Advice on new MAC upgrade for HDSDI & 4K live capture

[Jacques Mersereau]

Greetings,

We are about to upgrade our video HDSDI capture computer.
Currently, we have a Mac Pro tower and AJA Kona 3 card with breakout box.

We shoot with four Sony EX3 cameras, run their HDSDI into a Panasonic HVS450 digital switcher
and record the hot-switch output to FCP 7 via the Kona box - ALL GOOD & ROCK SOLID.

Our IT guys want us to upgrade our five year old Mac tower to a new Mac Pro.
I am told that both Premier and FCP X do NOT capture these days.

If you were upgrading with a new MAC PRO, WHAT SOFTWARE/HARDWARE would you recommend?
Is there ANYTHING that both manipulates video (edit/composite)
but that also has a CAPTURE function that works with known hardware (Smoke or ?)???
If NOT, what are you guys using for capture?

Again, we will need to capture HD right away, but we might also want to be able to at some time in the future capture 4K from a switcher and/or a camera.
(To me, until SMPTE comes out with a 4K on 1 wire spec (maybe it will be optical?) I don't want to even think about four BNCs per camera = UGH.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Jacques

 

[Jacques Mersereau]

I just heard that Lightworks has a beta version for the Mac, and it has a capture function.

Anyone have the skinny on Lightworks?

 

[Mathieu Ghekiere]

Aja has their own capture software, VTR-something it's called, it's free.

Black Magic has Media Express or something, also a free download.

Of course these software packages only work with the capture devices of their respective companies.

 

[Clark Dunbar]

AJA - io4K (just like having a Kona card on Thunderbolt) - and you can still use FCP-7 on the new MacPros

http://www.aja.com/en/products/io-4k

 

[Brian Merlen]

FCP7 is 32 bit, running that on a new mac pro is kind of crazy since it will only use 1.5 cores and 4gb of ram, you may as well run it on a laptop at that point ya know? Plus pretty sure it won't solve his 4k problem but I sold mine a while back and can't remember... I'm pretty sure 4k is out for that though if I remember right...

Avid can't do 4k, (at least not now as far as outputting it). It can capture your HD for now though just fine and is 64 bit and does have some 4k input abilities, but it scales it to 1080 cuz they live in a 1080 world still. You can use the log and capture tool to log in real time as you capture and their media management is second to none for high end stuff... I would go with Avid and just hope they come up with 4k outputs sooner then later... At least it can utilize much more of your towers specs then a program discontinued several years ago can...

I am not sure if you want to get into using these capture solution editing solutions, versus a real editing program...


Does anyone know if resolve can help em? I know people use it for sending LUTs out so it can def take a signal, and version 11 looks friggin awesome...but I don't use the program and use redcine for basic one lights in my world, but hope to get into using resolve 11 on a new machine shortly. I would def look into Avid and Resolve versus FCP7 and 32 bit universe...pretty soon FCP7 won't even run on contemporary macs is the reality, you have maybe one more year of OS releases or so if your lucky...