UltraStudio 4K vs. Decklink 4K Extreme

[George A.]

Hi!

Many people are contemplating buying Thunderbolt to PCIe dual enclosures to house two cards: a Decklink 4K Extreme (for DaVinci monitoring etc) and the RedRocket.
Now, there is the UltraStudio 4K on the market, which connects directly to the Thunderbolt port.

Any advantage or disadvantage going one way or the other?

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/ultrastudiothunderbolt

http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink

Common sense says the UltraStudio is a better option - we would only need to buy a single slot PCIe enclosure for the RedRocket (cheaper, smaller).

Am I missing something? Does Decklink have better/extra features, compared to the UltraStudio?
Both have almost identical prices.

Thanks!
George

 

[George A.]

Is anyone familiar with the UltraSudio 4K from Blackmagic?

 

[Manfred Lopez]

Would also like to know.

 

[Michael Romano]

By putting the Decklink (UltraStudio4K) on its own TB port you could possibly benefit from increased bandwidth for each card.

 

[George A.]

That's the advantage Michael, indeed.

Any features that the PCIe Decklink has and the Thunderbolt UltraStudio doesn't have?
Is the UltraStudio simply a Thunderbolt "version" or "alternative" (more or less) for a Decklink card?

George

 

[Manfred Lopez]

I was also wondering if one can hook up a Seiki 4K to the UltraStudio. Someone else in another thread mentioned that they were getting spotty results when a friend did it. But that was with Premiere. The trick would be to get Final Cut pro and Resolve running the Seiki 4k through the ultraStudio with a new Mac Book Pro.

 

[Jason Osterday]

The ultrastudio 4K and decklink 4K are essentially the same boards just one is housed in a chassis with the breakout cable built in. The same for the entire Ultrastudio line up. We use Sonnet/Magma's with Decklinks on the same machines with Ultrastudios for multi input recording. We've even put multiple decklinks into a Magma for multi cam recording with no issues.

With the Ultrastudio 4K you gain rack mounting, a mini feed monitor on front and a full breakout on the back side. The only issue is that it does not support TB pass through since there is only one port, just like all other Ultrastudios. This can be an issue depending on your chain of TB devices.

When testing between Ultrastudio vs Decklink in a chassis, there was no difference in bandwidth. The Magma also performed just as good as the Sonnet single slot chassis. They are all 4x speed.

I will say, however, that the Magma saw little to no diminished performance when stuffed with a Rocket, Decklink Extreme AND SAS card. This is only pertaining to resolutions up to 2K. We have not tested 4K input/output in this configuration since we had no 4K devices to send/receive a feed from the Decklink (or Ultrastudio for that matter).

Personally, with them being the same price it is all about form. Do you need a decklink mounted in a rack? If so, the Ultra 4K is a great value. I personally use 2K monitors for most grading and thus I was able to buy an Ultra 3D AND a decklink Extreme for the same money as a single 4K version.

As for the Seiki, there are currently issues with both models displaying only 30hz for 4K inputs, so there have been reports of noticeable jitter and frame problems. YMMV depending on when you purchased it if they potentially smoothed the conversion issues over since claims were placed by customers. To my knowledge, only the larger Samsungs display 4K properly.