HD video capture

[zother]

This is my first post on the site I hope I can get some useful help.

I am looking for a video capture device that will except composite HD signal as the input. I have found already the AJA Xena LH/LHe and the Matrox RT.X2, both of which can be found for about $1,500. Are there any other solutions in the same price range (under $2000 or less) that are recommended? All any links to hardware round up on this subject would be great.

Thanks.

[meansizzler]

You mean component not compositie? try the Decklink Intensity Pro, yours for only $350, plus the $10 of course you going to paypal to me for pointing you in the right direction....

http://www.decklink.com/products/intensity/

[zother]

Looks like a steal compared to the other cards.

I've seen cards in the price range before and they all downscale component HD signals. Does this card do the same? How is its video quality?

[Mad Mr H]

I have the Blackmagic HD SDI card.

the Blackmagic are considered entry level by "Broadcast" guys.

The AJA brand is considered much better quality.

(I can't prove that)

With digital signals it is ALL about "jitter" , higher the jitter worse the signal.

The question is can you tell the differance?


If you are looking to capture HD signal that are NOT HDCP protected then all these should work.

Sending an HDCP signal will run into issues.

(This is the reason I went for HD SDI - Originally I was going to use my Blackmagic card for HD Capture, NOW I have changed my mind I intend to use it for 1080p24 output from a PC that will playback HD DVD's (or Blur Ray)

Andy.

[Mad Mr H]

Search the list of companies on this site

http://www.tekcare.co.uk/Scripts/home.asp

that will give you most that is available.

NOTE that UK prices will usually be much higher the USD based versions.

The above site will at least give you a good list of possible options.

[meansizzler]

Originally Posted by zother

Looks like a steal compared to the other cards.

I've seen cards in the price range before and they all downscale component HD signals. Does this card do the same? How is its video quality?

I don't have one as You need a 3-4 Disk RAID 0 Array to capture footage in HD... so unless you have that first no point in getting the card

Depeneding on what the source res and frame rate, but say on average 165MB/s, single hard drive averages about 40-45MB/s, hence the need for a dedicated raid controller and array, eg.. Areca/3Ware/Adaptec

[Mad Mr H]

I have a raidcore / Broadcom array card.


I have never tried to capture HD but are you 100% sure about those figures?

I ask as HD data on a HD DVD or Blu Ray is compressed right?

So you would not need to record at the full HD rate.

Just a suggestion,

But anyway did you look at the list?

I would like to hear your thoughts on any of the products.

[meansizzler]

Originally Posted by Mad Mr H

I have a raidcore / Broadcom array card.


I have never tried to capture HD but are you 100% sure about those figures?

I ask as HD data on a HD DVD or Blu Ray is compressed right?

So you would not need to record at the full HD rate.

Just a suggestion,

But anyway did you look at the list?

I would like to hear your thoughts on any of the products.

I was talking uncompressed, don't think you can capture HD using a compression format with a decent bitrate in realtime..

When I capture in SD it's around 30Mb/s or so Uncompressed YUY2, also easier editing uncompressed footage, as you can literally fly through the editing points, try editing H264 video, a lot of loading times waiting for the CPU to decompress the video using the relavent codec...

There is a formula to work it out the HD Transfer rate needed to capture...

Resolution * Colour Mode * Refresh Rate

so for sd 720*576 * RGB24bit * 25fps

converting to bytes

720*576*3*25

divide my 1,000,000 to get result in MB

and you get 31MB

so 31MB/s

now say 1280*720*3*60 = 166MB/s

Of course if footage was interlaced then number would be lower...

the AJA one is populer, is this the same as Bluefish?, to many to keep track of, as for HD-SDI I don't have any sources with that output, what do you capture by the way?, care to lend me your system.....

When I encoded I encode to WMV for SD I use between 6-8mb/s, yes it's high same as DVD bitrate but it gurantees almost source quality... I use 1:1 Pixel Aspect Ratio, so encode at full resolution i.e 1024*576 instead of 720*576 Anamorphic, as some programs cannot stretch anamorphic WMV to the correct display resolution...

As for HD Encoding only tried re-encoding some blu-rays but had some great results, using 1920*1080P Resolution, found 16mb/s WMV gives near source quality...

Check out this clip here...

Link

[techmob]

is it possible to use the intensity pro to capture SD while watching/playing in hd via the hdmi on the tv (using xbox 360)

[pjclark1]

Originally Posted by Mad Mr H

I have never tried to capture HD but are you 100% sure about those figures?

I ask as HD data on a HD DVD or Blu Ray is compressed right?

So you would not need to record at the full HD rate.

Why would you want to do this?
Wouldn't a digital copy be easier?

Or are you trying to copy sky HD?

[David Mackenzie]

Yes, I expect the hard disk speed would be an issue here. Using my own Decklink card's disk speed test (on a 7200rpm Western Digital drive):

10 bit YUV 4:2:2 Frame Rates (read/write)
PAL 57/40
NTSC 68/48
720p (I assume it means at 60hz) 25/18
1080i/p 11/8

So, while a 7200rpm drive seems to be able to keep its head above water for SD capture, things aren't quite as easy for HD.