Trying to find Capture Card - w/ Component input

[VaBeachGuy]

I've pretty much ruled out the Blackmagic card completely, for now direct extraction will work and when that is no longer an option I'll begin looking into the options that are out there at that time.

An HD Recorder will solve all of those issues though.

[uscboy]

Hey, I appreciate you trying to save me money, no complaints there.

I know about the HDMI thing, obviously can't use that... but HDCP isn't on Component video. So, I guess my questions more specifically are:

How does the card give you a 30-40GB/hour rate AND a ~700GB/hour mode? I know that uncompressed Component video is ~700GB/hour, but on their site they have a chart that shows a capture mode for 1080i/720p at around 30-40GB/hour instead... in MJPEG. Is this not 'on card' compression? And if it's not on card compression, how do they reduce the size so much - realtime using your CPU? Or is the 30-40GB/hour rate the card downsampling the video to SD video?

If you can rip Component video at 30-40GB/hour with this Pro card at 1080i in this MJPEG mode, is the final .avi file you get compatible with most software out there for re-encodes/transcodes/etc?

I care less about processing time to reencode and I can get plenty of SATA disks in a RAID 0 (I have two 320GB now only) and have a Core2Duo 2.13Ghz overclocked to 3.21Ghz, and 2GB of PC6400 RAM, so it's not that slow.

Most component SD/HD cards out there have analog component in and uncompressed SDI (SMPTE 259m/292m) out.

I don't have the card but the card specs mention nothing about hardware compression. It seems to dump uncompressed video to the PCIe bus. The software driver has extreme system requrirements (Dell workstations don't quality) so I must conclude the compression happens in software. Even so HD MJPeg is still huge by consumer standards. This card is mainly intended for high end FinalCut Pro and Premiere Pro edit workstations although a fast consumer system may keep up.

From System Requirements link

Once you have found a chassis you like, you will need to fill it with a power supply, motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard disk and an Intensity card and then install your desired software from the list of supported applications above.

Traditionally uncompressed HD video has required the use of very fast, external disk arrays. However the high quality Online JPEG codec included with the Intensity drivers means that you can capture high definition video to a single, internal SATA disk. If you want to work with uncompressed video, you'll need at least two SATA disks in a RAID 0 configuration for standard definition. For uncompressed high defintion we'd recommend at least four SATA II disks (with 16 MB cache and running at 7200rpm) in a RAID 0 configuation. The motherboards listed above are inexpensive and assume the use of internal disk storage for capture and playback of video. The following list of chassis note whether there is enough space and power connections for an internal SD or HD disk array.

Well, I have the P5B Asus board they recommend and probably have good enough system specs. I don't really
care if the file ends up being 40GB/hour, I'm looking just to capture around 3 hours and then re-encode to fit an
HD DVD. It's probably pretty safe to assume that the final .avi file you get from this card when capturing using
that "high quality Online JPEG codec" is a stadnard of some sort and can be opened with other applications besides
Premiere Pro.

Suprised at the lack of info out there about this card - it sounds like it's the only semi-affordable means to capture
Component video from a DVR that's out there right now.

[edDV]

I was looking for the driver control panel to see if it can be used stand alone.

[edDV]

Here is a Dec 2005 shootout "Online MJPEG" codec vs. Cineform HD codec.
http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?p=638156

[uscboy]

Those are most likely videophiles though complaining about very minor edge effects.

I'm willing to bet video captured with the Intensity Pro via Componet using that Online MJPEG codec looks better than DV captures of S-video 720x480 video... just a hunch.

The real question is if someone buys that Intensity Pro card, puts it in a decent enough computer, and hooks up a Component source, can you use any capture utility (and BlackMagic's MJPEG codec) to capture 1080i/720p video at 40GB/hour?

Simple enough question, but I can't find an answer out there. May just email BlackMagic to find out I guess.

[VaBeachGuy]

Those are most likely videophiles though complaining about very minor edge effects.

I'm willing to bet video captured with the Intensity Pro via Componet using that Online MJPEG codec looks better than DV captures of S-video 720x480 video... just a hunch.

