Apple IO-HD
 

"Apple and AJA have together provided an early glimpse at the IO-HD. The new external breakout device is built for real-time input of and conversion to Apple's new ProRes 422 high-definition video format introduced for use with Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server. The performance and file compression of the device allows direct editing of even 4K HD video in the field on a MacBook Pro, Apple says, and will up- or down-convert video resolution to match the intended editing environment. The IO-HD should cost one fifth the amount of competing HD video encoders and is set to ship in July for $3,495."

Now, is this going to allow direct field capture of "ProRes"/"Uncompressed" ???

yep.

I would assume you would want to capture to external hard drives though.
I don't think a internal MacBook Pro HD would handle it. Express card SATA?

incredible...
So I assume it has no Hard drive in it...
still, given the price of hard drives, it is a great solution !
wonder how the codec is, I assume great,
4:2:2 is what I crave

it is 4:2:2 full raster, but not uncompressed.
It uses the new fancy Apple codec just announced
yesterday.

1920x1080 4:2:2 is a nice step up from 1440 4:2:0

Title of this thread should be "AJA IO-HD", since it is an AJA product.

Some clarification is needed:

it looks like it is possible to do on-field capturing by using a firewire 800 cable even with a MacBook Pro; the Apple ProRes 422 samples at 145Mbps (normal quality) and 220Mbps (high quality), therefore:

- I guess the capturing can be done on standard hard disks (internal and external), am I right?
- Once the editing has been done is it possible to stream back from the Mac (through the firewire cable) back to the SDI output?
- Has anyone seen examples of the Codec quality?

Cheers
Christian

Supposedly the codec is pretty good, (rumors has it rivals cineform)

It would seem like any disk that can support the bit rate (internal or external will allow for the recording.

If you check out the aja site they have a picture of the back of the box which shows an hd-sdi out as well. I think at 3500 this is freaking awesome.

Who do we buy it from?

So I'm a bit confused... granted the AJA IO handles the HD SDI input and conversion to ProRes 422... but you still need a Macbook Pro/G5 for control and playback, and an additional firewire/SATA drive or RAID setup (for the paranoid)? So all in all, we're still talking about a ~$7K+TAX setup? And there's still no elegant way to power this via battery?

No need for a RAID for this codec...unless you're doing multiple streams/layers. That's the beauty of it...small enough to go straight to a laptop.

Yes, you then can play back via the SDI.

No battery...too bad. I still think this could be of use with an H1 and a laptop, especially for greenscreen shoots, etc.

I think you would at least want to use an external firewire drive or something. Laptops strike me as quite an expensive storage medium :)

Drew I think the exciting thing about this is that it brings us that much closer to having a "firestore" like portable device available. With the prores codec hardwired into a chip, it seems like the next step is for someone one to incorporate that into a small form factor with an HD-SDI port and a couple of 2.5" 160gb hard drives. Not a completely portable system yet, but getting a step closer then the Wafian was/is.

Agreed,
This is on the way to a dream machine...
(while he waits for Red)

I checked it out at NAB and it is indeed impressive. The ProRes codec is a huge improvement over the other QT alternatives and is possible to capture to a single hard drive over the entire disk. It will cross convert to 720 60p, which could be useful for a variety of reasons, not the the least of which would be slowmo purposes.

Even better would be the fact that you can route audio through the device and embed it, along with timecode, into the FCP capture, which was a serious issue for XL-H1 owners with the video-only SDI signal. You can also capture raw HDMI from the HV20 if you want to bypass HDV on that little cam too.

I hope to get one this summer.

Barlow,
(how are you my friend?)
We have Sound through the HD-SDI?
holy smoke!

Can you confirm whether there is a a Hard drive in the IO-HD or does it need an external hard drive firewired to it?
Does it NEED a Laptop?
and it, I assume, needs to Plug in to some power...?

Thanks B,

John

ok.
So it is really just an I/O

...so it's really just gonna end up being a little bit smaller than lugging a MacPro (w/ HD-SDI card) and compressing to Sheer or PhotoJpeg 4:2:2....
(you could argue that a MacPro is acyualy more manageable than the
1) IO-HD (& power)
2) MacBook (& power)
3) extra drives

Basically same price.
Plus with a MacPro you also get a computer...

am I missing something?