basics of uncompressed video editing

[potemkin]

hi guys, im thinking of getting a card that would enable me to capture, uncompressed. i saw the black-magic designs Decklink. its cost only $295.
my question is just about how powerful is uncompressed video? im primarily a DV editor and so would this give me a better video output? is it a worthy investment? i read that it gives me more power by giving me more realtime effects.

can somebody enlighten me on this. thanks guys

[darthmaul]

Hi! re the decklink that's very cheap for a capture card. but take caution thou, it's always concern how compatible your machine to the capture card. And re the uncompressed video, let me put it this way..... uncompressed video means your getting 100% color/image from your source(D1, BETACAM, DVC PRO, ETC..) or simply 10bit or 1:1.... and the other one is what we call 8bit (dv) it's sort of 3:1 compression of your source video(but not vcd quality).Here's the question, whats the nature of your business? if your only using a DV source, that's good already if your using it for weddings, school, and etc. By using a firewire your good to go and also saves a lot of space... Now if you wanna use a uncompressed video(HIGH DEFINITION or HD) it eats a lot of memory but for a fact your image quality is outstanding.But of the source materials are also expensive.So if your not doing any commercials, i mean using a D1 or HD players. Your good as it is using a dv... hope this help you out. By the way re on the realtime effects, if you have a g5 and running at least 2 gigs of ram some of the effects are realtime.....Check also YNZAL re capture cards....

[Edited on 3-25-2005 by darthmaul]

[akira]

Originally posted by potemkin
hi guys, im thinking of getting a card that would enable me to capture, uncompressed. i saw the black-magic designs Decklink. its cost only $295.
my question is just about how powerful is uncompressed video? im primarily a DV editor and so would this give me a better video output? is it a worthy investment? i read that it gives me more power by giving me more realtime effects.

can somebody enlighten me on this. thanks guys

the blackmagic decklink ($295 the cheapest) is a pretty stable capture card, but you need a high-end SD-SDI deck like sony dvcpro 50 or digital betacam for your i/o (some dv deck like sony, offers SDI i/o as an option). plus for monitoring you'll need a broadcast monitor with SDI port . i'll recommend this card if you'll be editing stuff for broadcastt. i know some (tv) network using the blackmagic product.

also, if you gonna do uncompressed 10 or 8 bit SD(Standard Definition)-SDI video you'll need a faster data drive like an external RAID with a dual channel raid controller or fibre channel.

been using the decklink extreme and the decklink sp for quite sometime now.