Blackmagic Design created a gorgeous full featured product in the UltraScope. And they tried to make it as inexpensive as possible by making it a card you can drop into a spare Windows system laying around the office or studio.
However, most people who have a spare system like this don’t realize the additional specs required. You need at least two PCIe slots–one of which needs to be a x16 PCIe slot for the graphics card. Spare systems might be an older system laying around from a previous system–and they may be PCI-X, not PCIe.
There are few graphics cards that are officially supported–mostly the newer variety–so you have to run out and buy a new card for that spare system. This would be very beneficial to all editors–Mac users included–since the system requires HD-SDI, but otherwise doesn’t care about the type of platform where its coming from. However, many Mac users wouldn’t have a spare Windows system like this laying around, nor do most users generally know how to build one from the ground up from scratch.
So…we decided to build a companion product for the UltraScope called ColoRig. "We designed the system as a low profile compact 2U rack which can be put on a shelf nearby, or away from the main editing system altogether in another room with a long SDI run" said Torrey Loomis, CEO of Silverado. "Its a ready-to-use product–just rack it up, plug in a monitor, turn it on, and boot up the software. Aside from that, you don’t have to tinker, install, configure or do anything else. Its the perfect companion for every Apple video professional"
ColoRig was most recently adopted by 4-time Emmy award winner Michael Forrest for use on G4’s American Ninja Challenge.
