What exactly is an I/O board and how it works?

igniz-krizalid wrote on 11/27/2016, 8:40 PM

Somewhere I read that if you are serious about editing videos you must have an I/O for capture and playback, how does that compare to a dedicated graphics card? eg this board.

I am considering a lower price Firepro w4100 (just for the fun of having 10-bit color) but found out this little I/O bastard support 10-bit color as well, as my understanding goes this board is intended only for capture and playback depending on what NLE you use but why do people recomend this over a dedicated more powerful card for video editing? Ive seen grass valley and blackmagic users talking on this while Vegas users keep silent... is anybody here using a workstation card eg Firepro w4100 or an I/O board for vegas if so, which one is the best, and why?

Edit: sadly to take advantage of 10-bit card I need first a 10-bit display and that it wont happen any time soon :(

thanks guys

Comments

NickHope wrote on 11/27/2016, 10:05 PM

...why do people recomend this over a dedicated more powerful card for video editing?...

It's doubtful that a 10-bit signal from Vegas will actually reach your monitor as a 10-bit signal via just a "10-bit" card such as Quadro or Firepro. See this discussion https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/are-quadro-firepro-gpus-better-for-10bit-than-geforce-radeon--104664/

megabit wrote on 11/27/2016, 10:24 PM

Exactly as Nick stated. Funny thing is that there are no technical reasons preventing NLE vendors to make professional (i.e. full bit depth etc.) use of Quadro or FirePro cards - in fact many of them do ( see Scratch or Nuke). But BlacMagic for instance: they make Resolve lite free to the public, but in order to use it in a really pro way one must buy one of their I/O cards (my Decklink 4K Extreme 12G cost me more than the price of the newest Pascal Titan X)... BTW - to the OP: why not buy the new BMD MiniMonitor 4K card? Just $195, and good for UHD up to 30p (both 6G SDi and HDMI 2.0, in 10 bits fo course, HDR etc.).

Piotr