Thoughts on HD Capture Cards
 

I have noticed that there are capture cards available (in my case for editing HDV with Premiere CS4).

I am used to a Canopus Storm for standard def on my old rig, and it worked very well - saving rendering and letting you see things like region effects in realtime.

My HDV rig has a Q6600 chip, 2gb of ram, 9600GT graphics card, and striped raid 0 storage.

The Matrox RT.x2 caught my attention Matrox RT.X2 - Overview

Is it worth the expense for HDV? Also would I see benifits of using a decent soundcard in this rig, rather than the board chip on my Asus P5B Deluxe mobo. (I have already have encountered a few minor gremlins with controlling audio channels in CS4, which I'm learning)

Hey William, i'm in the same boat, and from my limited knowledge, i'm going to have to say....
If you're working with HDV, then the Matrox card is definately passable..The fact that you can monitor, and colour correct alone saves heaps of headache...

Any other capture card solutions, seems to fit the higher end broadcast community needs, and the money required is substantially greater..

Since the Matrox card doesn't use it's own processor for sound, everything's dependent on you on board sound.
If you've got a validated system (as per Matrox site), there shouldn't be a problem with audio....

Thanks Peter
I've seen the benefits over the years of using capture cards to remove rendering (DV500, Pro-One, and latterly and the best card, the Canopus Storm Pro) so I'm sold.
And since I've noticed that you can't see the actual full screen picture until Premiere renders it, this Matrox card might be Santa's early load... if it does the biz.

I don't have a Matrox validated rig- I built it with Asus and Intel parts etc...

Asus and Intel parts are used in some of the validated rigs, the one I built was cloned from the Matrox site and used an Asus board and an Intel E6XXX processor.

The main thing to consider is that the Matrox card is a full length PCI-E card, so you need to have a case that can accept it.

Also, another thing to consider is that the Video Preview monitor attached to the DVI port on the Matrox has to be a computer monitor that supports 1920x1200.

We have a pair of 24" Westinghouse monitors for the computer and a BenQ 24" monitor for the Video Preview.

Matrox now sell a smaller version of the original RTX2 card - The RTX2LE. This card is standard length, and still works well for HD, but you lose the output to a dvi monitor.

Well both my monitors are 1650x1050 - so the Matrox wouldn't work anyway?

Those will work for the monitors hooked up to the PC for windows but for the dedicated output from the Matrox card you will need a 1920x1200 monitor.

It was worth looking into. I now conclude that it's a no-go. It's getting too expensive.

If you are staying with Edius you do not need anything other than a OHCI standard input and a reasonably fast PC. Your present rig is fast enough. Unlike DV you cannot view preview on the output using the 1394 output. Canopus have a Spark card that will output just the preview over HDMI in full resolution and frame rate at $599, works with Edius V5.

Ron Evans

I found an advert for this HDMI capture card. It seems to offer a full screen preview of how you movies will look, as you're going along editing them. It might do this in my rig that has Premiere CS4
Blackmagic Design: Intensity Software

HDSTorm card will do this for Canopus Edius too. IF you just need to see what your edit will look like the HDSpark will do that for Edius too. HDStorm will capture and display HDSpark will display to HDMI monitor. IF you have already captured to your video camera there is no advantage to capturing again with HDMI as the compression has already happened and transfer to the PC is purely digital with no loss. Capturing with HDMI is only advantages with some cameras live.

Ron Evans

Hey William....

This card will allow for capture and playback..
The catch is.....You need to capture in B/Magic's codecs..Not a bad thing, but unlike the Matrox card, there is no acccelorator. It will be at the mercy of your CPU, on how many effects/layers you may add to your projects..Although it's my understanding that the MJpeg codec used is very responsive, and visual quality is very good.

It's doable and affordable, especially if it's something for students to get their hands dirty with. But like with everything else, there are limitations to what this card can do..