Blackmagic Design has introduced two new products aimed at professional video producers and broadcasters — the DeckLink HD Pro HDTV capture card and the HDLink, an HDTV monitoring solution for LCD displays. Both products are being shown off later this week at NAB 2004 in booth SL-2472.
The DeckLink HD Pro is a 4:4:4 12-bit SDI capture card with multi-standard analog video monitoring capability, for about US$2,500. It’s based on two channel HD-SDI inputs and outputs and can be switched between standard HD-SDI 4:2:2 or standard definition SDI. SPDIF/unbalanced AES audio input and output, audio word clock out, and TriSync or Genlock input are also supported. The card includes a Sony-compatible RS-422 deck control port.
The DeckLink HD Pro is built on a PCI-X 133MHz architecture; if you plan to use it for standard definition (SD) only, you can also use a slower 33 or 66MHz PCI slot.
Blackmagic Deck Control software is included to help users mark in and out on tape and capture selected segments from tape automatically. And under Mac OS X, users can also use built-in downconversion for mastering HDTV video edits out to SD decks like Digital Betacam and D5.
Blackmagic expects to ship DeckLink HD Pro within 4 weeks.
HDLink
Also to be introduced this week is HDLink, an HDTV resolution 4:4:4 monitoring solution designed to work with LCD computer displays. The HDLink works with any DVI-D-based LCD display for true HDTV resolution video monitoring. It supports standard definition SDI and HD-SDI-based inputs as well as Dual Link HD-SDI 4:4:4 input. Also included is analog (RCA) audio outputs.
Blackmagic recommends that users working in 1080 and 720 HDTV formats work with an LCD display capable of showing 1920 x 1200 pixels; users working exclusively in 720 HDTV formats can get away with a 1280 x 800 display instead. The HDLink can also display NTSC or PAL images at 2x oversize.
Control software is included for Mac OS X and Windows XP; the device also features a USB 2.0 interface to gamma table manipulation and to support firmware upgrades as necessary.
Blackmagic expects to ship HDLink within about two weeks for about $1,300.