I’m trying my best to buy this product! LOL, I really have liked what I’ve seen, but honestly, a single camera is just not very feasible to me. That’s why I want / need the ability to have multiple cameras. Eventually I hope to have a 6x Camera setup. For now though, I only need about 3 in order to have a viable portable live editing system.
I can’t for the life of me figure out how I can get 3x cameras to pull in as sources to my MacBook Pro. I was going to get the MacBook Air, but luckily someone here (I think one of the devs of BoinxTV) steered me away from it!
Please explain how I can get 3 cameras (I have 3x SONY:HXR-MC50U) to show up as sources for BoinxTV! If you can do this, you will truly revolutionize the portable video editing market!!!
Anyone out there have any idea how I can bring this to fruition?
A friend of mine suggested a pci express chassis that I could put a pci card in that would control multiple cameras.
There is a thunderbolt chassis coming out soonish from one company (can’t remember name now) that will allow you do have a pci card -> thunderbolt to your laptop. This setup could be what is the final better setup for a MacBook Pro portable studio (without taking a desktop with you)
Anyhoo, thanks again for any advice on how I can get 3x cams to work with BoinxTV and a MacBook Pro. (PS. My macbook pro I’m getting is the kick butt almost $4k fully loaded one - Wewt!)
The cameras only deliver their signal over HDMI so you’d need HDMI capture cards and for Expresscard there is currently only the Matrox MXO2 as far as I know. And that gives you only 1 HDMI input. The other option is a MacBookPro with Thunderbolt and something like a http://blackmagic-design.com/products/ultrastudiosdi/ but we have no experience with this at the moment.
The last point is: If you feed these cameras in in HD you might overstrain the MacBookPro graphics card a bit.
I’ve tested boinxTV with my (1.83mHz) MacBook Pro using a pci express card with two 1394b HD inputs. It SERIOUSLY chokes the system so I’m looking at other options.
I tested a single HD camera via 1394b on my i7 iMac and it works GREAT. Problem is I need a second (or more) 1394b input and can’t add on iMac.
So I’m looking for a slightly older used Mac Pro that I can put dedicated HDMI inputs in for each camera (hope to have 3 going eventually) and going to give that a try.
Interested to hear feedback from anyone using older Mac Pros (they suggest the newest/beefiest Mac Pro for Boinx on configurations suggestions but I can’t quite afford that yet and not sure I want to until I’ve tested it in the real world a little).
So anyone out there running this on an older Mac Pro with multi HD cameras? If so, what’s the experience like?