Blackmagic Intensity: First HDMI PCI Express card

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.
 
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.
 
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...
 
Bogdan said:
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 :)
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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.
 
Capt Quirk said:
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.
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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.
 
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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/
 
Fernando Kurezyn Jr. said:
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
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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.
 
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projectsplat said:
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.
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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
 
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