Apple IO-HD
 

"Apple and AJA have together provided an early glimpse at the IO-HD. The new external breakout device is built for real-time input of and conversion to Apple's new ProRes 422 high-definition video format introduced for use with Final Cut Studio 2 and Final Cut Server. The performance and file compression of the device allows direct editing of even 4K HD video in the field on a MacBook Pro, Apple says, and will up- or down-convert video resolution to match the intended editing environment. The IO-HD should cost one fifth the amount of competing HD video encoders and is set to ship in July for $3,495."

Now, is this going to allow direct field capture of "ProRes"/"Uncompressed" ???

yep.

I would assume you would want to capture to external hard drives though.
I don't think a internal MacBook Pro HD would handle it. Express card SATA?

incredible...
So I assume it has no Hard drive in it...
still, given the price of hard drives, it is a great solution !
wonder how the codec is, I assume great,
4:2:2 is what I crave

it is 4:2:2 full raster, but not uncompressed.
It uses the new fancy Apple codec just announced
yesterday.

1920x1080 4:2:2 is a nice step up from 1440 4:2:0

Title of this thread should be "AJA IO-HD", since it is an AJA product.

Some clarification is needed:

it looks like it is possible to do on-field capturing by using a firewire 800 cable even with a MacBook Pro; the Apple ProRes 422 samples at 145Mbps (normal quality) and 220Mbps (high quality), therefore:

- I guess the capturing can be done on standard hard disks (internal and external), am I right?
- Once the editing has been done is it possible to stream back from the Mac (through the firewire cable) back to the SDI output?
- Has anyone seen examples of the Codec quality?

Cheers
Christian

Supposedly the codec is pretty good, (rumors has it rivals cineform)

It would seem like any disk that can support the bit rate (internal or external will allow for the recording.

If you check out the aja site they have a picture of the back of the box which shows an hd-sdi out as well. I think at 3500 this is freaking awesome.

Who do we buy it from?

So I'm a bit confused... granted the AJA IO handles the HD SDI input and conversion to ProRes 422... but you still need a Macbook Pro/G5 for control and playback, and an additional firewire/SATA drive or RAID setup (for the paranoid)? So all in all, we're still talking about a ~$7K+TAX setup? And there's still no elegant way to power this via battery?

No need for a RAID for this codec...unless you're doing multiple streams/layers. That's the beauty of it...small enough to go straight to a laptop.

Yes, you then can play back via the SDI.

No battery...too bad. I still think this could be of use with an H1 and a laptop, especially for greenscreen shoots, etc.

I think you would at least want to use an external firewire drive or something. Laptops strike me as quite an expensive storage medium :)

Drew I think the exciting thing about this is that it brings us that much closer to having a "firestore" like portable device available. With the prores codec hardwired into a chip, it seems like the next step is for someone one to incorporate that into a small form factor with an HD-SDI port and a couple of 2.5" 160gb hard drives. Not a completely portable system yet, but getting a step closer then the Wafian was/is.

Agreed,
This is on the way to a dream machine...
(while he waits for Red)

I checked it out at NAB and it is indeed impressive. The ProRes codec is a huge improvement over the other QT alternatives and is possible to capture to a single hard drive over the entire disk. It will cross convert to 720 60p, which could be useful for a variety of reasons, not the the least of which would be slowmo purposes.

Even better would be the fact that you can route audio through the device and embed it, along with timecode, into the FCP capture, which was a serious issue for XL-H1 owners with the video-only SDI signal. You can also capture raw HDMI from the HV20 if you want to bypass HDV on that little cam too.

I hope to get one this summer.

Barlow,
(how are you my friend?)
We have Sound through the HD-SDI?
holy smoke!

Can you confirm whether there is a a Hard drive in the IO-HD or does it need an external hard drive firewired to it?
Does it NEED a Laptop?
and it, I assume, needs to Plug in to some power...?

Thanks B,

John

ok.
So it is really just an I/O

...so it's really just gonna end up being a little bit smaller than lugging a MacPro (w/ HD-SDI card) and compressing to Sheer or PhotoJpeg 4:2:2....
(you could argue that a MacPro is acyualy more manageable than the
1) IO-HD (& power)
2) MacBook (& power)
3) extra drives

Basically same price.
Plus with a MacPro you also get a computer...

am I missing something?

