Cinedeck Drive Professional-Quality Video Recorders with Bluefish444
11 July, 2017
Cinedeck, based in New York City, is a manufacturer of innovative recording systems for use in a variety of video production environments. The systems are used for recording, on-set monitoring, playback, and quality control, and they help to unify end-to-end, camera to post to archive workflows by offering the most comprehensive range of ready-to-edit output formats. Cinedeck recorders have been adopted by hundreds of TV and cinema productions, and have won multiple awards for their user interface and experience.
Cinedeck’s customers are primarily production, OB and post-production facilities. Their recorders cater to all forms of ingest from archive to multi-cam, with SD to 4K resolutions, and encoding in ProRes, JPEG2000, and virtually everything in between. Driving the SDI input and outputs on all Cinedeck recorders, are customised Bluefish444 Epoch | 4K Supernova S+ video I/O cards.
Cinedeck have been using Bluefish444 video cards for the past five years. They chose to work with Bluefish444 as they were looking for a professional-quality card with good support. Through this partnership, Cinedeck was able to launch the MX Recorder; their first server-class ingest solution, aimed at facility-level customers that were looking for a serious professional appliance. Bluefish444’s reputation as having the highest-quality video card in the industry, with 12-bit processing, flexible I/O options, and up to 4K 60p capabilities, were important factors when Cinedeck were choosing what hardware to use.
“We considered a range of cards before finally moving ahead with Bluefish444. One of the reasons we chose the Epoch | 4K Supernova S+ was because of the ability to customise the card to meet our requirements,” comments Charles D'Autremont, CTO at Cinedeck. “And not only is the signal clean, we liked that we have good access to the incoming VANC and HANC, there weren’t any limitations, or ‘gotchas’, like there were with some of the competitor products we looked at.”
Cinedeck have deployed the Epoch | 4K Supernova S+ from Bluefish444 in every piece of hardware manufactured since 2012. The decks are used by organisations large and small with notables such as Apple, BET, Cartoon Network, Dreamworks, MTV, NASA, NBC and the US Navy. A big benefit Cinedeck have with the Epoch range is the ability to customise their software to leverage additional quality and functionality of the Bluefish444 hardware. Common customer feedback they receive especially revolves around the flexibility of the Bluefish444 cards.
“Having a flexible I/O port design, the ability to switch firmware to support different workflows and formats such as 4K/UHD, has been a big plus for our customers that work in SD, HD and 4K,” says D'Autremont. “That same flexibility also means a ZX45 four channel recorder, comprised of two Epoch | 4K Supernova S+ cards, can quickly become an eight-input recorder.”
D'Autremont mentions that Bluefish444’s support has always been excellent. The few issues that they have had were rectified quickly, with a new card shipped out immediately when required. This kind of support is critical for professional users and was one of the primary reasons Cinedeck chose the Epoch | 4K Supernova S+ as the card for their recorders.
Looking toward the 4K and IP-based future, Cinedeck hope to continue their relationship with Bluefish444 in the form of the KRONOS video I/O card. Capable of up to eight channels of HD, or two channels of 4K 60p in/out per card, it will give their customers even more flexibility, particularly as the industry migrates more toward 4K production.
