Can You Capture HDMI at 1080p24?
 

I thought HDMI only supported 720p and 1080i. Is there a 2:3 pulldown?

Thanks,

David

P.S.
Second question: what is the color space on HDMI: 4:2:2, 4:2:0, or something else?

Think I got my answer...yes, the HDMI is 2:3 pulldown, and yes, it is 4:2:2 10-bit.

Yes, but HOW?
Do you need a desktop with extra Video card or is there a laptop solution to record it with a less compressed codec?

J

A desktop with a black magic HDMI card and a couple large hard drives...

The cards are due out this month....

The question is whether Cineform will support the BlackMagic HDMI card. If they do, the hardware requirement goes down signficantly.

The card will need a RAID array.However you get uncompressed 1920x1080 4:2:2 10-bit video (vs compressed 1440x1080 4:2:0 8-bit) with uncompressed audio (vs. MPEG 1). And you still have the HDV option on for handheld and run and gun.

It makes you wonder if Canon, Panasonic, and JVC will add HDMI to their lower cost camera.

Can you also you the HDMI on new video cards or is that only for output? Are we sure that it will be full 1920x1080 over HDMI as another thread about this says it will still be 1440x1080..?

We are being told that the HDMI output is un-compressed... 1920x1080
4:2:2 10 bit....

The camera sends to tape/hard drive (optional) or both compressed at the
normal HD of 1440x1080 so the tapes/hard drive data can be played back
on other cameras/gear......


pretty nice...:-)

You do not need to wait for Cineform. Blackmagic has a new mjpeg codec for HD thats gives 1920x1080 4:2:2 in AVI files that are around 11 MB/S. It isn't exactly at that rate because the codec is variable and so the files will be larger depending on how complex the scene is. If you are shooting bluescreen elements the file size should be smaller because most of the image is made up of a solid color. If you are shooting a jungle during a huricane (good luck getting your computer water proof) the file size will be larger due to how complex the video is. The codec allows HD at near uncompressed visual quality in a file size that will fit on a single SATA hard drive. Cineform may have a slight edge in quality due to waveform compression but you do not have to wait around for it to support the Blackmagic cards.

The mjpeg codec is much much better than HDV and only shows a slight reduction in quality when compared to 8 bit uncompressed HD. It is a standard Windows AVI codec that uses VFW and Directshow versions of the codec which means pretty much any NLE should be able to read the files. I for one can confirm that Avid Liquid which is known to only use very specific file formats can load AVI files using the mjpeg codec and not only load the video but play and edit it in realtime as a native Liquid format.

The Intensity card uses the HDMI 1.2 spec which is limited to 24bit color or 8 bits per channel. You will not get 10 bit HD with HDMI and Intensity.

What about a PCMCIA verson of that (the Blackmagic Intensity) or external enclosure for laptop use? How long can HDMI cable runs be, 10m max? Could be a problem on location.

I'm aware of 600' HDMI cables that have been successfully tested with soon-to-be-announced products. However, the HDMI 1.2 spec claims that cables of only up to 15 metres have been tested to spec. I can't comment on that cuz I don't know who tested those, nor do I know who made the 600' cable that I'm aware of.

Right, thanks for that :-). If I want to monitor via HDMI and capture via HDMI, is there any solution for that?

Gefen and Kramer both manufacture HDMI splitters, so you can monitor and send a feed elsewhere. I'm not aware of an HDMI box that will work with a laptop, however (not yet, anyway).

Its HDMI isn't 1920x1080, it's 1440x1080. Also, where did it say anything about 10-bit? I haven't seen that, but that would be very nice. Is it a full 10 bits wide? The Canon outputs HDSDI at "10 bits" but it's really an 8-bit signal with the bottom two bits forced to zero.

According to Thomas...

...so just 8bit - 1920x1080 4:2:2 though which is lovely, If I could only come up with a workable portable HDMI recording system, I guess a full PC would work... damn AC power

You don't necessarily need AC power. Computers use DC and there are DC-to-DC power supplies available. They are generally intended for car computers, but it may someday work for battery-operated desktop-replacement machines that would work for our purposes. The problem is that powerful CPUs use too much juice for most of these DC-DC supplies.

Concerning batteries, there is a NiMH battery pack that can do over 250Watts for one hour that costs $270. It weighs about 8 pounds (3.5 kilos) and a charger us under $30. I'm sure it is possible to do it much cheaper if you are willing to use heavy lead-acid batteries. I'll say that a computer that could do the job would cost about $2000 with Intensity card and battery.

