HVR-HD 1000 and Black Magic Intensity Pro card
 

Hello Everyone,

Tested the HVR-HD1000P with the Black Magic Intensity Pro Card as follows :

Best Capture and Edit -

1. Camera HDMI to Intensity Pro Card HDMI - Capture at Full HD at 1920 x 1080I resolution, so called uncompressed AVI or Quicktime about 1 GIG per minute at 4 :2 :2 sampling ( I think the video was upscaled from recorded HDV tapes format )

2. Camera HDMI to Intensity Pro Card HDMI - Full HD at 1920 x 1080I resolution, compressed motion Jpeg AVI or Quicktime about 1 GIG per 3 minute at 4 :2 :2 sampling ( I am using this for capture and edit, 4 times better quality than HDV and DV )

3. Camera Firewire to computer - HDV at 1440 x 1080I resolution, compressed AVI or Quicktime about 1 GIG per 3 minute at 4 :1 : 1 sampling.

The Intensity card ( can be used on both Mac and PC) works very well with the camera and I think this is the best way to go.

BTW I have a Palladine 37" Full HD LCD TV ( The cheapest Full HD LCD TV around ) hooked up with the Intensity Pro Card via HDMI and the picture quality is awesome.

Configuration HDV-HD1000P via HDMI to Computer and from Computer Via HDMI to LCD Full HD TV. Camera controlled via firewire for HDMI capture ( both the HDMI and Firewire cables are attached )

Please post some full res stills. I would like to see how the sensor performs.

Sounds like a great comparison/test. Have you considered using a trial of Cineform Prospect HD (or Aspect HD) to evaluate as well?

Do I really need a Black Magic Card?
 

I'm in the process of purchasing a Mac Pro to use for my New Wedding Video Business. I have purchsed the New Sony HVR-HD1000. I'm looking to get everything at one time and something has me very confused. I hope that someone can please help me.

As I understand it. I take my New Sony HDV Cam via Firewire800 and Final Cut Studio will just suck it all in.

If thats the case, What is the need for products such as the "Black Magic Intensity Pro Card"?

Do I need it when my Mac Pro/Final Cut will import my footage anyways?

I guess I need to do some research because I have NO idea what all that "4:2:0 Color" stuff means and how it will affect me making a Standard Def DVD. I'm sort of all lost right lost now.

All I want to do is just import, edit, and burn a Standard Def DVD for Weddings. I know FCP has many options in which to edit - but for my business (Wedding Videos), I think I might be way over my head in all this techno stuff. Do I REALLY NEED to be concerned about ProRes 422 (have no idea what that is) and "Color Space"??

Do I need a capture card? Need to invest in a MacPro or will I be just fine with an iMac and Firewire800??

Please help me make a sound decision.

Thank you for your time.

These are good questions
 

The answers are not so easy.

You will do just fine importing HDV video via Firewire into your computer. You will be able to edit it, and do almost everything highly demanding professionals do. The 4:2:2 vs 4:2:0 color space issues will not be an "issue" in most situations. If you ever do any Chroma-keying work (green screen or blue screen), then the 4:2:2 color space will certainly be better. Otherwise, in a side-by-side comparison of the same shot, the 4:2:2 will look better than the 4:2:0 shot on SOME scenes. But don't worry...the 4:2:0 will look just fine, especially for the vast majority of wedding video work.

Where you might run into a difference, and maybe a BIG difference, is the amount of time it takes to compress video into an MPEG-2 file for your DVD. The HDV flavor of MPEG-2 is different than the DVD flavor of MPEG-2. MPEG compression is highly complex, and requires a LOT of number crunching by your computer.

Therefore, an Intensity card will allow you to change your codec when you ingest your video into your Final Cut system. You can go from HDV into either DVCProHD or ProRes422. Both are great codecs. Both will be easier on the computer (less processor intensive) to edit than will HDV. And both may compress into DVD MPEG-2 faster than HDV will.

Some capture solutions are expensive. An AJA Io-HD is around $3000 and a Kona card is around $2000. If these were you only two choices, I would just stick to Firewire import of HDV. But that Intensity card is only $250 or so. That's pretty cheap, and may be well worth the investment.

Thank you so much for that indepth information. Do you have any idea what iMovie HD codec is? I'm just wondering if I import via Fireware and capture with iMovie HD is the codec is similar to anything Final Cut uses.

Thanks for your help.


Update: (I found the information)
What happens when you plug in the FX1 into an iMac running iMovie HD?

Nicely, the interface changes to accommodate the 16:9 format video and some interface details indicate the use of HD content. I’ve highlighted them in the picture to the left (click to enlarge).

Because of the compression used with HDV, capturing video is NOT real time. Though the video plays off the camcorder in real-time and is copied to the hard drive in real-time, the iMac has to decompress/transcode the video into an editing friendly format. This is done in parallel with the spare CPU cycles as the HDV video stream is being copied to the hard drive. When the playback on the camera stops, a modal dialog box appears asking you to wait until the remainder of the buffered video on the hard drive is decoded. I observed an average of 1/2 to 1/4th real-time on my iMac. This process can apparently be done entirely in real-time on the Dual 2.5GHz G5.

If you open the captured video in Quicktime Player, you can get more info about the captured video. There are a couple of interesting things to notice. First on the left, you can see that the data rate is 12.8MB/sec. This is substantially higher than the 3.2MB/sec used for standard DV, even though HDV is supposed to use the same 25Mbits/sec data rate and uses the same tapes. This due to the decompression step described above as you can see in the screenshot on the right. The native resolution of the video footage is 1440x1080 and format is the “Apple Intermediate Codec” used for editing. When you play it back, it will display at 1920x1080 stretching the pixels.

Working with HD content on an iMac may make you yearn for a faster computer, but it is certainly passable and eventually gets the job because many tasks (including import and export to tape) can be done as non-real time steps. As long as you are patient, it works.