Blackmagic Intensity: First HDMI PCI Express card

[brdplya1]

What do you think about this?

[microbob]

The first article is pretty interesting and full of speculation:

-> http://theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34318
-> http://www.biosmagazine.co.uk/article.php?id=4140
-> http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

[Fugitive]

If you are on a mac, this is horrible, particularly because you can only use it with the Mac Pro. On a PC its fine.

One thing I have never understood about Black-Magic is why they dont go more for mobility? PCI Unompresseed HD Capture cards are suitable only for studio-like environments since desktops obviously cant be carried around. We need a latop/notebook solution, especially since Merom processors now allow Laptops to be as powerful as Desktops for processing HD.

I wish either the MacMini could be modified to accept the cards, or BlackMagic would release a PCMCIA card so that we could use a new Merom Laptop with the camera and really get some Indie-style Uncompressed-HD fottage.

[christophersj]

This is not true. Any Power Mac G5 with PCI-Express slots will run this card.

-Christopher

[Fugitive]

Thats what I meant. You cant use it with IMac, emac, or or the books...

[David Saraceno]

Thats what I meant. You cant use it with IMac, emac, or or the books...

It is a PCI Express Card.

Of course it won't work on a Mac or PC without slots.

or am I missing something?

[Kholi]

It's pretty portable when you take time to plot out a portable system.

A little PC Cube with a large enough HD LCD screen with this input is rather portable. I mean, you get into powering issues, but once you figure that out then you're set.

S'what I plan to do.

[Barry_Green]

Thats what I meant. You cant use it with IMac, emac, or or the books...
Well of course not. It's recording uncompressed HD! It needs the PCI bus to handle the data rate of, what is it, 2 gigabits per second? That means a data rate of somewhere around 250 megabytes per second. How could you even begin to record that on an imac's internal drive? Or a laptop's? Hard drives only run at around 30 megabytes per second.

It is an impossibility. The only way you could even start to do so would be to compress the footage. And if you're compressing, then what's the point of recording uncompressed?

[Jarred Land]

You need a Raid 0 of at least 10 drives with fiberlink or infiniband (sata II may just cut it) to lay down 250megabytes a second... this could work no a mac mini.. as long as you have a small refrigerator sized raid array sitting below it.

[Disco Robo]

I want to record the decompressed HDMI signal uncompressed so that I can....what. Eat up a ton of hard drive space. It's analagous to capturing SDI (270 mbps) from DVCam (25mbps) tape. It's not like there is anything out there (acquisition) that records uncompressed HDMI. Even HDCam SR is compressed. Good enough for Star Wars good enough for you I always say. What I would like to see is an HD toaster. Remember when computers weren't fast enough to process video and you had to use dedicated external boxes? What about having a box that had various inputs analog HD, HDSDI, etc., married to a SATA card. You could use a slow machine that would control the parameters of the box but the actual processing would be done on the toaster. Your machine would only guide the process and not do the processing. You could use a G3 iBook and a SATA raid and capture high data rate HD. The major cost of devices like the FS 100 is the development of the control processes that your computer cal already do. 2000 dollars for a 100gb hard drive is ridiculous. My 100gb hard drive has a 17" screen and runs my editing software as well as email, after effects, photoshop, etc., Innovation Please!

[akkadia]

Actually, this product looks very interesting, not to record uncompressed but to bypass the 25mbit HDV compression and capture to a decent HD codec. On Mac, Photo JPEG at 75% quality would be an excellent choice in principle, although even the new Mac Pro seems to stuggle to encode in real-time. DVCPRO HD would be another possibility.

Either way, a simple FireWire drive can easily handle the bandwidth and a laptop is a whole lot more practical in the field than a Mac Pro!

[briscoe]

I went by BlackMagic's website and it said you can use two Intensity cards in a high-end Mac with their switching software called On-Air 2 and switch 2 HDMI signals while recording the result to hard drive.

