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When Apple's Final Cut Pro hit the market, Pinnacle Systems was one of the first companies to prove that this upstart NLE was not a toy. Pinnacle introduced the CineWave card around the time of Final Cut Pro version 1.25, turning Final Cut Pro into not only an advanced editing system but one capable of editing uncompressed high definition video.
HUB-3 Technology
The CineWave hardware is a PCI card based on Pinnacle's HUB-3 technology and is the same foundation as the Pinnacle's TARGA 3000 for the PC. A breakout box is connected to the back of the card via a thin umbilical cable. This breakout box is more than just a set of audio and video connectors, since the selection of the appropriate breakout box determines whether you have digital and/or analog I/O or a standard or high definition video system. The PCI hardware card itself never changes.
The CineWave solution is based on the TARGA Cine Engine (hardware) and the TARGA Cine codec (software). The card's architecture uses a 128 MB frame buffer coupled with an onboard HUB-3 "video CPU." An image is pulled into the buffer, processed by the HUB-3 chip at up to 200 mega pixels per second, and then read back out to the buffer. A properly configured Apple G4 can handle up to two real-time steams of standard definition 601 video plus two real-time graphic channels or one stream of uncompressed HD. An HD system can also simultaneously output a downconverted SD signal without the need to render the conversion.
Media Compatibility Through QuickTime
Final Cut Pro is really a "media management tool" that controls the way QuickTime handles audio and video media. The TARGA Cine codec is QuickTime compatible, which permits the CineWave card to capture video, "wrap" it inside of a QuickTime media "container," and store it on the drives. Once the TARGA Cine codec is installed on any Mac, QuickTime-compliant applications can read the media files, even if the hardware isn't present. This means you can capture HD footage on a CineWave station equipped with the HD breakout box, move the media across a network to other workstations, and process the footage as needed. In fact, all configurations of CineWave can edit HD footage, so in a...