I'm very frustrated with this card.
I've re-installed the card drivers many times and it just won't capture.
I got it to work only once at the begining but when I made the intensity not the default audio card it stopped working and I haven't been able to make it work again even after I reinstalled it and let it be the default card again. There is no way to get this thing to capture anymore.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Call Blackmagic support?

I found them to be responsive and knowledgeable.

So much for Intensity in the colonies!
 

Just back from Mediatech, our local bi-annual trade show (broadcasting, video, audio etc). Interesting thing is that I went to the company "apparently" representing Blackmagic (or one of the Blackmagic products) --- and they had not heard of the Intensity card.
Good choice of representatives, there, Blackmagic!
I would have bought one on the spot.
Ah, well, perhaps better luck in 2 years' time.
Also noticeable by their absence was Adobe and, for that matter, Cineform.
And meanwhile the HV20's keep flying off the shelves here --- the entire South Africa seems to have gone HV20 (and HDV generally).

Carl,
Jo'burg

Intensity shows as Discontinued at B&H today.

Looks like Intensity Pro will be the only option?

We have definitely not discontinued Intensity.

Hi Carl,

Thanks for the heads up and I'll let the guys here know about this. I doubt these guys you'd mentioned are representing us. Intensity is flying off the shelves and any reseller worth their while should know about it.

Representation
 

Kristian
The Blackmagic Decklink, as indicated in the Mediatech Guide, was represented by Apple IMC South Africa. One would have thought ...

Carl,
Jo'burg

HDMI monitoring work with Vegas?
 

The BM Intensity cared works well with Premiere offering HDMI out to my 24" BenQ monitor. But I can't seem to get it to work with Vegas.

I wonder if anyone who owns this combination has been able to use an HDMI out monitor with Sony Vegas 7e?

Curious minds would like to know.

Brendan G.
killersocks.com

Hi Brendan,

Unfortunately, we don't support Vegas at this point.

Is support for Vegas expected?

Vegas support has kind of had to come from the SONY side. You will notice that Vegas only seems to support a certain driver version for Blackmagic cards. This driver is usually built into Vegas so the card driver doesn't get updated until Vegas gets updated. The Intensity card came out after the latest main version of Vegas so the card will not work. Some of the main Blackmagic cards do work as long as they work with the older driver that is supported by Vegas.

You need to ask SONY to add support for the Intensity card with at least driver 1.5.

I looked at your webiste. Its seems that Intesity cards don't work with Avid either. Is that correct?

Thanks.

Yes, this is correct. If Avid allows us to plug into them system, we would love to. :)

Kristian,

How about Windows Movie Maker? (I'm serious; I'd love to use your card, just trying to figure out how.)

Hey there,

I've been looking the intensity for quite some time but there's something that i just can't get clarified. (Great product, btw)

What are the system requirements for running the intensity with the HV20? If you're capturing uncompressed, i imagine a ridiculously fast raid array is necessary. But what about processor and memory requirements? I've heard things (in this thread) about capturing directly to ProRes422? Does that require a screaming processor and a lot of memory to do? And if you do that, do you need a RAID? Any information on this would be EXTREMELY helpful. We have an hv20, and have a few large broadcast projects coming up, and would like to use it, if we can in fact get high quality (not HDV) video off of it. Thanks!

Dale

Uncompressed HD at 1080i60 requires about 120 MB/sec so your media drives must be able to keep up or you'll get dropped frames. A 3-drive SATA RAID0 *should* be able to do this but drives slow down as they get filled so the more drives in your RAID, the better.

If you are to work in Apple ProRes, then you'll need a Mac Pro in order to capture in realtime but since you're using Intensity (which does now work in a G5), that should be sorted. Recommended RAM for HD work is 4GB or more.

Thanks a lot!

Kristian,

BM's website says:

"Intensity is an ideal companion for most video editing software."

"Intensity works with a huge range of software to let you choose the tools you already know how to use, so you don’t need to waste time learning custom software when you want better video quality."

"... use your favorite software, including Final Cut Pro™, Premiere Pro, After Effects, Photoshop, Fusion™ and many more."

What software am I missing to do live streaming HDMI capture with an Intensity card? I use a PC and don't have Premiere. But I do have Avid, Vegas and Windows Movie Maker. What else is there that does work with Intensity?

Thanks much!

the intensity comes with its own stand alone capture application. you dont need any editing software at all to be able to capture footage live, preview it, and play it back. you can then bring that footage into any editing software you wish. you can also use cineform hd/hdv to capture from the intensity and recompress as well without any editing software.

terence

Terence,

So all this hubub is about using Vegas's capture program instead of Intensity's or Cineform's capture progs? No prob. I could care less what capture prog I use.

I'm leaning towards getting Cineform NEO HD version anyway, this way the data rate will be managable.

Thanks much for the help.

The card works in any software by the fact that it creates normal AVI files or quicktime files to use in pretty much any program. Perhaps not all programs will work with the card directly but you can capture via the free capture program and then import into any program as long as they can read normal AVI and quicktime files. If you use a program that does support output from the card then you can render a new file of your timeline then use the free capture program to output to your HDTV.

Premiere of course has better interaction when used with the card but it isn't needed to use the card.

For example a visual effects artist may not use a NLE at all with the card. They could just capture clean uncompressed clips to a AVI file and then use those files in After Effects or Combustion to work with. After Effects and Combustion both actually use the card for input and output so you can do your FX work in Combustion and see what you are doing on your HDTV.

Even if you never capture material and are just a graphic designer, Intensity will work with Photoshop, After Effects and Combustion.

Thomas,

Can a codecs, i.e. DNxHD, be added to the capture program supplied with Intensity? If not, does the capture program have built-in compression choices or is it uncompressed capture only? Thanks.

FYI,

If you are looking to get into the Avid with DNxHD, here is the flow.

Capture using the intensity to quicktime. Import into After Effects, and export to quicktime using the DNxHD codec. You must have a media composer installed to get all the resolutions. Then open Avid and do a quick import of the footage. It's actually not that bad of an option. I've done it and it works great. I'd say it took about 5 minutes to render to DNxHD 145 from uncompressed HD out of the HV20 and into the computer via Intensity. Once in the Avid it cuts like butter. BTW 1:30 of uncompressed video was about 11 GB. Wow! Cineform cuts that to about 400 to 500 meg and the blackmagic codec is similar and looks good too.

Chris

More precision
 

So in other words, I can capture my footage out of a HV20 or a Sony V1 through Intensity, they edit and process the uncompressed footage in Vegas?
Can I also convert it in something else than HDV?
Thanks for the info
Larry

Is there by chance an ETA for Intensity drivers for HV20 support AND Vista Ultimate 64-bit? I was disappointed finding out that it wasn't supported, but it seems like Blackmagic is aware of the needs of the user, so hopefully we'll see one soon?

Any info on this would be fantastic. Thanks!

Oh, and Larry - i'm not exactly the most qualified source to answer your question but...

Using the HDMI output of your HV20, you can capture to your PC via the intensity card either Uncompressed (which requires a very fast RAID array), or Photo JPEG, or DVCPRO HD compression. Any compression other than uncompressed requires some (substantial) processing power by the PC you're capturing to, but IMHO it's worth it, unless you're maybe doing lots of compositing or something. I think with the new update there may be a new compression method for PC, but maybe not. I know now you can do ProRes 422 now with the Mac (Intel-only), which is awesome.

So to simply answer your question, yes, you can capture to something other than HDV (which is really the point of the Intensity card).

Hope this helped.