If DC-DC power supplies are insufficient, there are power inverters for about $40 that can make the AC for a regular power supply.

Considering the capabilities we are talking about, 4:2:2 uncompressed, some inconvenience is no big deal considering all this can be done for under $10K. I think the ability to revert to 4:2:0 HDV when extreme portability is needed is a great fallback and makes the V1 system incredibly versatile.

I feel like I am on the verge of a new era...

I guess I could just use my 800w power inverter from my car that I normally use to power 650w Arri's. Long run from car to location wouldn't be too bad. PC on a crate trolley, moving it around after the camera with 15m of freedom via HDMI to the camera.

Sounds good, there just needs to be a laptop solution, are there any cardbus to PCIe or PCIx adaptors/enclosures?

The firewire would still send a feed when capturing with HDMI? Just thinking about DV Rack monitoring, but maybe just go all HDMI with the splitter.

Does sound quite good, I'm nearly forgetting about the entire 1/4" chip DOF thing (why did I bring it up again!).

HDMI has the *ability* in the spec to do 10bit 1920 x 1080, but I'm unaware of any manufacturer meeting that ability. Kinda like HDSDI, the pipe is there, but not enough water to fill it.

I don't understand pulldown.

I don't understand 4:2:2 or whatever.

I don't understand 10-bit.

And I don't know what HDMI is.

Am I right in assuming that the reason to capture via HDMI is in order to preserve higher quality than capturing via firewire? Ie: HDMI = HD and Firewire = HDV - in a very simplistic sort of a way?

So I need an HDMI port on my PC? Just like I have a firewire port? And does it need to be an HD one? I am so confused... I see them advertised from a few hundred dollars right up to a few thousand dollars but I don't know what the difference is. Can someone shed some light on this for me? If HDMI Output is such a bonus for the V1 I'd like to know why. Especially since I also don't understand how I can edit the footage if it is 1920x1080HD instead of 1440x1080HDV. Premiere won't understand that, will it? On the net I saw that the Blackmagic Intensity PCI Express HDMI Card will be able to work with Premiere Pro and supports 1080p24 but I don't see how.

And you're saying that you need a super computer tp be able to capture it. How super a computer do you need? My AMD 4400 dual core with 2Gig of RAM and nVidia 7800GT can do just about anything. Is it in the same league as what you're talking about?

DSE isn't that true of the HDMI 1.3 specs? The HDMI 1.2 specs are limited to 24 bit color. The HDMI 1.3 specs are very new and I'm not sure if anybody has made anything to support it yet. There may be a 1080p projector that does, but I haven't heard of anything yet.

A lot of people have complained about banding in HDMI 1.2.

HDMI 1.3 now includes 30bit, 36bit and 48bit color up from 24bit color in earlier specs. That is info taken from the HDMI website in my own words.

I think the PS3 is going to be one of the first devices to use HDMI 1.3 according to the website.

In a very simple and visual sense, yes. It's not going to be a very observable difference, but for people keying and people like me going to large projectors and film-outs, it can just make a difference.

Premiere can edit 1920x1080 just fine. I'm using 1.51 and have been playing around with exporting my 1440x1080 HDV to 1920x1080 uncompressed out of Premiere, de-interlacing with HiCon32 and bringing them back into a timeline at "full HD".

I don't know if you aware - excuse me if you are - that with the camera connected via HDMI, you can only achieve all the benefits talked about through 'live' streaming capture, not like bringing the footage off the tape and into your NLE via firewire - after the point.

I don't think editing will be too big of a pain as Blackmagic - referring to Intensity - has their own codec that should lower overheads akin to cineform.

"So I need an HDMI port on my PC?"

No.

Put down the mug and switch to decaf! :)

HDMI output on the V1 is an extra capability, not a replacement of HDV. Your computer will be fine. In fact, in some ways HDMI-captured video may even be easier to edit than HDV. Think of it in a plumbing analogy: HDV and HDMI are like molases and water. HDV is viscous and sticky so it needs a strong pump to move it around (the CPU) but it is compressed down into a small quantity so the pipes needed are small. HDMI is less compressed so it flows more easily, but it is therefore larger so big pipes (hard drive subsystem) are needed.

Current CPUs are powerful enough to pump HDV and hard drives are large and fast enough to handle the greater flow of HDMI.

