With a double-wide PCI Express graphics slot, Apple's new Mac Pro allows users to select a graphics card at purchase and still have three open slots for extras. Companies like Blackmagic Design and AJA Video wasted no time getting their HD graphics cards ready to fill those slots.
Within hours of Apple's introduction, Blackmagic announced that its PCI Express-based video capture cards are now Mac Pro compatible through a free software update on its web site. That includes the DeckLink HD Extreme, DeckLink HD Pro 4:4:4 PCIe, DeckLink SP PCIe, DeckLink Extreme PCIe, and Multibridge Extreme and Multibridge Pro.
In addition, Blackmagic said its testing has shown that when the new Mac Pro is populated with 3 x 500 GB SATA disks internally mounted and striped with RAID 0 configuration, performance of approximately 170 MB/sec was achieved. This allows editors to build lower HD disk arrays for simple capture and playback tasks. For higher performance editing solutions, Blackmagic said its testing has shown Apple's Xserve RAID works well as an uncompressed HD disk array.
AJA Video said its Io, IoLA and IoLD Firewire interfaces now have Universal Binary software and work with any Mac Pro configuration. Through a single FireWire connection, any Io box connects to the Power Mac and provides audio and video I/Os, connection to VTRs, genlock and integrated Final Cut Pro drivers.
New Mac Pro-compatible v3 software for the PCIe-based KONA video cards from AJA, including the KONA 3, KONA LHe and KONA LSe, will be available by the end of August. KONA cards are uncompressed QuickTime I/O cards that work with Final Cut Pro and support editing in the HDV and DVCPRO HD formats.
For more info, visit http://www.blackmagic-design.com and http://www.aja.com.