Blackmagic Intensity Pro

[Ron Little]

Yes the up res-ing does indeed seem to smooth the mpeg encoding in the footage. The real hit is in storage. It requires a lot of space.

My system, a dual quad core handles it fine capturing to a dedicated raid. The only thing is it seems a little finicky. When I switch back and forth between the Matrox card and the infinity card.

The captured footage has to be rendered and does not play in realtime. That is a pain. I stopped using the intensity for that reason.

I hope that new drivers will come out that makes this thing work better. I do wish there was a better explanation on the available codecs for capture into Premiere Pro.

[Charles Papert]

Kristian, I have an email out to your tech support dept...when the Mac Pro goes to sleep, the card loses the handshake to the monitor (JVC HD CRT, through the component outs on the BM Intensity Pro) and won't reconnect unless I restart the computer. Worse, if I try to work in FCP with the board and the monitor not talking, it causes FCP to hang up and I have to force quit.

help?!

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by Ron Little

Yes the up res-ing does indeed seem to smooth the mpeg encoding in the footage. The real hit is in storage. It requires a lot of space...

Ron, you could use a really good codec when you capture, like Cineform's, if you want to save some space.

The real ? seems to be "Does capturing an HDV tape out of the HDMI port to a high quality codec give a better result than capturing an HDV tape out of the Firewire port to a high quality codec?"

The answer seems to be "Yes."

[Daniel Browning]

Originally Posted by Kristian Lam

The question is how good a job the camera is doing when it is up res-ing the HDV video compared to capturing native HDV via firewire and then transcoding it to ProRes 422. In this instance, it may be possible (and I'm speculating here) that the HV20 is doing a better job than going via the software transcoding route.

If the HV20, with its teensy tiny processor, can up-convert in real-time better than a full-size computer can do with unlimited time, then the software is braindamaged. However, both should do an equally excellent job given that up-conversion has been a solved problem for a long time.

Originally Posted by Peter Moretti

The real question seems to be "Does capturing an HDV tape out of the HDMI port give to a high quality codec give a better result than cpaturing an HDV tape out of the Firewire port to a high quality codec?"

The answer seems to be "Yes."

If the answer isn't "they are the same", then one of them is poorly done.

[Kristian Lam]

Originally Posted by Daniel Browning

If the HV20, with its teensy tiny processor, can up-convert in real-time better than a full-size computer can do with unlimited time, then the software is braindamaged. However, both should do an equally excellent job given that up-conversion has been a solved problem for a long time.

If the answer isn't "they are the same", then one of them is poorly done.

Fair point, Daniel. However, since there is no fixed formula for this conversion process, certain manufacturers may employ different algorithms which will inevitably affect the final quality.

[Peter Moretti]

Originally Posted by Kristian Lam

...
However, HDMI is not data transfer. It is an actual video signal and in order for the camera to play out your HDV tape as a video signal, it has to up res the footage to 1920x1080 at 4:2:2. This is the only way it can transmit that information to the Intensity card or any HDMI capable display. This is done regardless of whether you send video out via HDMI or the analog component connection.

When you are capturing 'live', the camera bypasses the HDV compressor chip and sends the signal out via HDMI.

When you are capturing off a HDV tape, the camera decompresses the data on tape, filters and resamples the data before sending it out as 1920x1080 4:2:2 via HDMI...

Kristian,

Do you know how audio is handled?

When capturing live via HDMI, what sampling and bit rates come out?

And when HDMI capturing from an HDV tape, the MP2 audio must be decompressed. Is it up-resed to the same sampling and bit rates that live HDMI capture stream out?

Thanks much!

[Kristian Lam]

Originally Posted by Peter Moretti

Kristian,

Do you know how audio is handled?

When capturing live via HDMI, what sampling and bit rates come out?

And when HDMI capturing from an HDV tape, the MP2 audio must be decompressed. Is it up-resed to the same sampling and bit rates that live HDMI capture stream out?

Thanks much!

Hi Peter,

The audio in the HDMI stream is 48 kHz and 24 bit so it it is coming off tape, it will get resampled if necessary.