Blackmagic breakout boxes + unsupported video cards

Hello All! my first post is a purchasing question. Sweet!

right now i am editing off a macbook pro 2011 2.0 ghz quad i7, 8 gigs ram ddr3 (waiting for my 16 gigs to arrive snail mail) and my current video card is AMD Radeon HD 6490M 256 MB

as of this moment, my video card is not compatible with resolve, which is important because i'm in the processes or ordering a cinema camera next month.

i come from a background of music production and in music, you can have a non-compatible system and run pro tools off the HD cards with no lag time or processing errors.

currently im looking into also purchasing the ultra studio 4k or the ultra studio express.

my question is, would either or these units serve me in the same way the pro tools systems would, deliver me the processing power and compatibility with the software or would i have to purchase a new mac.

right now, my main field of interest is commercials and short film editing. so i'm not really aiming for a full feature movie system. just enough to handle daily editing task and maybe even a few sit com work.

thanks for any one that take the time to read this.

[Dwaine Maggart]

Resolve should run with your HD6490M graphics chip. The issue is the low level of VRAM. With 256MB, you won't be able to do anything higher than an SD timeline, and probably not much on that. Adding an UltraStudio device will do nothing to help that. Nothing you can add externally will help the weak graphics situation. What size display does your MBP have? Resolve needs a display resolution of at least 1680x1050 to work. I suspect with the graphics you have, you don't have a display that meets this requirement.

So yes, to do any real work with Resolve, you are realistically looking at getting a better Mac.

Yup. i figured that. my display resolution is only 1440x900. luckily i'm also looking at selling my current laptop and getting the new imac with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5. as of right now my main NLE software is adobe premier. i might play around with the speed grading software also until i make the switch.

thanks for your input. its been a great help.

i'm also looking at selling my current laptop and getting the new imac with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680MX 2GB GDDR5. as of right now my main NLE software is adobe premier. i might play around with the speed grading software also until i make the switch.

The 680MX in the new imac will run resolve very quickly and is a great piece of hardware. Similarly, speedgrade, of which i am not a big fan, will be able to take advantage of the CUDA cores in the 680MX and also provide far better performance than your current laptop. All of this software has become very dependent on a fast graphics system through CUDA and OpenCL and its really important to have a proper system if your going to be doing real work in these applications.

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