REAL TIME RENDERING CARD FOR MAC G5 and Final Cut Pro???????

[jeffheart0808]

I have just started with VIdeo Editing and I am having a confusing time in trying to find exaxtly what I need to get almost complete real time effects/rendering. I am using Final Cut Pro HD on a Mac G5 2.0 Ghz Dual Processor with 2 Gigs of RAM and the Radeon 9800 Graphics card. I am using mainly DV from a Canon XL1-S Mini DV camera and low quality analog sources like VHS, S-VHS etc....
Basically, I want the ability to render everything in real time. Text seems to take along time too. Using Live Type takes a while as well as all the FInal Cut Pro embedded text functions. I want to be able do everything in real time, or as close to that as possible.
Will the Black-Magic Deck Link Cards do that? I saw the Decklink HD card that says it has many real time features....but I havent noticed any card mention anything about rendering text in real time.
The other problem is......my computer has the new PCI-X slots and I can't seem to find any cards that use that technology except the Decklink HD.
So i conclusion..... is there an affordable ($1000 or lower) card that will give me complete real time solutions, and is the Decklink such the card?
PLease help!

Thanks,
Jeff H

[terryj]

http://www.videoguys.com/rtx100.html

[FCPguy]

We used Matrox RT cards back in the day. (I don't use it anymore, but that worked well in the past).

And for text, get ready for Motion this summer. It will be an awesome help for doing texts in pretty much real time standards. (So spend your money buying RAM!!!) Peace

[jeffheart0808]

I checked out the Matrox RT.......From what I gather, that is PC ONLY though???? Am I incorrect in making that statement? System requirements mention nothing of a mac.

I also checked out the G-RAID hard drive system that runs on firewire800. After all I have read these past few days about needing good SCSI drives to keep up with uncompressed video, I'm wondering if that drive is a good purchase. According to the FCP manual, Firewire Drives won't cut it, but this particular new drive actually has 2 hard disks in it and acts as the supposive, worlds first firewire RAID array. They claim it will add some real time effects in FCP. If you havent seen it, it's here :

http://www.medeacorp.com/ (then goto FIREWIRE)

I've read that to get good transfer rates, you need a drive with seek times of better than 9ms, spindle speed of more or equal to 7200rpm, and sustained transfer rate of atleast 8Mb/s. Even if the drive had those stats, is it possible to facilitate that via Firewire800 or would it be like a bottleneck?

Thanks,
Jeff

[TugBoat]

They have a Matrox Mac version, but, it doesn't work on a G5. For the G5 you need to look at something like a KONA 2 which must be expensive as hell as you can't find the price anywhere. Oh, the Kona works with Firewire, probably FW800, the FCP document on FW was written a while back, they need to update that.....

[BJ_M]

a bluefish or aja HD card for final cut pro starts at about 10grand ...

but a full equipped G5 for HD will run you about 30-40grand ...

for everything -- EXCEPT your source and targets ...


that is still not fully real time rendering in all respects though -- in fact not at all ...


a fully realtime HD system will run you better of 100 grand .... and you can double that easy ..


i am surprised that some dealer sold you FCP without hardware options ...

at the least --- a cinewave board -- which i think is about 10 grand ,,, but there are tones of them used around (there is a good reason for that which i dont want to get into) ....


you would have been far better to go for something like a BOXX HD system which would have given you better real time capabilities and better performance and more capable software and about 60-70% of the mac route ...

i know -- as i have been through this many times ...

[jeffheart0808]

yeah, i checked the kona cards and they are all upwards of $3,000.

As for the $100,000 set-up is concerned.....well, that's obvioulsy not happening. So maybe I should be a bit more layed back in what I want..... Let's say something more like a decent amount of real time...perhaps just real time text scrolls, crawls, etc.... and a fair amount of RT effects like page curls and things of that nature. My g5 already does RT color correction and a boat load dissolves and simple text movements so I guess I really just need some additional "push". text previews fine, at least until I add shadows and and filters. If I could just get text in FCP and in Live Type top render in RT, I would be much happier.
Lastly, I guess no one knows about the Decklink card I inquired about? It is PCI-X (which is what I have) but doesnt have firewire input so I can't really use the inputs or outputs because I don't have broadcast digital equipment. I would basically be buying the card and dismissing all of it's ins and outputs, just to get the features of it's RT power with the footage and EFX I work with already online, but as far as working with DV i capture straight from my Canon XL1-S or cheapy sony AV converter, will the decklink HD Pro card act as a hardware processor to give me more RT graphics features? That card is $959 which is right up my alley. I just dont want to find out that it won't help me with anything.

[jeffheart0808]

a bluefish or aja HD card for final cut pro starts at about 10grand ...


i am surprised that some dealer sold you FCP without hardware options i know -- as i have been through this many times ...

I got it at guitar center and I knew what I wanted so there wasnt much discussion. I figured it would be easy to buy that and research the cards for a later purchase, not realizing that it was going to be this difficult.

[TugBoat]

... will the decklink HD Pro card act as a hardware processor to give me more RT graphics features? That card is $959 which is right up my alley. I just dont want to find out that it won't help me with anything.

I haven't heard anyone around here mention the Decklink card. I don't have any knowledge of it. You might try kicking around the Final Cut Pro board and asking a few questions, good luck.

[miksu]

Don't know exactly available brands or their connectors, but isn't the pci-x compatible with pci? I know PCI-X cards don't work in plain PCI, but otherwise round it should work. RTMac incompatiblity maybe caused by the fact G5 doesn't supply 5V into bus, only 3.3 which is newer standard. So if you can find card that physically has suitable connector (connectors are "keyed" against wrong connections) and it works with OSX, it's likely to work with your G5.

I know it's slightly theoretical explanation, but it's important to notice PCI-X card requires PCI-X, but plain PCI works with PCI-X. May give you slightly more options. And manuals really don't always have latest information on compatiblity.

[AntnyMD]

I am using mainly DV from a Canon XL1-S Mini DV camera and low quality analog sources like VHS, S-VHS etc....

For someone working from VHS and S-VHS, you sure have expensive tastes!

[MerlinMacuser]

That's my computer too, Jeff.

For a capture device I use a Pyro DV by ADS. My model was on sale from the ADS site. I'm not using it for anything special, just transfers from Tivo via iMovie to save shows on dvd. It has S-Video inputs as well as RCA and can take digital input as well. It transfers to the G5 via firewire. I'm very pleased with the results once I stopped trying to run 45 feet of interconnects from the Tivo to the G5. Now I just bring the Tivo into the computer room and hook them up via 1 meter MonsterCables and the results are fantastic...not quite HD but good enough to impress my friends.