Playing Igniter Digital Picture On A DC30+

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 (720x486 or 360x243), the picture appears very squished on the DC30+ with its square pixels (640x480 or 320x240). 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.