HDMI on the V1?

[Marcus Marchesseault]

Council meeting? Hmmm, I'm claiming that you have a natural advantage over me with Native American languages! :) I'm familiar with "hui", but I'm not good with phrases. I only know the words that are in everyday useage here. I can say this, if you visit here one more time you may qualify as Kamaaina!

I'm guessing you have indicated that you are coming here to meet with Vegas users, but I didn't get the message! I feel abandoned...perhaps the group found out I have been shirking my editing responsibilities...

Do you know when you will be here? What do you have planned?

[John Benton]

Originally Posted by Douglas Spotted Eagle

The V1 outputs 1440 x 1080 4:2:2 at the HDMI output if you're using it for live output.
Post tape/recorded output is processed to 4:2:2 for HDMI output.

D.S.Eagle,
Are you suggesting that if I already have recorded to tape in the field, back in the studio, the tape will unpack itself back into 4:2:2 from 4:2:0 HDV tape?

Also are there viable Laptop ingests for the HDMI signal?
Or do you need a Tower with a card?
Thanks,
J

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by John Benton

Are you suggesting that if I already have recorded to tape in the field, back in the studio, the tape will unpack itself back into 4:2:2 from 4:2:0 HDV tape?

This is the same thing that Scott Billups said was happening with the Canon XL H1 over SDI output, but nobody would believe him.

[Thomas Smet]

Tapes will always be sort of upconverted when going out any other form of output other than firewire.

What happens is that the 4:2:0 has to pass through a A/D converter. With S-video on a DV camera or component on a HD camera the signal will not have any extra detail compared to 4:1:1 or 4:2:0 but it will be blurred. This means there is no extra precision in the chroma but it isn't as jagged either.

This is why in some ways I still prefer to capture live as component. Analog signals do not work in 1's and 0's but in waveforms so the chroma can become a lot smoother and easier to deal with. There are filters in certain NLE's that do the same sort of thing but that adds to rendering time and not everybody has access to those filters.

I wasn't sure if tape to HDMI would pass through a filter or not since it is pure digital but if Spot says it does then maybe it does.

I have been trying to get a test done for a long time to see how much different capturing Component would be to SDI or now HDMI. I realize analog has some quality issues but in the end I'm not sure if anybody would really notice the difference when played back. I think I might still prefer component to HDMI but HDMI is great since the Intensity card is only $250.00. To get a card that has component and HDMI the cost goes up to $995.00. I will have to see how much the HDMI is filtered. If tape to HDMI would use the same type of upsampling and filtering as the component well then HDMI would be better.

[Douglas Spotted Eagle]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

This is the same thing that Scott Billups said was happening with the Canon XL H1 over SDI output, but nobody would believe him.

Billups is correct, as am I.

Nothing is gained in the conversion, but nothing is lost, either. It's simply a process that conforms to what the output of the live preview is as well.

It's not "uncompressed" as once it's compressed, it's compressed. It's not like a Zip file. But the color space maybe standardized on output, which is what (to my knowledge) the Canon and V1U offer.

As far as tests of the differences between component out and firewire out for recorded material, this has been performed ad nauseum. Hasn't been tested via HDMI at this point, because there isn't a shipping card that I'm aware of. Announced, but not shipping? Perhaps I'm incorrect on that one.

[Stu Holmes]

Hi DSE - off-topic i know (sorry!) but i remember a week or two ago you said that your article on V1 would be expanded from a "quick look" type of thing to a more full review (pending Sony's ok i think). Any further news on that ?

thanks in advance.

[Mike Gorski]

Hey I'm new to the game here and pardon my lack of knowledge as I'm trying to catch up and learn as fast as possible. With this HDMI output, can you utilize this signal and record straight to a portable laptop or some means other than tape bypassing the further compression that puts it on the tape. I'm not sure if I'm understanding this 100% but if I'm wrong can someone point me out? Thanks a bunch.

[John Cline]

Originally Posted by Mike Gorski

With this HDMI output, can you utilize this signal and record straight to a portable laptop or some means other than tape bypassing the further compression that puts it on the tape.

You can use either the "Intensity" or "Intensity Pro" cards from Black Magic Design to record live output from the V1 via HDMI to a desktop computer thus bypassing the HDV compression. (It's a PCI-Express card, so you can't use it in a laptop.) The Intensity is HDMI I/O only and lists for $249. The new Intensity Pro has HDMI I/O as well as analog I/O and lists for $349. I suppose you could record the HDMI output playing from tape as well, but it will have already taken the quality hit by virtue of being compressed and recorded to tape.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

John

[Seth Bloombaum]

Mike, keep searching those old posts and you'll find more info. Check out the cineform forum too, and search on "intensity".

The short story is that yes, there is a workflow from camera to PC via hdmi, it must be live from camera, not from tape, to realize the benefits.

AFAIK, the only solution is:
Camera
HDMI cable to Blackmagic Designs Intensity PCI-X card (about $250).
Capture to BM MJPEG codec, or perhaps better yet, use Cineform Connect HD (now being relabeled/updated to NeoHDV) to compress directly to Cineform digital intermediate and store on a vanilla hard drive.
Edit with some NLE that can use Cineform (used to be only PC, Vegas & Premiere, but now cineform tools can compress to or convert to a QT wrapper for FCP).

One significant gotcha' in this otherwise very interesting workflow: HDMI capture is only available on a PC with expansion slots ie. a desktop machine, not laptop. Meaning AC power, separate monitor/KB/mouse, big heavy box, perhaps noisy, etc. Perhaps there will be a laptop HDMI capture solution in the future.

[Mike Gorski]

Hey thanks for all the quick replies. It seems like every few days I lean more to the V1 over the A1. Still in the research process but I thank everyone for the patience and willing to respond to my noob questions. Thanks again.

[John Hewat]

Originally Posted by Seth Bloombaum

One significant gotcha' in this otherwise very interesting workflow: HDMI capture is only available on a PC with expansion slots ie. a desktop machine, not laptop. Meaning AC power, separate monitor/KB/mouse, big heavy box, perhaps noisy, etc. Perhaps there will be a laptop HDMI capture solution in the future.

But you can buy 10metre HDMI cables. Is there a degradation in quality over a 10metre cable? If it's a digital signal nothing can interfere with it right? The way it leaves the camera is the way it arrives at the computer, yes? Otherwise it doesn't arrive at all. I think...

So you can conceivably have a 10m gap between camera and your PC... I hope so because that's my grand plan with my V1 and my soon to be bought terabytes of hard drive space...

[Chris Hull]

does the picture from my fx-7 to my plasma pioneer look the same with hdmi and component because the set has 1280x768 pixels.chris

[Tim Allison]

HDMI is a budget connectivity solution. It was designed for consumer grade equipment, but a lot of people have discovered that it does a darn good job. You can buy an Intensity card from Black Magic for about $250 that will ingest your HDV tapes via HDMI. That same card will feed a HD display that can be purchased from Wal-Mart.

Is this the best way to go? Well....no. But we recently bought a Panasonic HD monitor that cost nearly $4000. The Intensity card and the HD display from Wal-Mart will cost closer to $1000. The cheap solution won't have all of the bells and whistles, but it will do an adequate job.

Just another example of the acceptance of HDMI.....AJA's new Io HD box does include HDMI in/out connections. Since the Io HD will connect to a MacPro laptop via a Firewire cable, that means you don't have to have a desktop computer with PCI slots.