When people talk about 4:2:2 and the like, they are talking about colorspace - the amount of color data included in the data stream relative to the black and white information. The bigger the second and third numbers, the greater the level of color detail. The reason more color data is better is that compositiong could be more accurate. Also, more color information may allow a bit more latitude when doing color correction. It could also give a perceptible increase in apparent resolution, although the luminance (black and white) information is more responsible for that quality of the image.

8-bit and 10-bit color is the level of precision in each pixel of the color information. More is better for image quality, but HDV is still good even though it is lesser than the signal from HDMI.

HDMI output is only a good thing for future V1 owners.

By full HD, you mean 1920x1080 at 24p? I have heard of HiCon32 but have never used it. Does it produce good enough results for a film out?

In many ways, that's my interest in all of this. The V1 + HDMI out + Blackmagic Intensity = great chance of high quality film out, yes? Certainly better than my Z1 + HiCon32, right? Or should I just look at another camera all together if that's my goal?

I understand that I'll need to be streaming to capyure footage via HDMI; that's not a problem. I guess I was just worried because everyone was saying you need a super computer to do it.

Thanks for that explanation Marcus. I feel a little better now. I (try to) do a lot of keying, and from what I understand, HDMI will solve lots of problems. How come? Is it because it's progressive? Or because of the 1920 resolution? Or am I misunderstanding?

8 bit color means each color channel has 256 shades of color. 10 bit means each color channel can have 1024 shades of color.

256 shades of color stretched out over 1920x1080 pixels can cause banding.

With that in mind however HDV, DVD, DV, DVCPROHD, HDCAM, DVCPRO50, Digital-S, HD-DVD, BluRay are all 8 bit formats so 8 bits are not all that bad. The only HD shooting format that actually records 10bits right now is HDCAM SR. Almost everything you will ever watch in HD is going to be 8 bits for a very long time yet. So do not look at 8 bit color as a bad thing. 8 bit uncompressed video will still knock the socks off of HDV or DVCPROHD.

HDMI 1.3 with 10bit color makes sense for the PS3 since the games could be rendered using 10 bit graphics or high end HD production where studios would want to view their 10 bit source material on a 10 bit monitor.

The signal is after the downscale to 1440. The data words may be 10-bits, but there will be only 8-bits of data. Two bits will be set to zero.

And, yes it works during shooting and tape playback. But, I've not been able to get audio.

In the HDMI Spec (V1.0, 2003) I've seen--http://www.hdmi.org/pdf/HDMISpecInformationalVersion.pdf--section 6.6 (pgs 23-24) seems to indicate support for 8, 10, 12 bit quantization. I thought Sony uses a 14-bit A/D converson, so there should be more than enough resolution for 10-bit.

The Sony diagram does show 1440x1080 going to HDV and somewhat ambiguously to component. But why would they down res to HDMI? It seems to defeat the resolution advantage of the HDMI. And since HDMI doesn't support 1440x1080i (sections 6.2 and 6.3, pgs 18-20), they would have to upres after down resing .

The Black Magic Design info on their HDMI card talks about getting 1920x1080 from an HC3. Does the HC3 output 1920x1080 and the V1 only 1440x1080?

I'm a bit confused. What document says the HDMI is down-res'd?

I didn't find this on the Black Magic Design website, and their hardware requirements all point to requiring a disk array. Is it spec'd somewhere. The card is supposed to ship next week.

Just saw the 1.3 spec where 30, 36, and 48 bits are supported by timing changes. Although I am confused by what I read in the 1.0 spec, which seems to talk about 12-bits in the Pixel Encodings section also. It seemed to say that 12 bits where used for Y encoding and 12 bits for C encoding, which seemed to make sense for 4:2:2

I'm surprised it isn't mentioned anywhere. It was talked about a lot by Blackmagic at IBC and on other forums. The current 5.7.1 drivers already have the new codec and if you download them you can use the codec. The software can be installed even if you do not yet have a Blackmagic card. You will still be able to use all of the codecs to try them out. I have rendered some animation from 3D Studio Max using the mjpeg codec and it works great. Very high quality HD capable of running off a single hard drive. I will try to find out why the new codec isn't mentioned on their site.

I'm not sure what is going on with the specs either but I do know there were lots of complaints about banding in earlier HDMI specs. The website does clearly say that specs before 1.3 were limited to 24 bits.

quantization is different then color sampling so maybe that is where some of the confusion is. DVD encoding uses a quantization of 9 or 10 bits but the color is still 8 bits.

As for that chart are you sure that isn't the chart for the 1.3 specs?