Doesn't the Red have an HDMI output?

Couldn't you use Intensity to record a live-switched two Red-camera shoot?

[Kholi]

As far as I knew you couldn't expand a Mac Mini in the first place. a Mini PC, however, yes.

Which laptops come with the ability to add a capture card? Only option I've been thinking of is Mini - PC cube with two internal drives. Or, maybe, two external G-Raids.

Why won't the cameras just be here so I can test?

[Fugitive]

That means a data rate of somewhere around 250 megabytes per second. How could you even begin to record that on an imac's internal drive? Or a laptop's? Hard drives only run at around 30 megabytes per second.


Reasoning that most modern laptops come with a firewire port, and that Firewire's bandwidth is either 400MBs or 800, I would assume that unless there is a technical idiosynchracy i am unaware of, that would mean a Laptops hardrive "can" store at a significantly faster rate than 30mbs.

Besides, arent those external USB 2.0 harddisks up to snuff? Unless the bottleneck is that the data has to go "through" the computer first. Still, should be decently fast.

And wait, the new IMacs have a laptop-type Hard disks? Man, yeah I know its the only logical explanation for the slim size, but I just so want this to be untrue! :(

[Fugitive]

It is a PCI Express Card.

Of course it won't work on a Mac or PC without slots.

or am I missing something?

No you are not. Actually I was referring to what I had mentioned in another thread. I mentioned that BlackMagic ought to be considering PCMCIA cards. We really need those cards on laptops.

Make sense now?



Which laptops come with the ability to add a capture card?


I think I already answered that. We need PCMCIA cards...and faster Hard-disks...

[Barry_Green]

Reasoning that most modern laptops come with a firewire port, and that Firewire's bandwidth is either 400MBs or 800, I would assume that unless there is a technical idiosynchracy i am unaware of, that would mean a Laptops hardrive "can" store at a significantly faster rate than 30mbs.
Bits and bytes, bits and bytes. Laptop hard drives run at around 30 megaBYTES per second, firewire runs at 400 megaBITS per second. Even so, firewire is capable of up to 50 megabytes per second, laptop drives aren't. You can look at the tests for yourself; tom's hardware guide used to have lots of great test info but they seem to have undergone some sort of reorganization and I can't find anything decent on 'em.

Let's put it this way -- a two-drive 3.5" RAID like a G-RAID can only sustain a maximum throughput write rate of about 50 megabytes per second. No way will a little 3.5" or 2.5" laptop hard disk come close to that.

[Capt Quirk]

One thing I have never understood about Black-Magic is why they dont go more for mobility?
What I don't understand is, after spending close to $1,000 for one of their cards, why couldn't they throw in a few cables? Even a manual would have been nice.

[Shadowville]

HD Uncompressed? you'll at least 400mbs a to succefully run uncompressed video with AVID of Finalcut using any of their capture boards MOJO.BLACKMAGIC or AJA. You will need a fiber channel drives to have that type of tranfer rate. Raids 1 or 2 will not work in your favour at 270mbs, you will expereince drops in the transfer speed pretty much all the time using uncompressed.
Solution, dig all your media on site with your laptop usind HDVPRO if you wish to see how the edit would look in big format, I recommend you did 4:3 to save space for your off-line, Firewire 800 should bring HDVPRO in only some problems, I recommend a SATA drive for best results. You should!, unfortunately at this time only use HD 10 or 12 bit unconpressed during your online process, at this point if in most casses can't afford a fiber channel drives you can rent them for a day or two to get you media at that quality.
As far as laptops you won't experience this type of technology that is applied to your desktop computers for sometime.

