Those of you who have dealt with Pro Tools and digital picture over the last couple of years may have already encountered this:
Digital Picture digitized on an Aurora Igniter videocard is not usable on a Pro Tools system with a DC30+ videocard running OS 9. Since the Igniter uses non-square pixels (720×486 or 360×243), the picture appears very squished on the DC30+ with its square pixels (640×480 or 320×240). The Aurora Fuse, the other videocard often used by Pro Tools in OS 9, doesn’t have this problem as long as you use the 2.0.3 driver.
There is a fix for the DC30+ and it’s called OS X. If you switch your system over to OS X, some version of Pro Tools 6 and use the DC30 Xact Driver, your DC30+ card will playback your Igniter digital picture at the proper aspect ratio. I just tested this out myself on Friday.
Unfortunately there still isn’t an OS X driver for the Aurora Fuse. Those of you with this card looking to switch to Pro Tools 6 should probably just suck it up and plop down the $1000 for the Igniter. Obviously the DC30+ is a viable option with the 3rd-party driver, but since the card hasn’t been manufactured for 4 or more years it’s a crapshoot whether you can get your hands on one.