The real question is if someone buys that Intensity Pro card, puts it in a decent enough computer, and hooks up a Component source, can you use any capture utility (and BlackMagic's MJPEG codec) to capture 1080i/720p video at 40GB/hour?

Simple enough question, but I can't find an answer out there. May just email BlackMagic to find out I guess.

I've emailed them a few times and they never responded to any of them.

[edDV]

Simple enough question, but I can't find an answer out there. May just email BlackMagic to find out I guess.

The issue is real time software only capture. This is not a problem if your disc system is a fast enough RAID. The CPU has nothing to do. If you want to capture uncompressed video to a single drive, the CPU needs to compress on the fly. This is the way Huffyuv uses the CPU to reduce uncompressed SD down to below 30MB/s to match a fast ATA drive.
http://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/huffyuv.html

Real time software MPeg2 compression at SD rates with reasonable quality is tough. A good example is the Mainconcept MPeg2 encoder that uses about a 3GHz P4 to get 6000 Kb/s VBR MPeg2 for DVD. Real time software MPeg2 encoding of full bandwidth 1920x1080i just isn't in the cards even for a Core2Duo. Or, at least at full quality.

720x480 = 345,600 pixels per frame
1920x1080 = 2,073,600 pixels per frame or 6 times the size and uncompressed bit rate

So which encoders are less demanding?

MJPEG is similar to DV format in processing load at SD resolutions and usually needs hardware assist for full quality. At HD resolutions CPU encoding requires both a fast CPU and quality compromise.
http://www.morgan-multimedia.com/
http://www.pegasusimaging.com/picvideomjpeg.htm

Cineform Aspect HD was developed as a software "digital intermediate" codec intended for up/down sizing and de-GOP'g HD MPeg source for fast editing on a normal PC. Amount of compression was limited to what a single SATA drive can handle, not a DVD. Cineform Prospect HD produces a higher quality result from uncompressed source when constrained to ~40-50MB/s rates and flat out CPU calculation. Downside is it doesn't come cheap unless bundled.
http://www.cineform.com/

Bottom line, real time software compression needs a very fast CPU. Hardware compression doesn't.

[VaBeachGuy]

Bottom line, real time software compression needs a very fast CPU. Hardware compression doesn't.

Uncompressed we're talking about somewhere around 700 to 800 gb per hour, right?

I'm just kind of spitballing here, not something I'd really consider but if you were to capture uncompressed HD video to a large Hard Drive do you think you could then run it through something like ProCoder to compress it to a more reasonable size without losing a lot of quality?

[edDV]

700GB/hr, actually 1485 Mb/s is the data rate for SMPTE-292M serial digital interface that runs around HD production studios and is also the connection for studio video disk arrays. That figure includes 10bit video and uncompressed AES audio so doesn't directly apply to the Black Magic Intensity as it would to the Decklink.

To deal with SMPTE-292M in one to multiple streams see this intro to Disk arrays.
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=62

Since the Intensity Pro is dealing with HDMI inputs not SMPTE-292 (like Decklink) the data rate will be reduced if we are dealing with 8 bit video, 4:2:2 YCbCr sampling and compressed audio as comes out of an HDV camcorder HDMI port. The Intensity manual lists those 1920x1080i data rates as 120 MB/s or 422GB/hr. (1290x720p/59.94fps would be 376 GB/hr). These are the input rates that "Online MJPEG" realtime software compression reduces to ~46 GB/hr.

But, you aren't talking about HDMI from an 8bit HDV camcorder, you are looking at analog component or direct set top box HDMI captures. The Intensity Pro would capture analog component at the rates mentioned above. Computer or set top box HDMI might be 10 bit and it might be RGB which increases data rate closer to SMPTE-292 rates and could be more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI
HDMI v1.3 can be up to 16bit RGB at 4:4:4 rates
Single link data rate is 1020 Mb/s. Double link maxes at twice that.

These are staggering capture rates especially when you consider your source video is 19Mb/s ATSC MPeg2_TS which generates 10GB/hr. files.