It's a lot smaller and easier to deal with than lugging around a full MacPro with an appropriate LCD monitor. Yes, you have to supply power, but dealing with a laptop and this little box is way easier to move around with than a big MacPro with everything else that's needed. (LCD, screen, mouse etc.)

John, I don't think this works with a macbook, you'll need a macbook pro I believe.

But I'll argue with you about it being the same as a macpro. Those things are heavy.

You can drive a firewire buspowered drive from a macbookpro so you've got two outlets to power. Since you're going to need an outlet to power the IO-HD anyway adding a second outlet shouldn't be too bad.

I think as an affordable option for Commercials and Indie movies this is awesome. RNG guys will have to wait a little bit longer. (and then complain about the weight of the on-board device)

Also I think it's not really fair to emply that if you have a macbook pro you don't have a computer (or that the only way to have a computer is to have a macpro) I've edited off a laptop with an external screen, and it hasn't been bad at all.

That being said I still don't think I'll buy one until I have a real rental for it. Or some of the red guys decide they want to go this route.

DOH Barlow beet me buy a minute

Thanks Nick, Thanks Barlow,
good points,

Yeah,
I only have a Macbook Pro as a computer, and didn't mean to imply that it is not a viable option,

This is cetrainly very interesting -
seems like a very good alternative for people depending on your needs & price point.

I'd love to try it and see

For a little more money ($6K + Media Packs), you can have a completely portable, on-board solution with multiple codec offerings in the Colorspace INDI. Completely contained, multiple 2.5" drives for extended recording, on board playback and meta data input via 7" touchscreen.

That looks nice, Drew. What are the codec offerings? A huge advantage of the I/O HD is the integration of the ProRes codec which I took a pretty good look at (NAB) and it indeed looks visually lossless...even after multiple recompressions. All that quality for just over 20 MBs is pretty phenomenal.

Nick, you guys would've probably used an I/O HD on The Signal, were they available, correct?

We have a big feature that we've been struggling to get financed that will use the RED cameras.

However, we're developing an ultra-low budget feature to shoot in the mean time with our XLH1. We will definitely use the IO-HD connected to a MacBook Pro and use the ProRes 422 HQ codec as our workflow.

Very exciting.

Barlow,


My understanding is that the ProRess format is a DCT based 4:2:2 codec running at 140 and 220mbps. That sounds to me like it will be roughly equal in fidelity to the DNxHD 220Mbps, and the MPEG-4 200+ Mbps 4:2:20 DCT based codecs.


All of these codecs are lossy of course.




The INDI will be supporting MPEG4 initially, and more codecs subsequently. Exactly which ones first is not completely clear at this point in time, but customer feedback will play a heavy part in which codecs we support first.

I would like to see CineForm, ProRes or Sheer codec supported.

I currently use the Sheer codec from bitjazz (www.bitjazz.com) to capture XL-H1 raw HD-SDI with a Kona card and Final Cut Pro. It's the best out of all of them, but it has the highest bit rate. (45 MBs) If the recording capacities were large enough, I would prefer to capture with this codec (if it's implementable) as it is truly lossless, and it's multi-platform too.

Dude in a second! I think capturing uncompressed and having an HDV backup is quite possibly the coolest thing ever. You get full everything and just in case a drive crashes or something you've got your complete back up which looks pretty good as well.

There's rumors of another Horror coming to town from some of the guys from the signal, I'm going to try and talk them into using that, but I have a feeling they'll want to go red... Of course, you can use IO-HD for red too so...

Anyhow. Back to the point at hand, I haven't seen the a comparison between HDV and prores, nor have I seen the INDI in person, so I dont' feel comfortable comparing the two, I jsut know that for me, a piece of gear that has many different inputs and costs 1/2 the price is a lot easier to justify right now. I am curious to see prores vs the indi capturing system.

I totally agree. Ideally HDV would make a very useable safety backup, but HD SDI will allow codec choice and get rid of compression concerns.

alright, alright, alright...
4:2:2/ lossless/ tape backup/ sound through the XL-H1's HD-SDI (how does this work again? or does it just work like it should)

Yes, it's great....3500$
I'll bite...

J

It's just a matter of sending an XLR feed to the I/O HD (along with timecode, ideally) and choosing the I/O HD in an easy preset. Video, audio and timecode can be captured via fw800.

ProRess 4:2:2 is not lossless. It is a lossy, DCT based codec.

