Canopus ADVC 110

[thierryd]

Originally Posted by cananball

Don't just assume the 22qf is the correct offset. If using canopus/ mojo/blackmagic you should also budget for a syncheck to accuratley set the offset. Learned this the hard way myself!

true, but you should know that with DV video through Canopus, it will never be exact. If you playback 10 times, it will be 10 times different with offsets varying between +/- 1 frame. We used to have 5 Canopus systems for years, and while it is certainly the way to have the video on an external TV without taxing the CPU too much, it always frustrated me that it was never dead sync.
Also with Canopus you are limited to SD Video.

With Blackmagic cards you still have to set the sync offset correctly for each different video codec (ie. Avid DNx, ProRes, MJPEGA, PhotoJPEG), but sync is more stable.

I might add for the original poster, that if you feel PT performance is getting weak on the G5, it's best to stay at PT7.3.1cs7. This was most our stable PT version for years, with all the great mixing features (preview etc.) included. I always felt that anything further, brought the G5 quick to its knees (first elastic audio in 7.4, but then really PT8, which is not made for G5).

Greetings,

Thierry

[SDDP]

Originally Posted by thierryd

true, but you should know that with DV video through Canopus, it will never be exact. If you playback 10 times, it will be 10 times different with offsets varying between +/- 1 frame. We used to have 5 Canopus systems for years, and while it is certainly the way to have the video on an external TV without taxing the CPU too much, it always frustrated me that it was never dead sync.
Also with Canopus you are limited to SD Video.

With Blackmagic cards you still have to set the sync offset correctly for each different video codec (ie. Avid DNx, ProRes, MJPEGA, PhotoJPEG), but sync is more stable.

Approx how much more %-wise does the BM cards tax the CPU vs. the Canopus?

[thierryd]

Originally Posted by SDDP

Approx how much more %-wise does the BM cards tax the CPU vs. the Canopus?

I wouldn't really know, as we are running the BM Extreme 3D cards with PT9 HD2 systems in Westmere Mac Pros, which we never used with Canopus, so I can't compare. We also have a Harpertown Mac Pro with HD3 system (so without a BM card) and I do have the feeling that the BM card takes away some speed on the PCIe bus, when I compare sessions between the 2 systems above. But it is difficult to say.
On the Harpertown I have used the Canopus a few times and it still works, but nowadays we run all video on HD screens in 720 or 1080 formats, which isn't possible with a Canopus.
The other issue with G5: most G5 models are PCI instead of PCIe (except the last model I think). I don't know if there ever existed a Blackmagic PCI solution that worked for a such a configuration. Again, I think G5s are not powerful enough anyway for these configs.

Greetings,

Thierry