Pandoras Box User Forum

Hi,

I am currently researching third party components so I can build a Media Player Pro machine. I am looking for HD SDI Input, HDMI/DVI capture cards. Also Video Cards (output) , network cards etc... I understand that the Coolux brand input cards offer the best compatibility and also the least amount of latency, but their cost is fairly prohibitive. I aim to be able to upgrade in the future to these cards but to begin with I'm looking for some thing a little cheaper. I was wondering what third party cards Media Player users and Coolux staff would recommend? I have had a look at Blackmagic, AJA and Datapath but I've not had any experience with these cards running Pandora's Box Media Player. If anyone has any experience with or feedback from any cards/components that they are using, I'd appreciate any info you have.

Thanks in advance

Paul

I also am interested in any response to this.....

I understand Coolux not recommending any third party cards BUT Coolux cards are extremely expensive!

I am particularly interested in any VGA inputs/capture cards,

Is there anyone out there who can shed some light in the subject?

Any comments is appreciated.

Hi,

we at coolux are also interested into your comments and we want to learn
from your learnings.

Here are a few facts and things to consider from what we have learned:

In general Pandoras Box supports any input device that has a direct show
driver and that works under Windows XP 32bit.
This is good news, because this means that you can buy any liveinput
card that comes with direct show drivers (any 10€ Webcam does) and put
it in/connect it to your Media Player computer and it should work. The
should part is the problem, since there are so many different inputs
cards on the market there is no way of testing them all and finding the
perfect driver combinations, coolux and nobody else can guarantee you
that it will work, but most of them do work more or less reliable. The
biggest problem is latency and stability. And here the same principle
can be applied like in most places of live: You get what you pay for.
Most of the capture cards are not made for realtime applications. If you
capture a movie to edit in your NLE-Software you do not care if
capturing it has a 5, 6 or 10 Frame Delay, all you care about is
quality. On the other hand if you are using a input card that comes out
of the survailance market, you do not care about image quality so much,
but are propably more interested in many inputs per card and good
hardware compression.
You will have to do your own tests to find the right card for your need
and please let us and the forum know what you found and what you used it
for.

We found out that some work better than others but non of them were able
to provide the latency and quality we were looking for.

Because of that coolux has spend a lot of time and money to find the
best live input solution for pandoras box with the best quality and
latency. The results of this research were the coolux input cards. All
coolux cards (SD-SDI, Dual HD-SDI and Dual DVI) have special customized
drivers (not direct show based) which tie right into Pandoras Box
Software.

The advantages of using coolux input cards are, that they are fully
integrated into Pandoras Box, have the lowest latency possible, are
tested, are supported by coolux and are available on the rental market.

Oh and with the new Dual DVI Input card you can not only capture DVI-D
but also DVI-A (VGA).

One more note regarding SD-SDI Inputcards. We used to put Decklink SD-SDI cards into our Servers, those worked great quality wise, but latency became more and more important to many clients, so we replaced them with the coolux SD-SDI card which has way less latency.

Daniel

It just so happens that I have dedicated almost the entire week next week to purchasing and testing different input cards.
I have a Time-Code generator that I will be testing this with to check the latency accurately.

I am definatly planning on posting the results on here.

Justyn

Hi Justyn,

Myself and many others on this forum will be very interested in the results of your tests. I'm not sure if you have any of these card manufacturers available to you for testing, but I'm fairly sure Coolux users are using them. I'm just not sure whether anyone knows which ones are better than others....

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/produc ... hdextreme/
http://www.datapath.co.uk/visionrgbE2.html

Which cards are you planning to test? I'd like to do some research myself...

Paul

Hi Justyn,

Just wondering if you had any results?

If so, would you mind posting, any feedback would be helpful.

Cheers

I'm sorry... Many shows came up which i guess is a good thing ...

I will be starting this either this coming week when I return to Canada, or the week after.

Justyn

Hi Justyn,

Any luck in choosing the input cards??