[edDV]

I'm just kind of spitballing here, not something I'd really consider but if you were to capture uncompressed HD video to a large Hard Drive do you think you could then run it through something like ProCoder to compress it to a more reasonable size without losing a lot of quality?

Here's the rub.

To do that you need to capture the uncompressed stream to a RAID (see http://www.blackmagic-design.com/support/detail.asp?techID=62 ) in real time.

If you do that, a slow encoder can process taking as long as it takes.

Until around 2004, uncompressed SD also required a multi disk RAID. That's why people used huffyuv to compress bitrate to single ATA drive sustained transfer rate. Once the capture was on disk, a slow encoder could compress MPeg2 for DVD.

That is similar to the situation today at HD rates. Uncompressed capture needs to be bit rate reduced to single SATA drive transfer rate (e.g. Cineform) for two step encoding, or directly hardware compressed to usable MPeg2, VC-1 or H.264 for HD/BD DVD.

[VaBeachGuy]

Here's the rub.

Thanks for your help (and patience) in answering these questions. One question that just came to mind is this, the card captures the uncompressed HD requiring everything that you've detailed to date. Suppose that I have a TiVo though and want to transfer a show or football game to DVD (either regular DVD's or HD/Blu Ray). The HD content on my TiVo is already compressed, correct? I understand that the HDMI port may well be protected and may not allow the transfer but the component connections aren't, correct?

If those assumptions are correct so far then if the component connections allow the transfer and the HD content is already compressed then what would we be looking at in terms of file sizes (in your estimation)?

[edDV]

Here's the rub.

Thanks for your help (and patience) in answering these questions. One question that just came to mind is this, the card captures the uncompressed HD requiring everything that you've detailed to date. Suppose that I have a TiVo though and want to transfer a show or football game to DVD (either regular DVD's or HD/Blu Ray). The HD content on my TiVo is already compressed, correct? I understand that the HDMI port may well be protected and may not allow the transfer but the component connections aren't, correct?

If those assumptions are correct so far then if the component connections allow the transfer and the HD content is already compressed then what would we be looking at in terms of file sizes (in your estimation)?

First the content my be protected in other ways. Second in order to ouput on analog component, the compressed digital recording is first uncompressed and then converted to analog YPbPr. Then the Intensity Pro resamples the analog components into uncompressed digital at the rates we have been discussing. There is no hardware compression. That again would require the big RAID to capture or the software compression.

[VaBeachGuy]

Second in order to ouput on analog component, the compressed digital recording is first uncompressed and then converted to analog YPbPr.

That's what I figured but wasn't sure.

Like I said earlier, for now I can extract the HD mpgs directly from the TiVo but I know that I won't be able to do that once DTV moves entirely from MPEG2 to MPEG4. As it is, an extracted football game of 3+ hours is around 18 to 25 GB.

Thanks again.

[uscboy]

Then the Intensity Pro resamples the analog components into uncompressed digital at the rates we have been discussing. There is no hardware compression. That again would require the big RAID to capture or the software compression.

So the MJPEG codec compresses the incoming video by using your CPU, that much I get. And I think everyone gets that uncompressed video is hard to capture and requires <insert link here yet again> (4 SATA drives - not wild bleeding edge technology, but folks make it sound like that).

But the question in the end that's not getting answered is what kind of processor does it take to keep up with their compression codec without dropping frames.

Does anyone even own this card? Used it before? I've read all their charts and computer recommendations, but some real life examples of CPU speeds would be nice. Just want to know if my overclocked Core2Duo running at 3.21Ghz could keep up with that codec and record 1080i/720p from analog component at the 40GB/hour rate. I take it no one knows that...

[edDV]

I see nothing unusual about a 4 to 30 disk RAID if you want to edit uncompressed HD. It just seems extreme for daily PVR duty.

I share your query about CPU requirements. I too was looking through the "Intensity Minimum System Requirements for Windows" < link above > for that suggestion.

I see 2GB RAM. I see suggested motherboards and chassis to support RAID but I don't see CPU spec to support "Open MJPEG".

Leadbetter < link above > was using a Pentium 4 3.0GHz CPU with HT in those March 8th, 2007 tests. He found Cineform trounced Open MJPEG but would the results be different with a 4 core? Somebody needs to benchmark.

