Ellory Yu wrote:Thanks Steve. So as not to waste a TB4 port, can I use a multi-dock that has a couple of TB3 ports connected to one of the TB4 ports on the Studio, and then connect the Ultrastudio in one of the TB3s?
Also, the new BM Media Player has more features and support more standards as well cheaper than the 4K mini ultra studio.
The way Thunderbolt works is, two ports to a bus; therefore with 4 ports on a Mac Studio it has 2 buses, with 2 ports each. You can daisychain off any single TB3/4 port; but each bus has a
total of 40Gb/s; therefore you can saturate them quickly, if say you have a wideband i/o BMD device, plus Thunderbolt storage and even a monitor; this will still happen if you use separate ports on the same bus. However TB4 doubles the PCIe bandwidth to 32 Gbps, over 3; the TB3 Ultrastudios won't perform better; but you can share them with more devices, even 2 monitors and have faster storage too. If that all makes sense?
In practice, you can put the Ultrastudio quite comfortably, at the end of a chain - I have a HP workstation Laptop, with only 1 bus (2 ports); attached via TB3 to a docking station/power with the 4K Mini attached to that; plus a HDMI 2nd monitor; USB drives; Sound Devices MixPre II 6; and numerous ancillaries, like keyboard mouse and USB hub for dongles etc. So all that is coming through 1 port on 1 TB3 bus. No problems whatsoever even at 4K. So you're unlikely to have a problem with your Mac Studio ever and you have 2 buses with 40 GB/s each too.
The Uktrastudio 4K Mini appears to have more standards, including everything on the Media Player 10G plus 3D standards too, from what I can see. It has also has more i/o features for a traditional edit suite; whereas the 10G has more features for live multicam work plus 10G for shared storage - unless you need that, it's not necessary nor as fast and wide as local storage can be.
Ellory Yu wrote:Is that what generally most colorist using the Mac Studio use in lieu of a DeckLink cards available for Intel PCIe? The DeckLink 4K Intensity card for the PC is only $235 and for me that's pretty good enough. Certainly they won't work on the Silicon architecture even with an external PCIe enclosure. Am I missing something or is BMD lacking a DeckLink model for the Mac Silicon line?
Unfortunately Thunderbolt is the only solution for laptops and Mac Studios and Ultrastudios more expensive than similar Decklinks. The 4K Mini is much cheaper than the competition, that can used to in Avid, if that's any consolation. But yes I'm surprised there's not a simple 4K monitor model too, even though I need all the extras on mine and none of those extra again on the Extreme 3.
Hope this helps.