[Anders Holck]

Actually capturing uncompressed HD on Laptop has been done in the past.
Scott Billups had a portable system back in 2003, using his Powerbook g4 with a Magma extension cabinet with the Pinnacle Cinewave and a scsi controller, and an external raid.
This enabled him to capture uncompressed 8-bit 1080p.
Article (http://www.pixelmonger.com/article/Krak.pdf#search=%22cinewave%20powerbook%20hd%22)

If a company made a combined eSATA / HDMI expresscard it should be possible to capture uncompressed 10 bit 1080 to a 4 way SATAII hardware raid.

[Fugitive]

How could you even begin to record that on an imac's internal drive? Or a laptop's? Hard drives only run at around 30 megabytes per second.


The new Imasc have a 160GB Serial ATA 7200-rpm hard drive at a minimum. I am sure thats more than 30 MB per second. So now we only need a PCI slot on the IMac and we are all set.

I wish Apple would produce an Imac with a PCI slot...

Thanks for the link Anders. Checking it out.

[Bogdan]

Uncompressed HD acquisition is extremely rarely practical for anything else than broadcast and TV stations. Smart and effective compression is the key to success in the future. No doubt about that in my mind. Silicon Imaging and RED are promising projects that hopefully soon will land in hands of average guys like me. Hey, we're talking cost of average cars, not houses here :)

For now, at least for me, it's too early even for P2. Capacities have to go way up and prices way down to make it practical. Working on the set (not to mention on documentary or hiking in the mountains with camcorder handy), the last thing I want to worry about is technology. Many folks like me still appreciate freedom tape brings. HDV and 63 minutes of recording on $5 media will keep us happy for quite a while :) With no hesitation I choose to have more time to master my shots, help the director and make better movie than spend that time taking care of technology and RAID systems on the set. HDV (especially XL-H1) is not bad at all, imo, quite the opposite :)

If you guys have resources, if you own or can rent hi-tech hi-bandwidth stuff and workflow, good for you and I can't say I don't envy you :) but I think good times are coming for all of us. Soon compression technology will be so effective and available very few of us will actually demand anything better. I believe it's question of just a few years, maybe even less, with SI and RED planned to be commercially available in 2007.

[fishquail]

Maybe you dont need it, and maybe This product is not good for everyone but it is great for compositors who want the best quality color from HDMI camcorders for greenscreens and such.

HDV compression ruins a good key.

Im going to get one for greenscreen shots which are done in studio.

[nycfilmmaker]

my raid 0 --2 terabytes-- runs at 225MBps and at 207MBps at 90% capacity. not bad. If i added another tera it will come close to 250MBps.

if your setup is not fiber based you need to partition your drives and create a raid with the first partition so it won't take a hit when they start filling up...

[Emanuel]

Uncompressed HD acquisition is extremely rarely practical for anything else than broadcast and TV stations. Smart and effective compression is the key to success in the future. No doubt about that in my mind. Silicon Imaging and RED are promising projects that hopefully soon will land in hands of average guys like me. Hey, we're talking cost of average cars, not houses here :) I agree. And it would be possible to go to a better codec than HDV adding to the upcoming V1 HDMI port if beyond the 1080i spec.

[projectsplat]

What I don't understand is, after spending close to $1,000 for one of their cards, why couldn't they throw in a few cables? Even a manual would have been nice.


These guys are trying to make the cards as affordable as possible. Considering most, if not all HDMI capable cameras ship with a HDMI cable, it shouldn't be that much of an issue. Printed manuals become out of date as soon as there is a software update.

It is true that any other company building this card would include the cables, but they would most likely charge you another few thousand for the privilege.

Edit : Don't forget that before BlackMagic came on the scene, any and all capture cards were in excess of $7k with HD capable cards starting at $15k. It is only because BMD started figuring out how to build cards smarter and cheaper that they put pressure on the rest of the market to drop their prices. BMD cards are still the cheapest (and some of the best) on the market, and they deliver a hell of a lot of bang for buck.

