Blackmagic intensity on a macbook pro portable
 

I couldn't find any info whether anyone had tried this, so I went ahead and installed an Intensity card into my Macbook pro for portable uncompressed capture. It seems to work well with an HV20.

I wrote up the details here:
http://panocamera.com/blog/?p=4

Interesting. But it seems Southern Sportsman's using an AJA IOHD, a $3000 product which is also using compression. Here we're talking about a $300 product and a $45 adapter, and getting uncompressed raw footage, as well as being portable.

Nicely done, Steve. Sounds a little easier to bring a MacBook Pro to set rather than a Mac Pro tower + Monitor, mouse, keyboard, APC unit, extension chords, big padlock & cable, etc etc... which i've done, lol.

I wonder when Blackmagic will make an external version/portable version of their Intensity product - it'd be as simple as making one product, and having a choice between a I/O card for a PCIe computer, or a I/O card for a modern laptop.

Wow thats a cool mod! I use my Macbook Pro's wireless so I wouldn't want to use that, is there any alternative?

Christopher, yes I would like to see a portable Blackmagic Intensity solution or wish that Cineform will release their portable product soon.

It just occured to me that all of that space where the optical drive normally resides could easily fit the Blackmagic card internally. If you'd pay $3000 for a dedicated hdmi capture device, why wouldn't one be willing to pay $3000 for a specialized Macbook Pro that Blackmagic had customized with hdmi capture card, maxed out ram, upgraded hard drive, and maybe one of those $100 Macbook Air -type- external DVD burners. You could be doing raw 4:2:2 capturing on-set then edit in the hotel room later, with a laptop you might have carried anyways. Of course, this might make you extremely tired.

For those who might miss the aircard, Amazon sells this:
http://www.amazon.com/Macsense-AeroL.../dp/B000M801WC
usb dongle

Incidentally, I tried 3D tracking some footage with this shindig, but the HV20's interlace and rolling shutter make a mess of things.