Thunderbolt Peripherals, AJA or Black Magic

[Eric Ulbrich]

Looking to purchase either the new AJA IOXT or the Blackmagic design Ultrastudio 3d. Has anyone worked with either yet? I feel lik the aja is a better choice since it allows daisy chaining but the packaged software with the black magic is quite nice as well. I would be using on a mac laptop with a davinci setup for small set work as well as putting a rocket into a sonnet expansion chasis for quick transcoding. Any thoughts or experience would be much appreciated.

 

[Craig Parkes]

AFAIK Output from DaVinci is currently only support by their top of the line Decklink card.

It's conceivable that they could add support for the new Black Magic thunderbolt IO, but I wouldn't make a purchase relying on it to happen if your main goal is to monitor from DaVinci resolve on set.

Either way, support for AJA products are probably WAY down the list of Black Magic's priorities, as the whole purpose of releasing the software as cheaply as they have seems to be to drive sales of their hardware and take market share away from AJA through that process, so if you were HOPING to use one of these cards in a resolve workflow in future, the Black Magic one is more likely to get support, but not guaranteed unless there has been an announcement I have missed.

 

[Scott Crawley]

Eric,

Do a quick search of the forum for Sonnet. The news so far has not been good.

 

[Jonathon Lee]

I'd go for the Black Magic due to software compatibility. If you want to use Resolve the Black Magic is the only thing that will work with Resolve. For instance, if you are going to use Resolve and Media Composer you are covered. If you get the AJA you will not be able to get IO with Resolve.

 

[dino g]

i have a 17" mac book pro with thunderbolt, a 27" apple thunderbolt display, a BM ultrastudio 3d and an hp grading monitor, a tangent wave, a promise raid and BM resolve.

it works perfectly together as a portable grading suite, i just graded a feature with it at the directors office. i would bring it in everyday and take it out every night, it would be one load in and one load out...

27" monitor powers laptop and attaches to the thunderbolt port onthe laptop. then there is an TB out on the monitor, which i then attach to the promise raid and out of the promise raid i connect to the ultrastudio 3d then out of the ultra studio i connect the hp monitor via hdmi or you could use hdsdi.

wave gets attached to the back of the monitors as well as the divinchi dongle.

this is a super clean set up one cable run to the laptop from the monitor, one cable to raid (besides power), one to ultrastudio and one to monitor...

all fits easily on a 6' home depot table, i suggest a 450va battery backup as the starting point to the the power. but all fits in a couple of bags or cases.

good luck.

dino

 

[David Cole]

We use the Ultrastudio 3D, Promise RAID and MacBook Pro to capture live 3D out of production switchers. Works like a champ. Never a hiccup.

 

[Jean Déraps]

Dino and David, how many nodes do you get out of the MacBook Pro? At what resolution are you working? Don't you feel the need for a REDRocket card?

 

[Craig Parkes]

Glad to know the BMD thunderbolt ultrastudio is working with Resolve! The resolve documentation I last read is obviously out of date as it didn't mention that was compatible solution.

 

[Eric Ulbrich]

Hey Guys, thanks for all the replies, I guess im just bummed that the BM box only has on TB port on it...sigh.
I always seem to find myself one port short...

 

[Ryan Lalonde]

Hey Dino,
Can you post the specs of the macbook pro you're running? I've got mine fully stocked but I couldn't see doing anything besides 1 node dailies on it (do you have a custom video card inside the macbook pro?)