Apologies for the rant, but up until BMD came onto the scene, I was buying these $15k cards, and getting very little for the companies money. Since the release of the Decklink cards, I have installed them in all of the FCP suites I was managing, and our costs dropped, our support requests dropped, and the output increased. Granted the intensity is quite a bit chopped down from the Decklink cards, but they are great for the money.

[Fernando Kurezyn Jr.]

hey!! you guys are forgetting some fresh news...

eSata... ExpressCard 34... a bridge (this new FrimTek adapter)

yep... MacBookPro... in the middle of this situation of course...

My possible configuration:

MacBookPro - FirmTek SeriTek/2SM2-E Serial ATA ExpressCard Adapter for MacBook Pro and PC Notebook Computers - FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2 Dual-Bay Hot-Swap External Serial ATA Enclosure - 2x SATA 500 Gigs Hard Drives anddd... any little help from BlackMagic LOL to connect their wonderful interfaces by FIREWIRE port or something... well we almost resolve this Laptop Hard Drive´s issues... is BlackMagic´s chance to give us a mobil device... dont you think?... or maybe Canopus.. what about Grass Valley?...

what you think???

(im learning in the middle of this!!! yeah!!)

Fer

webpages:

http://firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2sm2-e/
http://firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2en2/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A31619/

[projectsplat]

hey!! you guys are forgetting some fresh news...

eSata... ExpressCard 34... a bridge (this new FrimTek adapter)

yep... MacBookPro... in the middle of this situation of course...

My possible configuration:

MacBookPro - FirmTek SeriTek/2SM2-E Serial ATA ExpressCard Adapter for MacBook Pro and PC Notebook Computers - FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2 Dual-Bay Hot-Swap External Serial ATA Enclosure - 2x SATA 500 Gigs Hard Drives anddd... any little help from BlackMagic LOL to connect their wonderful interfaces by FIREWIRE port or something... well we almost resolve this Laptop Hard Drive´s issues... is BlackMagic´s chance to give us a mobil device... dont you think?... or maybe Canopus.. what about Grass Valley?...

what you think???

(im learning in the middle of this!!! yeah!!)

Fer


unless your RAID is going to be battery powered there is still not a lot of point putting a laptop in the middle of this solution.
to give you an idea of the limitations, check out the AJA IO - it is the only product that I know of competing in this space - although it is Standard Definition only, and at AU$3500 is a hell of a lot more expensive - and still needs a power supply.

cheers

al

edit: sorry to seem like a party pooper here, but you really need to look at the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve here.
i appreciate the "can we do it?" factor but you need to consider the "why are we trying to do it?" and the "what are we going achieve by doing this?" factor.

[Fernando Kurezyn Jr.]

unless your RAID is going to be battery powered there is still not a lot of point putting a laptop in the middle of this solution.
to give you an idea of the limitations, check out the AJA IO - it is the only product that I know of competing in this space - although it is Standard Definition only, and at AU$3500 is a hell of a lot more expensive - and still needs a power supply.

cheers

al

edit: sorry to seem like a party pooper here, but you really need to look at the bigger picture of what you are trying to achieve here.
i appreciate the "can we do it?" factor but you need to consider the "why are we trying to do it?" and the "what are we going achieve by doing this?" factor.



Ok...

Yep, you got a point Al, but, in my case, i want a laptop because i live in mexico, my location is my home, my studio, my country house, on the beach, etc etc..
in all this places we have electricity, but is not the same thing traveling with the
MacPro than a lap top (macbookpro).. the other thing is about service, i got bad experiences with my electricity regulation, laptops do not suffer, but my Power PC (G4) is suffering with this electricity issues, so, thats why im looking for a laptop, to
make my job, im working in my iBook and i love the experiences of working on laptops environment... so.. thats why my friend, im concern about performance, hard drives, etc.. in laptops... i want to be sure that i will be enable to work just fine with my next macbookpro... and for
me was very good news this firmtek´s new development... but well, im asking to the experts what they think (or you because you are an expert too) about this way.

thanks

Fer