Nothing really to report so far... anything we've tried either hasn't measured up as far as resolution goes, or has a latency of nearly 20 frames. (no name stuff)

However, this week, I am expecting a somewhat newer and unique kind of little device... a transcoder apparently mainly used for broadcast. It takes ANY signal and 'transcodes' it to firewire with a 1 frame delay so long as you don't process it anymore inside (why we would need to, i'm not sure).

So what I am hoping to find out is whether or not Coolux likes firewire video.

I have used it before but have gotten burnt on it with much older versions of the software (4.1) where what I'm guessing was a memory leak completely locked up the computer. - any thoughts?
Also what I'd like to see is how much latency is added through the processing on my machines and the software.

AND THEN if this all goes well, I have another product coming in next week that boasts its ability to be able to seamlessly split any firewire video signal (8 times i think) with no delay.

THEREFORE I'd only need one transcoder and one splitter to get a signal to multipule machines!!

Fingers crossed.



Justyn

I have a black magic intensity pro card with hdmi input.
Works perfectly well with coolux.

I think almost any usb capture device works (sweex composite capture device (10 euro's) also work)

Black magic has a usb hdmi capture device to. You need a USB 3 port though

greetings

Rik
posting.php?mode=reply&f=4&t=709#

I have just ordered the DeckLink SDI and the new DeckLink Duo (SDI) cards...

Both HD/SD SDI cards... they should be here in about a week aswell.

I will load a few machines up with the transcoder and these cards, put them all side by side and post the results.

Thanks for your patience everyone! Things have been very busy around here...

Justyn

Hi Justyn,

would be very interesting to know how this firewire device works out!
I´m curious about it!

Greetings,
Julia

Hi All,

Can anyone recommend what model of black magic card to go with?

Look forward to your replies,

Thanks

Shane

Alright... I actually had some time this week to play with these SDI input cards that have been sitting on my desk waiting for me for weeks.

I have 2 different cards by the same company BlackmagicDesign - the Decklink SDI, and the Decklink Duo.
They are both HD/SD-SDI cards, the only difference is that the Decklink Duo has 2 seperate SDI inputs.

The Decklink SDI (the single) I played with for hours trying to get it to work, intalling several different drivers, different software different ports, different BIOS settings but no matter what I did or who I spoke with at Blackmagic, I could not get it to work. What I was experiencing with my hardware was that after installation when booting it would sit at the Windows Logo screen anywhere from 1 minute to 5 minutes loading, but if I waited, Windows did actually load. After it was in Windows, everything would work fine, PB and any other program I could find. It worked UNTIL I loaded the capture card into PB or ANY OTHER WINDOWS PROGRAM. No matter what settings I had (ones I had myself, and other ones I went through support for) the entire machine would freeze. Windows, the mouse... The CAPS LOCK light wouldn't even light up on the keyboard when pressed. After hours with this, I gave up.

Then on an entirely different computer, I installed the Decklink Duo with the latest drivers and software, opened PB and it worked like a dream! Because it is a dual card, Windows (and PB) sees it as two different cards. I set up 2 Folsum Image Pros put input one on layer 1-6 and input 2 on layer 7-12, scaled them, started them rotating, and changed some colours on others and let it run for about 30 hours. It maintained the same latency of 2 FRAMES! but it was a little jittery after all this time. After further inspection, I discovered that the capture card its self was running at approximatly 55 degrees celcius, I cooled it (with a spray) and it worked fine. This just means that I have to cool my Coolux better... sorry couldn't resist.



To sum it up, I started researching with Blackmagic at the recommendation of Andre Girard, and with the result of 2 frames of delay, I am more than happy with Blackmagic. Also with a price tag of approx $500CDN for 2 inputs it definatly does the trick.


As for what I'm running this card on,

Intel i7 920 @ 2.67GHz (dual core)
3 GB of RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Decklink Duo HD/SD-SDI

Pandoras Box MP Pro


Hope this helps.

Justyn

Also Julia,

I did run a show with firewire converted from a Sony Deck.

What I got was I would guess around 10 frames of delay (couldn't measure) and a very unstable unhappy platform. It regularily froze, and regularily jittery.