HDLink/LCD or SD-SDI/CRT??

Norm_Li

Norm_Li

Well-known member
I purchased the Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro card and trying to complete my system here - both monitoring and harddrive set-up.

Should I use the HDLink and a nice LCD monitor to view playback/capture footage of HD uncompressed OR buy a Sony CRT monitor like http://cgi.ebay.com/Sony-PVM-14L2-Professional-Monitor-with-600-Lines_W0QQitemZ130002528934QQihZ003QQcategoryZ21517QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
and use the SD-SDI 4:2:2 input adaptor with that to view HD/SD footage?

Would I notice a huge difference in the quality of SD-SDI 4:2:2 and a CRT without this input adaptor?

Would HDLink really look a lot sharper and crisper on an LCD monitor compared to a CRT SD production monitor?

Thanks,

Norm
 
I would just get a JVC 17" HD CRT broadcast monitor (they only make one, easy enough to find) with the optional RGB/component board, will be around $2200-$2500. I have the 19" model and LOVE it - it does PAL, NTSC, 720p, 1080i, even true 1080p (no 3:2 pulldown added). If you want accurate color monitoring, you need an accurate color monitor, and LCD is not it. Period.

The HDLink/LCD solution is great for seeing detail and focus, as LCD is a sharper image, but CRT has better blacks and color reproduction sensitivity.

-mike from hdforindies.com
 
Hi Mike,

Thanks for the advice.

I have one more important question to ask and you're the one who knows best how to answer I guess!

I just received my Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro PCI-e card today.

However, I know there are a lot of other things I need in order for this card to work properly as a 10bit uncompressed 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 HD capture/playback station.

Being on a fairly tight budget, would purchasing an external eSATA 5-bay enclosure with 5 500GB SATA II 7200RPM drives do the trick to have smooth playback/capture of 10bit uncompressed SD/HD? Or would I HAVE to purchase
a SCSI to SATAII 12-bay enclosure with say, 12 320GB SATA II harddrives, a SCSI PCI-X dualchannel RAID controller, and a motherboard that supports all of this?

My current set-up is:

- Pentium D Dualcore 3.0 Ghz overclocked to 3.75Ghz
- Asus P5LD2 Deluxe Motherboard 2x PCI-e slots and no PCI-X slots, eSATA external port and onboard RAID controller
- 4GB Crucial Rendition DDR2 RAM
- Nvidia 6800GT Video card PCI-e in one PCI-e slot
- Matrox Parhelia APVe PCI-e in 2nd PCI-2 slot
- Blackmagic Decklink HD Pro PCI-e card
- 1x Samsung 213T 21.3" Samsung 4:3 Monitor and 2x Viewsonic 19" VA1912wb monitors

Could you guide me in the right direction on how I can effectively use my Blackmagic Card to capture/playback uncompressed HD 10bit with the most cost-effective upgrades? I'm willing to spend about $2000 on more upgrades before this gets a little too expensive for me after all the other recent purchases I made.

Thanks so much!

Norm
 
How high a data rate should we be sustaining with capture/playback of 10bit uncompressed HD in 4:2:2 and 4:4:4? 250MB/s? 300MB/s?
 
I just found out that it's around 187MB/s for a sustained rate and may be higher. 187MB/s is considered borderline.

Question though, does a eSATA port multiplier enclosure such as:

http://www.cooldrives.com/saiipomu55hd.html

actually sustain a rate of 3Gbs (or 375MB/s) when all 5 drives in the enclosure are all bottlenecked into one eSATA port from the enclosure to the back of the host controller or host eSATA port on the motherboard? Isn't the 5 drives sharing the 3Gbs throughput?

If not, then a cheap eSATA Port Multiplier enclosure like this with 5x 500GB 7200 rpm Seagate Baracuda 16MB cache harddrives raided in a RAID0 set would be sufficient for uncompressed 10bit HD capture/playback?
 
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