Blackmagic Intensity Pro.............
 

Hi Guys, I just have to share this, If I had of known about this I would have got one ages ago.
I capture a lot of stuff from the TV, for family and forums I belong to.
Installed my new Blackmagic card yesterday and I am blown away.
It can capture in Vegas (massive bonus, previous card had to use its own software)
It will capture at any resolution you want it too ( I know some will argue this, but IMO it means you can capture twice the size of what you re receiving which equates to lossless at a much lower bit rate)
Capture uncompressed or MXF (50Mbps MPEG2).
The MXF codec is sooooooooooooo good, preview in best quality.
Check out this one min clip of the 576i footy last night.....
YouTube - Blackmagic Intensity Pro test 2

I know this sounds like a corny ad, fact is , I wish I had known about this a long time ago.
Please guys, if there are things that you think are amazing that people may not know about, share it.

I bought one of these about 6 months ago and haven't been able to use it because it requires about a 3-drive raid array. They don't seem to point this out in their advertising.

Trying to understand
 

From your post, you are suggesting that you have 576i footage but capture at 1080i. Is this correct. Is it possible to take DV footage and capture to 1080i to be edited in Vegas?

Sorry Paul, I dont have a 3 drive raid, and Im going great guns. the default is to capture to the system drive ( my documents- Blackmagic design- capture-1 ). If you tell whats going wrong for you I may be able to help, maybe, Im a Blackmagic newb, lol.

Troy, that is exactly what Im saying, its so good. I think of it like this, The Input is analog 576i, you tell the the Blackmagic card to 'take pictures' of it at 1080i (or progressive if you want) IMO it means you lose nothing in the capture.

Which Model Do You Have?
 

I will start researching this immediately...

Intensity Pro.

And yes, you capture in Vegas and it appears in your project media.

Oh and I forgot to mention, it works in Vegas 64bit Windows 7, my capture has NEVER worked before in any Vegas 64bit, XP , Vista or 7, 8.1 or 9.

And another biggy as well, for HDV, you no longer have to capture to MPEG2, with this card you can capture it uncompressed if you like.

Wow thanks for this info...
 

One more question. When you say uncompressed you are talking .avi right? We all know Vegas loves .avi files. Man o man you made my day with this info. I think I gonna order one today!

8 bit yuv avi or MXF in Vegas
other options in the Blackmagic software.
have a good one.

Footage was phenomenal...very nice.

and another thing, and I think this may be the best yet.
Had my sons christening today, took along my handy little canon HF10 avchd cam.
Got home and went to load the footage on the PC, and thought, hang on, I wonder......
HF10 has HDMI out- plugged the HDMI into the blackmagic and .......
how good is this!!!!
Captured MXF 50Mbps MPEG2 from a AVCHD camcorder.
Now my formally AVCHD footage previews in best quality.
This thing really is the best thing since sliced bread.
:)

.....of course this turns up when I'm halfway thru converting my Hi8 tape thru a Sony DV handy!

Looks like a nice card.

HDMI/Composite HD/HD-SDI DIY portable capture station tutorial by Henry Olonga.

Wow Gerald, I may have to give the Intensity another chance. I thought the instructions said I needed a minimum hard drive speed that translated to a raid. As a result, I stuck the card in a drawer and never looked at it again.

Are you saying that a RAID not only is not needed, but I don't even need a dedicated drive? I've got an HMC150 and a Sanyo HD2000 and both have HDMI so this would be great news.

Paul,
when capturing in Vegas, you can choose to save the capture to any part of your PC, the same as capturing any HDV.
I havent tried an external HD via USB cable yet, this may be a problem as the data transfer is prob too fast for USB. Ill give it a go though and post back.
Any of my single Sata drives works like a charm.

I wanted to capture the output from my camera's HDMI port. Anyone have experience with this?