So, my primary question with all of this: What is the consistent formatting for integrating both live HDMI footage and HDV recorded tape footage? Do I simply capture the taped material via the Intensity card as well and, even though it's lost some elements compared to the non-taped material, it's all in the same format for editing?

What about later bringing in a few short pieces of DV from a DVCAM deck -- what is likely to be the best scenario for getting the DV footage into the same HD format as what I've described?

Both table and diagram are from the 1.0 spec. For YCRCB with 4:2:2 they used 24 bits to get upto 12 bit quantization. Channel 0 is divided into 2 4 bit channels. Y is on 1/2 channel 0 and channel 1. CB abd CR share 1/2 channel 0 and channel 2. 12-bits.

RGB was limitied to 8 bits in HDMI 1.0.

If you use a Intensity card with Adobe Premiere Pro you can mix HDV and mjpeg material in the same project. So you can record from tape as HDV or as mjpeg if you want to. For live stuff that needs to be higher quality such as bluescreen work then you capture live as mjpeg while recording a tape as well for backup. This way if your harddrive dies you at least have something you can go back to so you do not have to do the shoot all over again.

You can capture your tapes through HDMI but the quality will not get any better then what you would get through firewire. The fottage however may be easier to edit and use in 3rd party software that cannot load a HDV file. Capturing through HDMI will end up being just like using Cineform to edit with. With Cineform you capture the video through firewire but it gets converted to a format that is easier to edit and takes up more space than native HDV. The HDMI is basically doing the same thing except the conversion from mpeg2 takes place in the camera and then sent through the HDMI and saved as a mjpeg file which should be pretty close in quality to what Cineform gives you. The wavelet based codec from Cineform may be a little bit better but it also doesn't give you the option of capturing live uncompressed video that way either. Cineform's main format is limited to firewire capture. Cineform does have a higher end format that works with AJA capture cards but the cards and the codec are very expensive and will cost you more like $2,500.00 and not $250.00.

If you will be using the Intensity on a Apple FCP system then you have always had other codecs to use. You can capture to photojpeg(which is for the most part the same as mjpeg), DVCPROHD or the Bitjazz codec. All of these give you better quality than HDV.

If you use Avid Liquid I can tell you from testing out the new mjpeg codec that it works in realtime as a native format in Liquid. You can mix firewire captured HDV and mjpeg captured HD in the same project and as long as you have a good system it will all be in realtime. The problem however is that the only capture program that is currently supported by Blackmagic to capture mjpeg AVI files in Adobe Premiere Pro. Blackmagic has their own capture program but it only captures quicktime files. You will have to find another directshow based capture program to capture from the Intensity card as a mjpeg AVI file.

Oh by the way the new codec is mentioned a few times in the information on the Intensity card on the Blackmagic website.

When talking about editing in Premiere it talks about using compressed codecs such as mjpeg.

In the quality section it talks about using dv100 on Apple or the new jpeg based full resolution codec on Windows platforms.

The other interesting point is that nowhere does it ever mention capturing 10 bit video with the Intensity. Now the other Blackmagic cards can and it is listed many times in the descriptions of those products but Intensity never mentions 10 bit video.

You will also notice that Intensity is a PCI express x1 card. Every other HD card from Blackmagic has been a PCI express x4 card. PCI express x1 has enough bandwidth for 8 bit yuv HD but it would never cut it for 10 bit uncompressed HD video. This is why PCI express x4 is needed for the other products since they can capture 10 bit video. This makes me feel as though the Intensity really is a 8 bit only capture card regardless if a camera outputs 10 bits or what specs are used. Blackmagic has another card that has HDMI and component inputs that costs $995.00. This card does need PCI Express x4 and does 10 bit video because of the component inputs.

You can also get information on the mjpeg codec by going to the support section of the Blackmagic site and searching for the only document for the Intensity card they have right now which is titled "Which compressed codecs can I use with DeckLink cards?"

11 MB/s of mjpeg = 40 GB/hr. I'm shooting a feature with two-cameras -- editing in FCP on a new Mac Pro, which will hold 3 additional 500 GB SATA drives.

Adding those three drives might be the simplest way to start but that won't be enough for my project. What are the most economical and effective products for holding several TB of external storage?

I hope someone will produce a laptop HDMI capture system. An Expresscard 34 HDMI capture card and bus powered FW800 drive would be an awesome combination for chromakey work in a studio. Or even some location work with suitable power.

Vydeo.com are developing a HD-SDI capture card for Expresscard34 so it's not too much of a leap of faith to think a HDMI version could be in the works.

It could be a baby Wafian!!!

TT