Motu HDX-SDI, anybody heard any advance information?

Product page:
[www.motu.com]

Anyone heard or discussed any disadvantages with this product?
It is certainly a lot less expensive than the Aja IO HD.

Lots of input and output but is anything important missing?

B&H preorder price is $795

Never heard one way or another about their earlier product, the V4HD.

Wow, I was just this morning surfing the Cow and saw an ad for the HDX-SDI and took a good look at it. I like that it's PCI and has an express card option for laptops
.
I have only read one reference to anyone using the V4HD and it was mildly positive. I have mixed feeling about MOTU from their audio/midi side. There was a bad stretch there in the early OS X days but some of their recent hardware comes very highly rated.

ak
Sleeplings, AWAKE!

It's a very nice looking breakout box. I want one. But it is straight I/O only. Like the AJA IoExpress it offers no scaling capabilities.

Same video I/O as MXO2, superior video I/O to the IoExpress.
Its audio I/O not surprisingly blows everyone else's away.
Better sync options than MXO2/IoExpress.
Calibrate all outputs (MXO2 allows HDMI calibration only, IoExpress has no calibration options).
Great front panel monitoring.

If you want up/down/cross conversion options on your breakout box tho, then the Matrox MXO2 I/O boxes are still awfully hard to beat at the price.

I have owned 2 MOTU (still own) audio interfaces. Just bought a Traveler mkIII for several hundred dollars more than this.

On first blush, this is an incredible bargin for editors and post people. At the very least if the video conversion is a bust, you have an audio interface that will do 5.1 and even 7.1 audio management and monitoring at a reasonable price.

It appears if you are going to have some of the new outboard camera encoding units like AJA's KiPro or Convergent Design's nanoFlash this could be a of interfacing these units into your production machines if you wanted to work with 422 10 bit files.

The inclusion of a decent multi-channel audio interface is what is intriguing, at least in my view.

If you are into synthesizers and outboard music gear this unit will allow you to simplify your setup if you do both music and post production video work.

MOTU mac drivers have been solid for a few years now. There was only a brief period where some of them were fouled up.

-Andrew

It appears if you are going to have some of the new outboard camera encoding units like AJA's KiPro or Convergent Design's nanoFlash this could be a good way of interfacing these units into your production machines to do cross conversion instead of popping for a Kona3, Matrox unit or a Blackmagic solution.


Hey Andrew

Am a bit confused by your post ... No question that it's looking like a good device. And it's from Motu so the audio handling is obviously going to be pretty good. But surely using the new outboard camera encoding units like AJA's KiPro or Convergent Design's nanoFlash entirely obviates the need for interfacing and/or cross conversion as you're suggesting above? Also, with regards to cross conversion, I'm not seeing any note of any conversion functionality at all on this unit, it seems to be straight I/O but would love to be wrong ... am I misunderstanding what you mean?

Best
Andy

Hi Andy,

I got a bit exuberant when I saw the promo material then I shot off a post before I had properly thought things through. In the course of you writing your post I had corrected my post realizing that the MOTU unit didn't do cross conversion.

I saw all the IO, the price and got a bit over excited.

Sorry for the confusion.

I'd just like to mention here that MOTU stands for "Mark Of The Unicorn'. That always makes me smile.

I always wondered about that...NICE!

It lacks scaling abilities? ANY? Can it at least downconvert HD to SD? I wondered how they could go so cheap. I need to upconvert quite a bit, so I like my MXO2 (and the Kona 3) for that. For a straight capture box, it does look very good though...solid.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

I hope it's solid. Love the TC display. And I must be one of the few people rarely doing HD/SD scaling.

- Justin Barham -

We don't do any scaling either. But we don't take in work from other people. If one of out videographers brings in the wrong format, well their fired...

I use scaling for doc work. ARCHIVAL footage. And since that is all I do...


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

More important to me these days than scaling is 2K. Seems everything is RED these days.

- Justin Barham -