Aja vs Blackmagic - current state of play in Pro Tools on Catalina/new Mac Pro

[originalscottyg]

I decided not to hijack the other thread and start a new one, as this is a slightly different question.

For video playback in Pro Tools (not Video Slave), what is the current opinion on drivers from Aja vs BM? For years, I've read nothing but horror stories with BM drivers wreaking havoc, having to play the driver roulette game and keep rolling back until a working driver was found, etc.

I am speccing out a new Atmos premix room: new Mac Pro, HD Native, MTRX Studio, DAPS (no separate RMU) and am trying to decide on a video peripheral. I would prefer to go PCIe, will use video playback from within Pro Tools, and will most likely have house tri-level sync and a syncHD, so a video peripheral with Vid Ref is needed.

Thanks!

[tom_lowe]

Originally Posted by originalscottyg

I decided not to hijack the other thread and start a new one, as this is a slightly different question.

For video playback in Pro Tools (not Video Slave), what is the current opinion on drivers from Aja vs BM? For years, I've read nothing but horror stories with BM drivers wreaking havoc, having to play the driver roulette game and keep rolling back until a working driver was found, etc.

I am speccing out a new Atmos premix room: new Mac Pro, HD Native, MTRX Studio, DAPS (no separate RMU) and am trying to decide on a video peripheral. I would prefer to go PCIe, will use video playback from within Pro Tools, and will most likely have house tri-level sync and a syncHD, so a video peripheral with Vid Ref is needed.

Thanks!

I'm guessing you'll be using the Dolby Audio Bridge to send audio from Pro Tools to DAPS? If so you won't be able to use your Sync HD, so don't worry about Video ref.

For almost all workflows it's not really needed nowadays anyway.

[originalscottyg]

Originally Posted by tom_lowe

I'm guessing you'll be using the Dolby Audio Bridge to send audio from Pro Tools to DAPS? If so you won't be able to use your Sync HD, so don't worry about Video ref.

For almost all workflows it's not really needed nowadays anyway.

For the Atmos work, yes that's true, but there will be a lot of other work that isn't in Atmos, including dialog editing and dialog premixing/mixing that I'd like to have really tight lip-sync reference. So, I'm still going to go for the SyncHD. We actually have a few of them lying around the studio in various states of activity/inactivity, so I won't need to buy one; and I already have an Aja Gen10.

Thanks for the response, though. I know that overall sync without video ref can be pretty reliable these days, but I want to have one room (my room ) with an absolutely rock solid sync ref.

[tom_lowe]

Originally Posted by originalscottyg

For the Atmos work, yes that's true, but there will be a lot of other work that isn't in Atmos, including dialog editing and dialog premixing/mixing that I'd like to have really tight lip-sync reference. So, I'm still going to go for the SyncHD. We actually have a few of them lying around the studio in various states of activity/inactivity, so I won't need to buy one; and I already have an Aja Gen10.

Thanks for the response, though. I know that overall sync without video ref can be pretty reliable these days, but I want to have one room (my room ) with an absolutely rock solid sync ref.

In a lot of cases it's just as good as a referenced system. Given you won't have it in your Atmos workflow I wouldn't worry too much.

On the drivers front, both BM and AJA are very stable these days.