News

Bluefish444 Introduces Catalyst 2K/HD/SD Analog/SDI Video Card for Windows and Linux (6/5/2005)

Bluefish444, S. Melbourne, Australia, today announced the Catalyst uncompressed video card, supporting Windows XP, Windows 2000 Pro and Linux operating system 2.4 and 2.6 kernals.

Catalyst revolutionizes the way uncompressed video is processed, introducing for the first time in the marketplace dual 1GHz digital serial processors interacting with a field programmable gate array to create multiple layers of uncompressed real time video processing.

Catalyst has a PCI-X 64 bit 133MHz PCI interface for 1 Gigabyte per second of data transfer for up to 5 streams of uncompressed 10 bit YUV HD SDI video.

Catalyst supports film 2K resolution and HSDL frame rate, allowing real time monitoring of 2K or 2K as HD/SD SDI or 2K as component analog or 2K through a VGA monitor slashing the costs of monitoring 2K.

Catalyst supports all video and audio I/O connections standard on other Bluefish444 HD/SD SDI products. Dual link 2K/HD/SD SDI 4:4:4(RGB), 4:4:4:4(RGB) and 4:2:2:4(YUV) are all standard video connections for the digital intermediary and broadcast design markets respectively. Catalyst includes embedded audio and 6 channels of balanced AES/EBU with XLR connections or 8 channels of SP/DIF for 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound monitoring.

Catayst converts in real time 2K to HD/SD SDI (downconversion) or HD/SD SDI to 2K (upconversion) and everything in between, thereby dispensing with the need for any type of third party signal format converter box, and providing an all in one cost efficient and elegant solution.

Catalyst supports the 16 bit RGB pixel format, allowing compositors and VFX artists to monitor their projects in the 16 bit RGB color precision pixel format and avoiding potentially lossy RGB to YUV software color space conversions.

Catalyst has an internal keyer function for overlaying video or graphics over an SDI input stream in real time for logo insertion and titling.

Catalyst will seamlessly integrate with the latest Bluefish444 publicly available installer supporting free plug ins for; Symmetry, Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.1, Adobe After Effects 6.5, Adobe Photoshop 7.0, Discreet Combustion 4, Eyeon Digital Fusion, Mirage Twister, D2 Software Nuke, Windows Media Encoder, Drastic Technologies Quick Clip Pro and the ever growing number of freely available plug ins.

Catalyst will become a supported video card in the existing Windows and Linux software development kits for software developers and OEM integrators respectively.

Craige Mott, Managing Director of Bluefish444, says, "Catalyst represents a new architecture for uncompressed video within the industry, introducing DSP processing to uncompressed video for the first time in an independently available video card. Retail software applications ranging from sub $1,000 to sub $10,000 are about to get a massive hardware functionality boost, making them incredibly powerful solutions from within a range of what are essentially standard workstations for the broadcast and post production industries".

Catalyst is available from Bluefish444 resellers worldwide in the 3rd quarter of 2005 and retails for $US15,995.

www.bluefish444.com