Well, there's technically "lossy" (ProRes, CineForm, Avid DNX) and truly lossy (HDV, DVCPRO HD). Too bad it's so easy to lump 'em all together with such a vague term. I'll take the former if given a choice.

Everyone's opinion of what an acceptable loss in PSNR is will be different. I would personally not group ProRes/DNxHD with Cineform. As Cineform will have significantly less loss at equal bit rates than ProRes or DNxHD.

I like to leave the vague descriptions at the door, and simply refer to truly lossless formats as such. Some wavelet codecs probably are, "visually lossless", but I don't think I would stick that term onto 7:1/10:1 DCT based ones.

Good point. The demo of ProRes I saw on an HD plasma was quite good. I even looked at the material blown up (on the Mac Cinema Display) to look for artifacts and they were difficult to detect. And I was looking at at multi-generationl render of material compared to an uncompressed version.

When we see the full release of FCP Studio 2 and have both CineForm and ProRes to work with, it will be very interesting to compare the two.

but the Aja IO-HD is ProRes specific yes?

Has anyone priced a Cineform license? Is frickin' expensive and it only works on ONE box.

So your capture station has to have a license. You're producer's MacBook has to have a license. And then there's your editor's workstation (and let's hope he doesn't work on more than one box).

Don't get me wrong. The Cineform folks have created a wonderful product. But it's all about cost and scale.

ProRes 422 HQ may be a DCT codec, but it looks damn good and it's FREE.

Barlow, I'm wondering if that miranda box might come into play finally (the HD-sdi, video+timecode+ audio embedder?) I mean yeah it's like 2k vs spending I don't know 100 bucks on cable, but then everything travels down one cable and that's sooo cool! ...hmm maybe not 1900 dollars cooler though.

Robert, I think the other thing to consider is that we are talking about a thing that many of us will never really need. (I know, I know, it's great to go uncompressed, it's the next generation, uncompressed saved my life, blah blah blah) The canon HDV codec holds up really well and I can't help but think that if I really needed something better then I could go prores and that would be more then enough for me. But that's just me.

That being said I totally could see the icon or the indie, if I was needing uncompressed run and gun, but to be honest, if I'm getting run and gun footage I'm probably more worried about focus/frame/white balance and an uncompressed setup will only help me with one of those.

The one cable thing is nice, but I can definitely think of a lot of stuff I'd rather spend the $1900 on. The Miranda box is useful, but a bit of a luxury in my book.

Barlow, yeah totally, of course you do realize that we're talking about capturing "uncompressed"ish so isn't everything a luxury? ;)

One day the miranda boxes will drop down to something that I can justify (like 300 bucks) and when that day comes I'll be really upset that I had sold my xl-h1 20 years prior...

Pardon me if the question is too stupid. Is it correct that IO HD would send the captured video signal to a Mac via Firewire800 cable?
So once one has an IO HD, no other AJA (or the kind) video card will be necessarily built in the Mac?

One more: AJA refers to Macbook Pro and MacPro in their website. If the transfer is via Firewire, I can't see why a G5 cannot handle that.
According to the description of FCS2 in the Apple website, G5-s are compatible with FCS2 - that includes the new ProRes format.
So I assume older Macs will not become obsolete.

Anyone has more detailed info on these? Thanks.

PCI Express (PCI-E) card to a laptop
 

Now Avalable...

http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/

So you would have to capture to something like Sheer

I wonder how ProRes stands up to Sheer?

seems slightly more portable and slightly less expensive...749$ + card
Albeit slightly less functional in certain areas, more in others (if you can only capture to Pro Res from the Aja HD-IO)

I am specifically thinking of capture from the H1.
Have to wait until I see ProRes & Sheer.

J

I'm sure ProRes would be very comparable, but Sheer is actually bit-for-bit the same info as uncompressed. That said, the full quality mode of ProRes is a little more than half the bit rate of Sheer 4:2:2 so it could theoretically work ok with a single SATA drive, whereas Sheer needs a 2 drive SATA RAID typically. Something to consider if ultimate portability is desired, in which case I'm not sure if an internal laptop drive could even keep up with ProRes.

You could always go with DVCPRO HD 1080 if you wanted a decent I-frame codec at a lower data rate, but it's not a perfect format either.

Thanks B,
ok so looks like Aja IO-HD is the way