Eric, I understand that you are capturing directly into Cineform.

Aspect or Prospect?

What is the CPU utilization during HDMI capture with that port replicator?

Is sound in-sync on clips longer than 10 minutes?

Thanks.

I'm using Aspect right now, will upgrade soon.
Did some test with sound synch, and I'm definietely having issues. Even with short 1 minute clips. Does this mean the computer isn't fast enough? The cpu is hovering around 90%

Eric
 

Glad you have it working - the footage that this little card can produce is stunning.Is Vista optimised?There is a lot of stuff that you don't need.I mention this earlier in the thread.The other thing I mentioned in this thread here

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-...quirement.html

is that my cores sometimes do get to 90 % but not at the same time.This is when recording to FilmScan 2. It see saws between them. Average is 70% when capturing to the High setting with my optimised laptop.No dropped frames.Sound Sync issues?Make sure you have the latest drivers for the intensity and also the latest build of Cineform.
I have Neo HD not aspect so I use HDlink.Is that what you use?

I've done some tests with the mediaexpress application that comes with the intensity card and successfully captured mjpg compressed footage without sound sync issues.

I went ahead and put a bare XP install on a hard drive to do the following tests:
intensity control panel and turned on HD to SD down conversion and have successfully captured with cineform, SD footage. So this tells me everything is "working".

I have moved to an external firewire drive, which has reduced the cpu usage about 8 %, down to around 80%. But when capturing 1080 footage, the sound can't even stay in sync for 30 seconds.
Interesting enough, the cpu usages goes down another 5% if I capture film scan vs medium. But still out of sync.

It seems my laptop is not quite fast enough to capture HD 1080. I wish I had a source to test 720p.

Just hooked my Apple TV up to the intensity card and put it in 720p playback and played a podcast and successfully captured it in cineform without any audio drop out.

So now how to get 1080

So something in your setup is still not fast enough for 1080p.

Maybe processor maxing out was only part of the problem.

What is the bus speed the port replicator communicates with your laptop at?

Since I successfully used the blackmagic mjpg capture program media express that the card comes with at 1080, I think all the hardware is setup correctly.

I think there's something very odd with your set-up Eric. The difference in CPU load between 'medium' quality and 'filmscan2' should be much more than 5%. The preview window causing 80% CPU load also isn't right.

If you're capturing OK at 720p60, I'd be interested to know what sort of CPU load you're getting there. Also, when you're capturing at 1080i, are you using pulldown to convert to 24p?

Richard you were right, I times some tests on converting hdv files in low and film scan and got the same behaviour where the film scan used less cpu, but took longer time to finish. So I'm thinking this is limiation of my hard drive not being able to write the data out fast enough so the CPU is waiting.

Also out of curiosity I timed converting an HDV file that was 1:17 and it took 1:14 in medium mode. Just barely 1:1. Given that HDV is 1440 and Blackmagic is 1920 looks like my computer just isn't fast enough. I should have spent the extra $200 and gotten the top of the line processor, though I doubt a .1 extra gigaherz would make enough difference.

Finally found the right set of settings that will allow my marginal laptop to record live video through Blackmagic Intensity card.
cineform "low" mode, also had success with medium, Resize to 1440x1080, put camera in 24p mode, and turn on remove 3:2 pulldown.

I'm not sure the extra 100Hz of CPU juice would make any difference either, especially when the likely culprit is your hard disk, based on your test (though if you're re-encoding a file already on your main hard disk, it's not going to be a very accurate test as the drive would be reading and writing simultaneously, lowering speed massively).

The next test would be to defrag your hard disk and see what difference that makes. Google 'PerfectDisk' - it's the best defragging software around. You might also considering a reformat of your hard disk, and if using Vista, go back to XP. I have a lowly Radeon X700 in my desktop PC, and its preview window is fine in XP, but rubbish in Vista, even with Aero turned off. I have noticed similar GPU-sapping performance in my 8400M-equipped notebook.

On my capture notebook, I have two partitions - the first one of around 300gb, for video. The second, around 20gb, for the OS. I install onto the second partition as this would be the slowest area of the drive - leave the fast area for the video captures, which need it.

Filmscan really is overkill and especially taxing on a notebook CPU. I would be sticking to 'high' personally.

New cheap ($160) solution for capture (via component only) into cineform on laptop

AVerMedia AVerTV Express HD DVR

Hands On: AVerMedia AVerTV Express HD DVR | We Got Served

Serge - are you sure?

I haven't seen Cineform codec in its specs.

And that card doesn't do 1080p, only 1080i.

Hi, Alex!

I'm sure but not 100% :)

# upports real-time H.264 recording
# Digital recording in MPEG-2, AVI, H.264 (iPhone, & iPod), PSP

I think you can choose to capture in AVI with any installed DS codec incl. Cineform.