{"id":5,"date":"2007-10-07T23:44:29","date_gmt":"2007-10-08T06:44:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/07\/blackmagic-multibridge\/"},"modified":"2010-07-29T22:24:48","modified_gmt":"2010-07-30T05:24:48","slug":"blackmagic-multibridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/2007\/10\/07\/blackmagic-multibridge\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackmagic Multibridge"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was never all that impressed with\u00c2\u00a0original Multibridge from Blackmagic Design<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not an I\/O interface for your computer, it was just a Analog to SDI convertor, both ways.\u00c2\u00a0 When the Multibridge Extreme<\/a> was released, and with every major revision since then, computer I\/O was added in a brilliant way.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Basically they\u00c2\u00a0embeding their Decklink<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0electronics within the breakout box, and then devised a way to tap directly into the PCIe bus.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t believe they created the original concept of External PCIe, but they were the first by a long shot to market a product utilizing the concept.\u00c2\u00a0 Caldigit<\/a> and Ciprico<\/a>, among others, have recently developed drive\u00c2\u00a0arrays with an external RAID controller\u00c2\u00a0that uses the same\u00c2\u00a0basic connection.
\n
\nAnother major feature that the\u00c2\u00a0Multibridge\u00c2\u00a0was the first to offer, was DVI output for monitoring on an LCD in full screen independent of the graphics card.\u00c2\u00a0 It was also\u00c2\u00a0the first simple solution\u00c2\u00a0for monitoring 2K at fullscreen, using the DVI port to drive a 2560×1600 pixel LCD.\u00c2\u00a0 This has been replaced by HDMI in the newest revisions,\u00c2\u00a0removing integrated 2K monitoring\u00c2\u00a0support, but that is now offered through the HDLink Pro<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The most recent version, the\u00c2\u00a0Multibridge Pro<\/a>, can capture or convert to and from HDMI, SDI, and Analog formats.\u00c2\u00a0 Their newest feature is support for 3Gb\/s SDI, allowing HD\u00c2\u00a04444 and 2K 444 over a single cable in realtime. (Which allows 2K preview on an 30″ LCD though the HDLink Pro<\/a>, which is a separate item)<\/p>\n

On the PC side, they support three basic editing modes, well really two and a half.\u00c2\u00a0 Uncompressed is their primary format, 8 or 10bit, 422 or 444, and now 2K.\u00c2\u00a0 They recently added a compressed MotionJPEG codec, but they have not unlocked all of the options to vary the quality yet.\u00c2\u00a0 This allows the realtime capture and playback of compressed files through their I\/O.\u00c2\u00a0 Their MotionJPEG codec is 8bit 422, and from my use, I would class it as a great codec for full rez and frame rate offline editing, if you are finishing to HD or Film.\u00c2\u00a0 For Web encodes or SD, it is probably fine for online work, unless you need 10bit for Digibeta.\u00c2\u00a0 The last option is a Capture only one, into the Cineform<\/a> codec.\u00c2\u00a0 I know for a fact that this works over HDMI on the Intensity card, but I have heard that all of the\u00c2\u00a0Blackmagic products are supported.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Blackmagic products\u00c2\u00a0are the only way to capture RGB over dual link SDI in realtime to the new Cineform 444 codec, and possibly even to Cineform2K.<\/p>\n

There are a few\u00c2\u00a0disadvantages I am aware of.\u00c2\u00a0 Low realtime effects or rendering support in their hardware or editing modes.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t support many compression schemes, MotionJPEG being somewhat limited.\u00c2\u00a0 The big\u00c2\u00a0issue in using it with Cineform\u00c2\u00a0is that it seems that realtime monitoring is not available from Cineform RT projects in Premiere.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Lastly, Blackmagic<\/a> products are known for their reasonable prices, but not their long lifespans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was never all that impressed with\u00c2\u00a0original Multibridge from Blackmagic Design.\u00c2\u00a0 It was not an I\/O interface for your computer, it was just a Analog to SDI convertor, both ways.\u00c2\u00a0 When the Multibridge Extreme was released, and with every major revision since then, computer I\/O was added in a brilliant way.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Basically they\u00c2\u00a0embeding their Decklink\u00c2\u00a0electronics within […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16,12,15,24,13,14],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}