Re: USB 3.0 adapters for Mac?

Tired of waiting for Apple to keep up with technology; has anyone used USB 3.0 cards / ExpressCard adapters for using USB 3.0 hard drives?
Will appreciate your sharing experiences.

Alberto

Thanks, Ronny.

Thunderbolt is, in my humble opinion, is a worthless technology at the moment; the few Thunderbolt hardware available are too expensive; even the connector cables are $50 each! In the other hand, USB 3.0 adapters for (Intel only) Macs seem to be a more affordable solution for using the array of USB 3.0 hard drives in the market. At least, its speed is much faster that current FW and USB 2.0.
I still hope to hear from those using USB 3.0 adapters and hard drives on Macs.

Alberto

I don't know about hard drives, but I know that Blackmagic Design doesn't support their little external USB 3-only capture device (Intensity Shuttle, I believe) on Mac with USB 3. It will work perfectly in Windows because Windows "just works". Even if you buy a USB 3 adapter it will not work because it isn't fast enough due to Apple not implementing the proper protocols into the OS itself or some such thing according to Blackmagic Design. So my guess is that the same USB 3 hard drive will work better on Windows than it does on a USB 3 equipped Mac. Just like Adobe Photoshop and the such are faster in Windows than on a Mac (even on the same machine). But Windows isn't as shiny/pretty as the Mac OS, so we choose Apple. :)

I was be facetious with the whole "just works" idea because anyone who thinks that any computer (including Macs) "just work" is dead wrong. Good advertising slogan, bad expectation on reality. Anyway, I use the Intensity Pro and it is a decent card I guess. Kind of limited in the video formats it can capture (no analog 480p, no 240p, no 1080p, etc). My opinion is that if the majority of HDTVs in the world can display it, it should be able to be captured. But what do I know? Damn me all to hell for wanting more, especially for what I do.

The Intensity Extreme won't work on ALL Macs except Pro, just all with Thunderbolt. I doubt it would work with my Performa 9600 or whatever it is. And it still doesn't capture everything. You have to get a card from Japan for that from Micomsoft and, of course, it only works with Windows and the drivers and software are in Japanese. They get all of the cool stuff.

In all honesty, Craig, I think we should direct our blame to Apple for not giving us hardware to let us take advantage of Black-Magic and other third party developers. I keep my fingers crossed for better Macs next year.

Hey, let's forget about grudging for now; let's all have Happy Holidays.
Best wishes to Ken and all!

Alberto

Thunderbolt is supported by AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox. That covers the big three. Obviously many of us are waiting for the MacPro to be updated or replaced with a "Power" box which will support Thunderbolt.

The problem is not Apple's though. Intel has had delays in the next generation chips and Apple is waiting. Additional there's going to be some changes in Thunderbolt that should improved development timetables . . . and that's Intel's move as well.

Sorry, I meant 1080p60. It does support the slower 1080p flavors. Still no 480p or 240p (even as 480i), though.

Joe Redifer Wrote:
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> Sorry, I meant 1080p60. It does support the
> slower 1080p flavors. Still no 480p or 240p (even
> as 480i), though.

1080p60 is not really a video standard. I don't know any Video I/O supporting it and very very few cameras are starting to as a recording format. You'll also find most NLEs don't handle it either.
480p is also rare and 240p is not a standard at all.

I understand the importance of 1080p60 especially since I'm involved with live streaming consulting. A lot of the gamers want to stream live at 1080p60 and some would even like to push higher but most of the big video I/O card makers don't support it.

AJA, Blackmagic, Matrox don't support it.
I'm not sure Hauppauge or AVerMedia support it either.

Have you actually tried importing 1080p59.94 into either FCP7 or FCPX?
One can create all sorts of odd timelines in FCP7 but importing is the problem.

Also the cameras that do support 1080p59.94 are file based so that isn't likely to encourage Video I/O card developers all that much. It might be useful for monitoring though.

Yes I created an imported a 1080p 59.94 file, that's how I created the two sequences pictured above. Works like a charm. Remember, things shot with video cameras aren't the only reason for editing and capturing video. But the developers of such cards are perhaps unfamiliar with all the forms of video. I imagine that a lot of people here have no clue about videogames or any need to ever capture such footage.

Hi Craig,

I have just tried importing a 1080p59.94 file in FCP10 and it plays perfectly. FCP10 has a standard project setting for this format (pic1).

In FCP7 it imports, but it doesn't play well in the Viewer. It does play fairly well in the timeline though and the settings are correct (pic2).

As you say such consumer formats are always file based. However, when you want to capture 1080p59.94 gaming video live from a console you need a capture card that can deal with it. But as not many people do this I think the capture card manufacturers pay no attention to this format.

Best wishes,

Ronny

Ronny, how old is the computer you are using? 1080p 59.94 plays back in the viewer and timeline flawlessly in FCP7 for me. Granted I am doing ProRes422(HQ) but I think that generally runs at the same bitrate as 4444 unless there is transparency. At least that's been my experience when transcoding the same file to 422 (HQ) and 4444.

Hi Joe,

I did this on a 2010 8-core MacPro with 16 GB of RAM. It was a one minute ProRes 4444 test file I created in Motion. The Viewer skipped frames in FCP7. Maybe it's just because I put the test file on my desktop and not on an external drive, who knows. I just can say what I saw and unfortunately I have no further reference to this as we never use this format on regular jobs. But it certainly works both with FCP7 and FCP10, that was the point.

Best wishes,

Ronny