Blackmagic Intensity HDMI Card
 

This card could be a way of editing AVCHD from the SR1. Just output HDMI and edit uncompressed.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

Ron Evans

Wow, the technology is pretty impressive. However, I think it defeats the purpose of buying hard drive camcorder. Capture non compressed HD video to hard disk will require stack of drives.

Think about it, I can avoid this by buying HD DV camcorder and record via firewire 1 or 2.

Thu Nguyen

but if you do that you are recording the compressed data stream.
This card gives you the option to by pass the compression, allows you to do live event two camera switching etc.

Sharyn

It will be interesting to try chroma keying with its 4:2:2 color sampling

There is some discussion that seems to imply that the color via HDMI is still 4:2:0

Sharyn

Really? The specs clearly state that it is 4:2:2. Of course if you are playing back from tape (disk or drive) then the video has already been encoded in 4:2:0, unless the specs are wrong direct to disk recording should give 4:2:2

The discussion would be moot/pointless; the HDMI output is 4:2:2

Sorry I thought there was still some question as to exactly at what point Sony picked up the video signal to put on the HDMI connection on the SR1. I know HDMI is supports it but I was not clear if the path was from the Cmos in 4:2 :2 to the HDMI or if Sony was picking up this video somewhere down the processing chain.

So then what happens with 5.1 audio? The SR1 has this internally created 5.1, and 5.1 is supported typically on HDMI, but the Blackmagic Intensity does not support it?

Sharyn

I put up a post on another forum

http://forums.dvdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=39852

Mike at Convergent Designs has done a very good job explaining in block terms how the flow works, and spells out that the output from HDMI or Component from these camcorders is full HD pre compression.

For live work it seems to be an interesting alternative.
One solution for NON hdmi camcorders might be to look at a Component to HDMI converter, so that you can run the long coax cables and then convert to HDMI at the Blackmagic card location.

Problem are of course the cable length for HDMI, but if the Balun solution works that might be a solution, HD SDI is fine except the devices you need to connect into are typically pretty pricey.

I had some email exchanges with Blackmagic on their live switching program.

My concerns were that it only supported two inputs, but I was looking at getting a HDMI switcher that could be placed before the BlackMagic Intensity card so somewhat along the lines of the Panasonic MX50 you would have two busses that are synced, and that you first select the input you want to switch to and then perform the switch. Not the most elegant of solutions, but a lot cheaper than HD SDI vision mixers.

Blackmagic warned that on longer lengths the cable quality was an issue for HDMI, so it will be interesting to see how the solutions pan out, considering the home/business environment that is likely to need long length connections from the HDMI device to the HDMI Display, solutions should become available at reasonable prices.

Sharyn