.

[Nicholas Shields]

Great question. If you do not plan to go in/out via sdi/component/etc., then the only advantage is the addition of some realtime effects and yuv vs. rgb monitoring. If you need to go to DBeta/HDCAM/etc. on the rare occasion, it is very common to send a quicktime file via ftp or hard-drive to a dupe house. The only challenge in this circumstances is ensuring your color is where you want it. By the way, we have aja cards and they are head-and-shoulders above bm. Good luck and good shooting.

Nick.

[Steve Sherrick]

Just keep in mind that on the BM, it doesn't seem capable of converting 720P 23.98 sequences to 59.94 on output. This was a sticking point for me, as I do a lot of 720 work that is edited at 23.98. Best to edit at 59.94 with BM unless you have to edit at 23.98.

Minor point, but must make sure these cards do what you need them to do.

[Michael Hastings]

How about using intensity or intensity pro. I just bought two of these because I also want to try the two camcorder HDMI switching capability but it also seems to output a lot of things from Final cut to the HDMI consumer monitor that I have pretty nicely. And it's less than $300 - about 350 if you want analog capture and output.

I was wondering what the difference would be to go to the Extreme. Don't care that much about HD-SDI out now either. For HD-SDI output I would send the files over to my HDCAM deck owner/red owner friend rather than drag his HDCAM deck here.

Also I have a few years old Samsung CRT HiDef TV with DVI input and wondered if that would be better or worse for color grading than the $00 Sharp Aquos LCD?

Opinions?

[Steve Sherrick]

If you are just looking for HDMI output, then yes the Intensity is the ticket. The variable though is the monitor. But if you learn it, know its response, you can probably get by with a consumer tv. Try to calibrate it the best you can.

[tillHavis]

Hi Steve ! I was just wondering will the Kona 3 provides 2K output to a monitor and deck, I am in Pal land and need a card that can output 25p in 2K, 1080, 720 and SD to a monitor and deck.
Also if I did want to use a HDMI or DVI-D monitor would the Kona 3 work with the Blackmagic HD Link Pro which can provide 2K monitoring via DV-D or do Kona provide a good 2K DVI-D/HDMI option.
Thanks

[Steve Sherrick]

Hi Steve ! I was just wondering will the Kona 3 provides 2K output to a monitor and deck, I am in Pal land and need a card that can output 25p in 2K, 1080, 720 and SD to a monitor and deck.
Also if I did want to use a HDMI or DVI-D monitor would the Kona 3 work with the Blackmagic HD Link Pro which can provide 2K monitoring via DV-D or do Kona provide a good 2K DVI-D/HDMI option.
Thanks

Kona3 works with HSDL(High Speed Data link) to provide 2K to and from the card. There is a 2K crop function that allows you to work with 1080 monitors. I run into a BM HDLink to view on a DVI-D monitor and it works. I haven't tried to install the 1D LUT software yet though because initially it found a conflict with it. But as a straight converter, it works fine.

For more information on how Kona 3 handles 2K, read this.

http://www.aja.com/pdf/support/AJA_2K_whitepaper.pdf