[uscboy]

Yeah, using this for a PVR isn't a good idea.

A single core P4 with HT is much slower than an overclocked Core2Duo
running at 3.21Ghz per core.

And like I said about their benchmarks, I'm sure Online MJPEG looks much
better than SD S-video captures... they're just videophiles comparing a
Ford to a Ferrari.

Bottom line is I'd hate to waste $300+ only to find out I can't return it and
my CPU/board/RAID can't keep up with the codec compression.

Because for ripping Component video, 40GB/hour is more than fine since
I'll turn around and re-encode it for whatever purpose afterwards, HD
DVD, WMV HD using H.264, etc.

[proudgeek]

The real question is if someone buys that Intensity Pro card, puts it in a decent enough computer, and hooks up a Component source, can you use any capture utility (and BlackMagic's MJPEG codec) to capture 1080i/720p video at 40GB/hour?

The fact that these specs and samples are not readily available leads me to believe the quality is not that good. I, as some of you, am waiting to see what it really takes to capture using MJPEG and how good does it do it before purchasing.

Intensity Pro owners...please help!

[uscboy]

What we really need is a consumer priced card that captures Component
video and has a realtime encoding chip onboard.

This is certainly a business opportunity I would think.

[jagabo]

What we really need is a consumer priced card that captures Component video and has a realtime encoding chip onboard.

The ADStech Pyro A/V Link has already been mentioned in this thread. Component -> DV

http://www.adstech.com/products/API-558-EFS/intro/API-558_intro.asp?pid=API-558-EFS

[edDV]

What we really need is a consumer priced card that captures Component video and has a realtime encoding chip onboard.

The ADStech Pyro A/V Link has already been mentioned in this thread. Component -> DV

http://www.adstech.com/products/API-558-EFS/intro/API-558_intro.asp?pid=API-558-EFS

Yes but only for 480i. I think they are looking for 720p, 1080i capture.

[uscboy]

Amen. We're not talking about NASA level equipment here. Someone for
$499 could release a PCI-X card with an MPEG2 encoding chip on it that
could seriously reduce the file sizes and data rates of analog Component
video captures. The technology has been around long enough that it isn't
bleeding edge.

If I can buy a Quad Core processor from Intel that can run between 3Ghz
and 3.5Ghz for $276, I can't see how one specialized number crunching
chip could cost that much.

Is this card needed in the industry? Not really - they're way past analog
Component video at this point. However, most consumers are left behind
thanks to HDCP this or that on all the digital connections and there are a
lot of folks out there that would be interested in being able to have fair use
of paid programming and be able to capture 720p/1080i video - especially
now that HD DVD and Blue Ray burners are coming out more and more.

[proudgeek]

Check out this thread for actual sample captures via component. The owner is encoding with an Intel extreme CPU though $$$.

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=103540

I've been exchanging emails with support and they have not provided specific CPU requirement guidance. All they've stated is that the card would require 13 MBps for disk write and as much CPU as you can buy in order to support 1080i mjpeg captures. Their test machine is a dual intel xeon 3.6 Ghz. No more info available.

[edDV]

Check out this thread for actual sample captures via component. The owner is encoding with an Intel extreme CPU though $$$.

http://dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=103540

I've been exchanging emails with support and they have not provided specific CPU requirement guidance. All they've stated is that the card would require 13 MBps for disk write and as much CPU as you can buy in order to support 1080i mjpeg captures. Their test machine is a dual intel xeon 3.6 Ghz. No more info available.

Holding quality near constant, more compression needs more CPU. Realtime means CPU reserve is needed to prevent lost frames during extreme motion. Realtime compression is the worst case and most risky strategy.

[VaBeachGuy]

After reading up on this card it's become clear to me that for the average comsumer this card is not the way to go.

As for the other method of capturing 480p through component cables, what's the difference in that and just hooking up a DVD recorder and re-recording?

I really think everyone should save their money and in a few months if you REALLY have to have something that will record your HD content then buy one of the HD or Blu-Ray recorders. Otherwise wait a year and the prices should be more reasonable.

