Black Magic Ultrastudio 4K TB2

[rolfwenzel]

Guys and Gals,

does anybody has experience with this 19" Capture Card?
For me it looks like a perfect grabbing solution for the new MacPros..

For me it's the question to buy some thunderbolt > PCI Chassis to use my old Phoenix SDI Cards or to invest the same money as in TB Chassis and got these grabbers...

I was not the biggest fan of these black magic cards in the past but this item looks indeed very good for me..

Any comments welcome

Hugs

Rolf

[kiwi]

I looked at these at the end of last year. I'm pretty sure they won't capture from the two SDI inputs simultaneously, I think it's an either or situation. Also not sure if you can have more than one on your system.
That said I've never tried them, just looked, so I would also be interested to know the pros and cons.

[mlorenz]

Hey Rolf,

I think Mike already has one of these. I know for sure that he has an ATEM 4K Procuction Studio.

Might be worth asking him.
We had same bad expierence with the internal Decklink 4K Capture Card. But I never had a chance to try the TB-Version.
Will try to get a demo-machine from my dealer here in munich and let you knwo the results.

Best

Marc

[5th Element]

I would also be curious to know if this works. also it has a TB loop thru so you theoretically could still use that output?.

[rolfwenzel]

So Gents,

I had a longer test with this Ultrastudio 4K just to realize, that I was never able to capture one single frame with that..

I'm not sure if this (brand-new) unit was broken out of the box or if the hdcp handling of the device is simply a nightmare, but I wasn't even able to get something into this with an ImagePro, neither over SDI nor HDMI, so to cut a long story short, I lost the faith I never had into this...

I did testing with an Aja IO4K and this item works like a flaw, it did from the first second what it should do.

From latency side it looks like being on the 1.5 - 2 frames which would be acceptable for me..

Also it's just one input into the Mac, the different inputs on the Aja can be switched by the software

Will do more field testing in production environment on the weekend and will let you know...

Best

Rolf

[kiwi]

Also it's just one input into the Mac, the different inputs on the Aja can be switched by the software


Am I correct in thinking this is 4 inputs into the box but only one input into Catalyst? rather than 4 simultaneous inputs into Cat?
Guessing the switching you refer to is done in the AJA software? or can you use something like 232 from Cat to switch the inputs on the box?

[5th Element]

Cool, well thanks for checking back in about this, I have never been that happy with black magic stuff for a while now, it always seems to work but only with a lot of hassle.

Glad to hear about the Aja, Latency isn't usually my biggest concern as much as just looking like a smooth capture without any frame dropping, or just without looking like it's an internet stream… which seems typical with external cards.
Hopefully this will give some life to external captures over thunderbolt 2 without an expansion chassis,

What machine were you testing this on?

[rolfwenzel]

The 4 BNC Connectors of the AJA are for the different SDI Formats, like 6G SDI where you might need 4 x BNC to get the full Signal.

So it's just 1 x SDI in in total (from SD-SDI up to 6G SDI)

I did the testing just with a Macbook Pro, But I think that a faster machine would not reduce the latency of less than 2 frames..

Best

Rolf

[Mr_P]

Thunderbolt 2 PCIe chassis + Active Silicon Phoenix D20PE4H cards seem to be the best option at the moment. (albeit not the cheapest)
Have been testing multiple input scenarios and results are very promising with TB2 and MacPro 6,1

S

[5th Element]

oh cool, well that is good news, I tried a black magic intensity extreme, it's TB1 I think, it seemed to work ok in capture mode with the black magic software , but in catalyst it was not nice looking, It seemed to have a lot of trails to it. Can't think of a better way to explain what I was seeing.
I heard the Aja is much better, I might have to spring for one of those. What PCIe chassis were you using? Sonnet?

[Mr_P]

Sonnet echo express 3 TB2 rackmount - although desktop is identical in smaller chassis

Apparently MAGMA are also good - but not tested one yet

S

[rolfwenzel]

Guys, I have to bring in an update regarding the AJA IO 4K:

It IS possible to use all 4 SDI Inputs of the IO4K with different sources..
It's a little trick or workaround how to tell Catalyst what is what.
First of all: All Inputs must have the same Resolution and framerate, e.g. full HD with 50fps
Now the AJA is set to get an Input Signal of 3840 x 2140 via 4 Quadrants (means over 4 SDI Inputs, each representing a Quarter of the Picture)
In Catalyst you can set now for every input a different quarter and got 4 different SDI Inputs running for this...

Just to let you know

Best

Rolf

[NevBull]

Thanks Rolf - useful info!

Nev.

[Spam Butterfly]

In lieu of a 4K transmission standard it seems that 4 x HD SDI is the way that Outside Broadcast companies seem to be dealing with this and Sony's latest top of the range 4K vision mixer is dealing with 4K in this way.
NB 6G SDI and 12G SDI are not 'standard', and Blackmagic only support Level B 3G SDI.

Hugh