Decklink sp vs convergent hell

soundvideo wrote on 3/2/2005, 2:54 PM
So I finally chose the decklink sp over the convergent-designs box not for the price but for the fact that I could do my own renders to my trusty bvu 35 beta deck without having to deal with "compressed DV over firewire". For the last six months, the FCP guys I know that would render my uncompressed QTs of my commercials were constantly mocking me for using VV. I was the butt of every joke, Especially since we were delivering broadcast commercials for Time Warner (our client). These guys convinced me that dv out to a beta deck (ala Convergent-designs) wasn't a professional way of doing beta laybacks). Decklink was the only option to spit out 8bit Yuv rendered VV projects. Just when you think you've reached techno bliss. I couldnt get The Vegas rendered (BMD codec) files to "put to tape". Althought my tyan mobo is not on the list of recommended chipsets, I went with the decklink anyway. I convinced myself that the BMD requirements meant that mobos not on their list were not neccessesarily incompatable but simply not tested by BMD. How the hell could they test every mobo to see if it works right???. As if not on the fringe enough, I was also a die hard amd opteron user. (something BMD doesn't seem to keen about). Although, decklink captures 10bit uncompressed video that I can then drag into VV, the fact that I cant get decklink to output to tape not only has me depressed as hell but has got me thinking maybe I should have bought the Convergent-designs box. I also dont want to have to use AE as I have become quite capable at editing in VV. I would love to be able to stick it to all the FCP users if only I was able to. Anyone have any soothing or encouraging thoughts???

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 3/2/2005, 3:02 PM
Don't know what to tell you, except that many companies are using Vegas and Convergent for professional broadcast every day of the week. I love it, myself. In about a week, you'll see a story on perhaps the biggest broadcaster in the world using this exact combination of hardware/software. The guys from Convergent are wonderful to deal with, they have regular software upgrades to their boxes that are free and easy to download/use, and they are ALWAYS receptive to hearing from users. The uncompressed option for the Convergent Design is still in the works, and my understanding is that current owners of CD boxes will get the uncompressed upgrade for free.
Decklink is great too, no doubt, but there are a lot of hoops to jump through to make it work, it seems.
farss wrote on 3/2/2005, 3:05 PM
Having two SD Connect boxes and DB footage I really need to get into Vegas I share your grief.
How are you trying to PTT via BMD? I know for a fact Vegas will not do this.
I thought you could get it to fly by rendering out to Sony YUV and using some 3rd party app to PTT, don't BMD provide such a thing?

BTW the SD Connect box at the moment only does DV25 EITHER way so you're ahead of me there. They're working on it but last word I heard was they were still waiting for the SDK from the Vegas guys. Probably they should just write they're own app, the Vegas team have fiddled around with this issue for way too long, first they were going to support Declink and then that died, now Sony are supposedly going to sell SD Connect and yet the first app that Convergent will probably provide 10 support for is PP, go figure.

Ah, but I did see Vegas 6 will support 4D planar surfaces, that'll really make us look like pros :)

Bob.

JohnSchell wrote on 3/3/2005, 7:33 AM
Our plan is to have a standalone application that you will be able to use to capture uncompressed video/audio and then import into Vegas. You will also be able to take the video from Vegas to this app and play it back to the SD-Connect.
Our first priority is to get the Premiere plugins finished (sorry Vegas users), then we will finish the standalone application. I expect the Premiere plugins to be done in about 2 weeks and the application shortly thereafter.
For full Vegas support, we are waiting on the Vegas SDK.
Hopefully, this will help the Vegas users who are using the SD-Connect.
As always, all these upgrades are provided free of charge.

John Schell
Convergent Design Inc.
Coursedesign wrote on 3/3/2005, 11:57 AM
"I cant get decklink to output to tape"

Are you using the Decklink deck control app to do it?

Vegas can't use anything that isn't firewire for the moment, but the Decklink deck control app is used by many.
rmack350 wrote on 3/3/2005, 1:07 PM
You should probably look at the decklink forum on the Cow.

Your Mac friends are right, at least in principle. Obviously it should be better to output 8bit or 10bit decklink renders than it would be to output DV25. That's assuming that you've never downconverted to DV25 during editing. Where you'd see better results is in text and hard-edged graphics. Basically, you're tring to output something better than 4:1:1 video. That's something that the convergent box doesn't do yet.

I'm not using Decklink so I can't speak from direct experience, but it seems that you need to use the decklink application to PTT. You can't use Vegas. Additionally, I assume you need to have the card in a PCI-x slot and that you need to feed it from a striped array. Maybe you can get by without this for 8 bit output.

I've noticed that there are two 8 bit codecs for decklink. Maybe one works better?

Definitely go to their forum and ask questions. There are some decklink people who monitor the forum pretty consistantly.

Rob Mack