Component or SDI to a laptop?
 

I like the convenience of a laptop. Now that the new Macbook Pro is out, the 17" version, I might consider switching to it. I'd like to be able to work with the component signal of the HD100 and a laptop would make it so convenient to use it on the field. The problem is, I can't find a card or device that allows me to drive the component signal from the camera to the computer. There is the AJA mini converter for component to SDI with embedded audio. Great! How do I go from there to the lappy? I can't find a PCMCIA or ExpresCard adapter for this. Am I the only one asking for this?

TIA

I'm with you, I would love to find a way to use component in as well. Sorry Paulo, I don't know of any way.

Brian

I would do a little searching around on the apple forums first before you buy a 17 inch power book pro they seem to be having problems I was going to buy one myself but have decided to wait till the end of the year to see how it preforms for other people, so far not impressed yet and you never know what sony might realease this year.

Gary, thank you for the advice but... :)
I used a PowerBook 17" exclusively for the past 3 years. Apple made some amazing machine and I strongly feel that they have some of the highest quality around. The new Intel Macs are new and I'm not jumping the gun yet, I now that there can be issues but then again this happens with pretty much any machine. Regarding Sony, not an option, they don't run Mac OS X and besides, I switched to Apple, after 20 years of PC use, because of the solution they provide. There just nothing like it in the computing business, MHO. I'm waiting too but because I feel that they might get a speed bump in the hgh end pretty soon. I looked at the test by Ars Technica and strangely enough, the MacBook 15" is just marginally slower than the MacBook *Pro* 17". They will probably make the Pro line faster soon, just my speculation, in order to make the distinction between the two lines stronger.

Take care.

found any solutions yet to get component to a laptop?
 

Hey people, good discussion here. Heard there was something "big" going to happen in this field in NAB, any ideas from that?
About the new macbooks I have some practical experience. When they first came out, some post production ppl bought 15" models, and we were doing multicamedit in FCP. Unfortunately, when still the new intel based macs have to run the prog through the emulator, "old" 15" pbook performed the best in the edit. Bet the new ones rule, but only when new programs come out designed for the processor. And one big minus i noticed was the missing fwire 800 connection. Also prob the distiction they want to make between the 15" and 17".

Juha.
The 17" has the FW800 connector and now FCP is available in Universal binary so it runs native in the Intel CPU.

I've been searching too, especially for express card interfaces, but so far nothing. Seems like a market oportunity for the right company. I mentioned it to someone at the Black Magic booth at NAB and he said he didn't know about anything. Most of the sales types on the floor at NAB don't know what express card is.

But, if enough people sqwak, maybe someone will listen.

It's not just a matter of a 'whole' in the market. The main problem with a laptop are the outside connections. You need the data throughput like a PCI-bus to capture component or SDI. The throughput is simply too high for PCMCIA, USB or Firewire connections. The only devices which are available are devices which downconvert it back to firewire for example.

ExpressCard overcomes the speed limitations, at least in theory. It's just a laptop version of a PCIExpress slot that on paper supports up to 3Gb throughput. Both the 54 and 34 have the same interface.

Here is a good link to find out more about expresscard interfaces.

http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/

Includes links to various products.

Thank you Joe. Looks like we are gonna need to wait for an ExpressCard SDI interface.

Indeed that interface should do the trick.

Wouldn't this do the trick too? The new Matrox MXO box... it's pretty cool.
http://www.matrox.com/video/products/mxo/home.cfm


Edit:
oops- it's "output" not "input". Doesn't look like it would work for that.
still great little device.

There is an SDI expresscard in the works:

http://www.vydeo.com/products/EC34.html

I was hoping that the Blackmagic Multibridge would be adapted from PCIe to expresscard, but I believe the expresscard is 1x and will not handle the data rate of 4:4:4 uncompressed, which is why Multibridge uses a PCIe 4x lane.

We can only hope that Blackmagic Design will give us an option to use the Multibridge with a limited data rate to match the expresscard slot.

Yeah, it shows that the companies realized that there is a market of people using laptops to edit videos. The Matrox device is defintely interesting for color correcting footage via the built-in DVI interface of the POwerbook.