[proudgeek]

Holding quality near constant, more compression needs more CPU. Realtime means CPU reserve is needed to prevent lost frames during extreme motion. Realtime compression is the worst case and most risky strategy.

I definitely get that. That's why I want to know the minimum CPU required to ensure no lost frames during capture. I cant afford to capture uncompressed or to buy a new workstation. I'm comfortable with the capture quality but I dont want to buy the card only to find out that I need to buy a $1500 workstation with a $700 CPU to make this work.

[proudgeek]

After reading up on this card it's become clear to me that for the average comsumer this card is not the way to go.

As for the other method of capturing 480p through component cables, what's the difference in that and just hooking up a DVD recorder and re-recording?

I really think everyone should save their money and in a few months if you REALLY have to have something that will record your HD content then buy one of the HD or Blu-Ray recorders. Otherwise wait a year and the prices should be more reasonable.

You won't be able to record most content this way because of HDCP.

[VaBeachGuy]

After reading up on this card it's become clear to me that for the average comsumer this card is not the way to go.

As for the other method of capturing 480p through component cables, what's the difference in that and just hooking up a DVD recorder and re-recording?

I really think everyone should save their money and in a few months if you REALLY have to have something that will record your HD content then buy one of the HD or Blu-Ray recorders. Otherwise wait a year and the prices should be more reasonable.

You won't be able to record most content this way because of HDCP.

We'll have to see what kind of connectors the recorders have for input, if they have inputs for Component then it's my understanding that HDCP isn't an issue.

[edDV]

After reading up on this card it's become clear to me that for the average comsumer this card is not the way to go.

As for the other method of capturing 480p through component cables, what's the difference in that and just hooking up a DVD recorder and re-recording?

I really think everyone should save their money and in a few months if you REALLY have to have something that will record your HD content then buy one of the HD or Blu-Ray recorders. Otherwise wait a year and the prices should be more reasonable.

You won't be able to record most content this way because of HDCP.

We'll have to see what kind of connectors the recorders have for input, if they have inputs for Component then it's my understanding that HDCP isn't an issue.

The Intensity card can capture 720x480p component and most processors could handle realtime MJPEG or Cineform 480p encoding. The faster processors may handle progressive MPeg2 (but probably not with realtime inverse telecine).

The gray area starts just below 720p. I'm looking for real world experience with this card + driver as well.

[Xeberdee]

In most cases any typical consumer CPU is going to be faster and more capable than most chips on most capture cards. Problem is that people like Blackmagic can't go round saying that a CPU at XXGhz can encode a HD signal without dropping frames because, as mentioned, the process depends on many other factors. There's just so much crap that people stuff into their computers and so many operations that a CPU has to do other than encode a video signal, not to mention the other specs for storage, Ram etc.

Sure, if you buy a card that says it can hardware encode a signal into an intermediate codec then you should get what you pay for - a dedicated capture device and you can complain if it doesn't do what it promised. If you want to do it without hardware accelleration then you unfortunately have no guarantee that your particular system will do the job. Look at the problems with folks that buy quad core CPU's and expect them to just be twice as good/fast as a dual core in all situations. I'm not a programmer, but I know that getting the most out of quad core technology means using software on an OS that can access and streamline the rescources - most software on win 32 won't.
The same thing applies in this particular thread. You can't be sure that using an Intensity card on a random system and hoping to encode in software will be a dropless process, there's just too many variables.

It would be nice to actually hear from someone who has attempted to capture and encode in software in realtime with a typical high end consumer system. The CPU's on these machines are more than capable of processing the data.

[igor_video]

The Intensity card can capture 720x480p component and most processors could handle realtime MJPEG or Cineform 480p encoding.

I'm hoping to capture 720p game footage at 60fps. The Intensity card can capture a progressive signal up to 1280x720 through component?

Video Formats
HD: 1080i50, 1080i59.94, 720p50, 720p59.94
SD: 625/25 PAL, 525/29.97 NTSC

I came across a website where someone was using it with premiere pro2


The specs from this site:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/495426-REG/Blackmagic_BINTSPRO_Intensity_Pro_HDMI_and.html