Blackmagic Forum

Hi, Impoverished film maker needs help. I'm editing a short film 1080P on an old Avid Xpress pro with an SD Mojo, which is fine apart from the fact that I can't view my work on an external HD monitor as the signal from the Mojo is SD. Can I use a Black Magic micro converter (SDI - HDMI) to turn the signal from the Mojo SD to an HD image? I can see in the specs that it can handle SD, but not sure if it will convert to HD. Any guidance would be much appreciated.

If you work with HD project you want to monitor it in HD over HD capable card.
Instead of converter you can buy BM HD card ( they are cheap) and work natively in HD. Just check if your NLE supports them.
Upscaling SD to HD is about useless. Let TV upscale it- it will do better job than BM.

This:

SDI Video Rates
SDI video connections are switchable between standard definition, high definition level A and level B 3G-SDI.

suggest that it can do upscale on SD signal. Not 100% sure. Ask BM support.

If you must use that old of an Avid, you might want to look at ebay. You can probably pick up an old HD mojo, or even better for pretty cheap. (That old of an avid won't allow you to output through a third party card.) I think 5.5 media composer was when the option came in. You can also look for an updated, but still outdated Avid license on ebay for cheap, that would allow you to use a BM card in your computer...depending on your computer of course.

Or yes, you could probably go mojo out through a mini terenex type device to upconvert to HD.

And Roger may want to check out the Avid users group over on Facebook. There's bound to be somebody there that will have an old system they could piece out to him at an economical price.