EX1 HDSDI to Laptop
 

I am thinking of buying a EX1 and matching it with this laptop for HDSDI capture:

http://eurocom.com/products/showroom...m?model_id=188

I have not been able to find an Express Card HDSDI capture card.

I think it could be a desktop replacement for on site capture, editing and DVD burning.

Just wanted to see what the crew here thought...?

Plan on keeping it plugged in....The Battery life will be horrible! They say 1.5 hrs but that probably will never happen under the conditions you would be running especially with those specs. Great Specs though and over all sounds like a killer laptop...I too have never seen an HDSDI express car for capture...But you could just use a Decklink.

I dont think an express card could handle uncompressed HDSDI, I've certainly never seen/heard of one - and I probably would of. Your best bet for a laptop solution is the MOTU V3, Adobe On Location and an eSata raid but then you're still only capping uncompressed DVCPRO HD....surely the huge advantage of this camera is the workflow this method makes it a whole lot more expensive...

There was a company that had an HDSDI Express 34 on their website as a "coming soon.." product. It was there for awhile and I used to check back on its status, but it never materialized. Now all references to it have disappeared. It must have been difficult or impossible to engineer, or not worth it given the potential market.

Not bad, but if you're going to spend that kind of money why not wait for the Convergent Designs CF-based recorder or the proposed Cineform equivalent? Those offer a more manageable bit rate and are probably more portable, plus should be less likely to get stolen than a souped-up laptop.

Charles,
You might want to look at the AJA Hi5 HD-SDI/SDI to HDMI Video and Audio Converter. I think you could use it to connect an HD-SDI camera to an HDMI input card like the Black Magic Intensity.

www.aja.com/html/products_converters_HI5.html

($489.95 at B&H)

Ken Hull

From what I understand HDSDI is 1.4Mb/sec. The Hard drives will do 3.0Mb'sec and in RAID 0 that should be X3 about 9Mb/sec. The drives should be able to handle it but...

Acquiring the video needs to be HDSDI in or use a converter to get HDMI.

The MOTU V3 is a 1394B device. 1394B is 800Mb/sec...? How does that work?


chuck

Your numbers are off: standard uncompressed HD is ~1.5 gigabits/second which equals 187.5 MB/sec, while a good single hard drive can sustain speeds of roughly 30-50 MB/sec reliably. That means you need at least a 4-drive RAID to capture and play uncompressed HD, which is why most of us use some form of compression for most purposes.

And I don't know how one could get 1.5 Gb/sec through an 800 Mbps firewire bus, so something doesn't add up there.

Prospect 2k is a decent alternative to uncompressed HD-SDI. Easier on the array and you can edit the material on non-HD-SDI machine. However, capture, export, and monitoring via HD-SDI will require an AJA card or similiar. At the present, a compromise would be a shoebox or shuttle based PC with a carrying handle that will accomodate a full sized card.

Still, how are you going to carry/acomodate an external array? Kinda makes the laptop not as portable a solution. (A shuttle could also accomodate a two disk array... have to test that one first).

An HD-SDI express card would be a huge benefit,and couple that with an array made from solid state drives at 1/4 the power, size, and weight (when available), I could easily replace my quad workstation with a loaded Dell laptop.

Patience, technology/availability is almost there... one more cycle...

I think that fitting the 10bit 422 HD signal over an expresscard 1x pci-e bus might be a bit tough. granted the intensity does it (although im not sure it supports more than 8bit), but most HD-SDI cards like decklink or kona are pci-e 4x. my understanding is that a single pci-e lane is 250MBps, so its not totally impossible, but ~190MBps HDSDI (not sure about that number) is awfully close considering there is no doubt other communication going over than pci-e lane as well.

tekkeon might help ...
 

this little battery might help the battery drain.
http://www.tekkeon.com/site/products-mypowerall.php

The MOTU V3 is DVCPro HD, not uncompressed, which is how they can send the signal over firewire. (I believe it can work over regular firewire too).