Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup
by manbart
on
Oct 7, 2007 at 2:52:03 pm
I'm thinking of getting a Decklink HD Extreme or possibly Multibridge Pro.
My upgraded machine is
Quad Core Extreme QX6850 Quad-Core, 3.00GHz, 1333MHz FSB,
ZALMAN, CNPS9700 Copper CPU Cooler
ASUS, P5K3 Deluxe/WiFi-AP, LGA775, Intel P35, 1333MHz FSB,
OCZ, 2GB (2 x 1GB)DDR3 1600MHz CL (7-6-6-20)
EVGA NVIDIA 8800 GTS 640MB
Proposed Video for Decklink or Multibridge:
2 external G=TECH ESATA. Each with two Hitachi 7200 500G drives, with Sonnet Tempo SATA E4P. This has four ESATA connectors and hardware raid. Is this adequate for uncompressed HD with Decklink or Multibridge?
With this setup how would realtime performance be in Premiere.
Is Multibridge a stable reliable setup?
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by Bob Zelin on Oct 7, 2007 at 5:07:40 pm
you can BARELY do uncompressed HD with 5 SATA drives stripped RAID 0 (like the Cal Digit S2VR product), least not with 2 drives (you will get dropped frame errors). If you have a limited budget, you will not be doing uncompressed HD - you will be doing DVCProHD or ProRes422 (and 2 drives are fine for this). If you have the budget for uncompressed HD projects, you have the budget for a larger drive array. Products like the Cal Digit S2VR will be the cheapest thing you can get away with, but if you want to actually work, the Cal Digit HDPro, or the Dulce DuoQuad (or a minimum of EIGHT SATA drives RAID 0) are what you need to do a REAL project, that will not give you dropped frames 30 minutes into the playback.
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by manbart on Oct 7, 2007 at 8:43:31 pm
Hi,
I really appreciate your responses. I've been doing digital video for a long time going way back to the Miro DC1, then the Bravado card, DV Storm, now Liquid Edition Pro. I also recently upgraded my Premiere version to CS3 and have been playing with that.
Yep, I figured the GSATA Raid probably wouldn't cut it for uncompressed 10 bit SDI. It does however work very nicely of course for HD, and also for uncompressed SD. My longest project has been 50 minutes, most are substantially shorter. I have a Panasonic AG-DVC 30 with a Sennheiser ME66 Mic, and a newly acquired Canon HV20 with a Rhode video Mic. The past five or six years I've been using video to document my historical and genealogical research in Eastern Europe. I use motion video, but also quite a few stills that I often pan or zoom. I like nice titles. I often have music in the background, narration, sometimes the clips original sound. I deliver on DVD (at some point I suppose it will likely be Blueray, and I've also done some internet streaming in WMV format.
I could probably swing something like the CalDigit S2VR HD 1.6TB. Their information says it supports 10 bit Uncompressed HD 1080/60i, 8 bit Uncompressed SD. It's $1,700. A $4,000 drive system is another matter. It's hard to justify. I could just use the JPEG 2000 Codec, and put away my pennies for a $4,000 drive solution, or B&H I think has 6 months no payments! Were there's a will there's a way. Just not sure it's worth it. Would this system really give me that much more quality and valuable functionality, than much cheaper alternative like Edius NX Express? Also is my system, specs posted above in this thread, the right system for Multibridge Pro, other than the drive system obviously not being up to the task?
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by Gene Colburn on Oct 7, 2007 at 10:28:03 pm
Yeah, your system specs look like they can run Multi-Bridge just fine. Unless you are planning on doing a lot of multi-layer and green screen compositing, BM MJPEG2000 codec is about as good as it gets for compressed video. If you are going to DVD, Blueray or web, it is a perfect inexpensive solution. And save your drive money for driving in Europe. If I didn't have so much money in raid storage, and hardware I'd join you.
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by manbart on Oct 7, 2007 at 11:07:22 pm
Makes sense to me. I wonder what kind of real time performance I'd get in Premiere with Decklink or Multibridge, with their codec and high end quad core 3.0 extreme. Ordinarily real time in Premiere stinks. It's vastly poorer than Edius 4.5 or even Liquid Edition. One could go with something like the Matrox RT x2 in Premiere. It does good real time and greatly excelerates rendering, but it's a huge full size card that gets remarkably hot. It's very picky about your hardware configuration, and as far as I can tell a lot people have trouble with it, so no thanks. To me Edius 4.5 with the NX Express card really has a lot going for it. It's got great real time in Edius, mixed format timeline,hardware exceleration of various functions like resolution and aspect ratio conversion, excelerated Mpeg timeline export and other functions. It has realtime full resolution component HD and SD video output, and it filters and does noise reduction for analog input. The Edius Broadcast upgrade supports JPEG 2000. Is JPEG 2000 better than Canopus HQ? Finally people who are actually using Edius NX Express will overwhelmingly tell you that it works, it's remarkably stable, and Edius gets significantly better with each release. I think it's hard to beat Edius NX Express. I have Premiere CS3. In the eight or ten hours I've used it it's crashed three times on my machine which is remarkably stable and runs everything else virtually flawless. Liquid edition Pro has crashed about three times in three years. . that's how stable it is. I've used the Edius trial for a couple of weeks and it hasn't crashed yet. Premiere just isn't as stable. Any thoughts?
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by manbart on Oct 7, 2007 at 11:23:36 pm
I think right now 10 bit uncompressed only makes sense and provides some value for people doing certain type of work. Once something far closer to the desktop standard for storage has the throughput to support it, then it may be a different story.
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by Gene Colburn on Oct 8, 2007 at 12:21:35 am
[manbart]"Makes sense to me. I wonder what kind of real time performance I'd get in Premiere with Decklink or Multibridge, with their codec and high end quad core 3.0 extreme."
Decklink and AJA are basically converter I/O boxes. They do little hardware acceleration like Matrox, Edius, Avid etc. They merely give you ability to work with their I/O configs in Premiere. Editing is basically native Premiere, with SDI, HDSDI, and YUV component rather than just IEEE1394 or HDV which is all that Premiere supports without hardware I/O.
That being said with fast multi-core cpu, fast raid storage, and graphic card, editing can be very efficient. Also very stable. All effects are Premiere or plug ins that are native to Premiere, and hardware independent.
I don't know about Edius HQ codec. It looked good at NAB last year, but don't use it here.
I don't know why your system is crashing with CS3. If you start from scratch, clean install and latest drivers, prior to CS3 install - you should be ok. Are you on WinXP Pro or Vista? How are you setting up your scratch drives?
Re: Decklink HD Extreme or Multibridge Pro Setup by manbart on Oct 9, 2007 at 12:21:55 am
Hi,
The more I learn about the Multibridge Pro the more I'm inclined to purchase it, as an alternative to something like the Matrox Rt X2 or the Edius NX Express. All three cost pretty much the same give or take a few hundred bucks. My plan would be to use it with their codec and perhaps uncompressed SD if my two drive raid o system will do it. I'd think of the uncompressed HD as an upgrade path. What this would give me now is great IO options in Premiere CS3, terrific external monitoring on an SD and HD monitor. The Black Magic Codec which I understand is as good as you get. And I have the upgrade path to capturing and editing 10 bit HD. I think it makes the thing a little future proof vs RT X2 or Edius NX Express. The Black Magic information says that the Multibridge Pro does real time in Premiere CS3. It says, "Real time effects: Adobe
