AJA or Black Magic?

[laki]

10.9.7 seems to be doing the trick at the moment.

Many thanks to all that responded!

[Norad155]

Originally Posted by tom_lowe

For some yes, but your statement is a massive generalisation. Personally I'm fine with a BM. A friend has had nothing but problems with his AJA T-tap.

I agree, it is a massive generalization, but I'd argue that's what the OP is asking for when asking BM or AJA.

the basis for my generalization:
Over the last 10 years I've purchase, installed, and used dozens of output cards and boxes from both companies. Almost every BM product has given me nothing but headaches and issues. AJA has been mostly hastle free.

That being said...
To save a few dollars we currently use 12 of the BM thunderbolt output bozes (I forget which one at the moment) and they work... after some fussing... and you have to reboot them alot.
I'd prefer to pay the extra 10-20% and have the thing work.

[mgoorevich]

Also for those who is willing to take a noisy fan off the Aja card, it works without it with not a single issue for more than 5 years here.
Worth the risk for $150 second hand card.

[tom_lowe]

Originally Posted by Norad155

I agree, it is a massive generalization, but I'd argue that's what the OP is asking for when asking BM or AJA.

the basis for my generalization:
Over the last 10 years I've purchase, installed, and used dozens of output cards and boxes from both companies. Almost every BM product has given me nothing but headaches and issues. AJA has been mostly hastle free.

That being said...
To save a few dollars we currently use 12 of the BM thunderbolt output bozes (I forget which one at the moment) and they work... after some fussing... and you have to reboot them alot.
I'd prefer to pay the extra 10-20% and have the thing work.

if it was 10-20% more that wouldn't be an issue, but they're double the price, if not more, in a lot of cases.

I'm not saying BM is hassle free, but the T-Tap won't even work on my iMac Pro, and I tried several attempts.

[Norad155]

Originally Posted by tom_lowe

if it was 10-20% more that wouldn't be an issue, but they're double the price, if not more, in a lot of cases.

I'm not saying BM is hassle free, but the T-Tap won't even work on my iMac Pro, and I tried several attempts.

Hmm... that's curious... I had the opposite experience... Black Magic Mini Monitor (BM's version of T-Tap) was absolutely unusable(crashing and drifting)... and 6 T-Taps working flawlessly for a few years now with zero setup.

(the price difference on those are closer to 50% I stand corrected on that... last time I was shopping I compared Ultrastudio vs IoXT and the diff was about 20%)

also... it's easy for me to say I'll pay more, cause I'm not shopping with my money!

[MIKEROPHONICS]

I was. Performance alone after pressing play 5 times conceived me. None of that “oh - you mean play now?” that the Decklink Pro suffered from, especially in the early days of the AVE in PT11. The AJA didn’t suffer any perturbations and was much more stable (I have a Sync one-2 to measure to absurd levels of accuracy).
Sorry and surprised I t didn’t work for you Tom.


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[lucienpalmer]

Originally Posted by mgoorevich

Also for those who is willing to take a noisy fan off the Aja card, it works without it with not a single issue for more than 5 years here.
Worth the risk for $150 second hand card.

I also have the AJA One LHi. Great card and fast playback.

AMAZING deals on used ones. Check Ebay. That is where I bought mine. But it turns out it was one of the older models with a 'defective' super noisy fan. The customer service at AJA was so good that they swapped out the card for a whole new one. The customer service rep said that it didn't matter that I bought it used, because they always stand by the quality of their products.

[tom_lowe]

Originally Posted by MIKEROPHONICS

I was. Performance alone after pressing play 5 times conceived me. None of that “oh - you mean play now?” that the Decklink Pro suffered from, especially in the early days of the AVE in PT11. The AJA didn’t suffer any perturbations and was much more stable (I have a Sync one-2 to measure to absurd levels of accuracy).
Sorry and surprised I t didn’t work for you Tom.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

With 10.9.7 they finally cracked the BM driver, then promptly broke it again. It even was bad with VS3 so I rolled back to 10.9.7. So whilst I agree BM have been hit and miss, when it works it does work well, it's just that AJA is more consistent I suppose, except in my case where it didn't even work!

Even though High Sierra isn't listed as compatible with 10.9.7 it works fine, you just can't open the Pref Pane.

The T-tap in question was a friend's and he's had 2 where the image randomly shifts vertically across the screen. I tried it on my system and it would power up through a Belkin Thunderbolt 1 Express dock (plugged directly into a TB3 - TB 2 adapter) but the driver wouldn't see it at all. System Profiler did.

Plugging it directly into the TB3 - TB2 adapter it wouldn't even power up. HD Native Thunderbolt powers up fine the exact same way, so all in all very odd.

BM are definitely better than they were for sure.

[laki]

Originally Posted by tom_lowe

...Even though High Sierra isn't listed as compatible with 10.9.7 it works fine, you just can't open the Pref Pane...

Same on Sierra, Pref Pane will not reveal itself!