HDV Capture Card Reccomendations

[SCDVD]

I'm looking for a good capture card to capture HDV from a camcorder via firewire. I would like something that will capture to a lossless codec for editing in Vegas Pro 8 running on a Quad Core with Vista 64-bit. Suggestions?

[JohnnyMalaria]

Any FireWire card will do. The data are transmitted exactly the same as DV (i.e., 25Mbps).

What's important is the software...

[SCDVD]

I'm looking for a card that does the encoding to a lossless codec on the fly. A friend of mine uses Premiere CS3 with a Matrox card. He captures HDV that is encoded to Matox AVI on the fly which is a lossless codec that is more editor friendly because it requires less processor overhead than HDV mpeg. The Matrox card is expensive and since I use Vegas, the Premiere specific functions of the Matrox card are of no use to me. I just want to capture and convert to a lossless / editor friendly coded on the fly. i know I can convert after I capture but it would be nice to do it at the same time.

[JohnnyMalaria]

I see. I would have thought that software exists to do the job. e.g., I can view live HDV at full resolution + audio using VLC. It should be simple (ish) to save the uncompressed audio/video to disk instead - though extremely space-consuming. Or have you considered CineForm?

[SCDVD]

It's just that editing is faster with a lossless codec. When multiple effects are applied when editing a large project, it makes things faster. Cineform is a great product but it would be useful if the conversion to a lossless codec is done while capturing. It isn't a big deal on smaller jobs but it's extremely helpful with big jobs. I'm about to edit a 3-camera wedding shoot. There is about three hours of coverage times three cameras.

[edDV]

1. For a Quad Core with Vista 64-bit, native HDV project mode will work OK unless you go into many layers or filters. Be sure to update to the 64bit version d if you want to use more than 4GB ram. Otherwise 8c will work.

2. Vegas includes a VFW 1440x1080i max Cineform codec. Cineform gets you fast timeline performance and better multgeneration vs. native HDV. The Cineform codec included does not support direct capture. The work flow is detailed in another thread I wrote a few months back. Use search.

3. Purchase Cineform NEO Scene ($129) for flexible software HDV->Cineform encoding during capture and max 10bit 4:2:2 1920x1080 scaling. This is the recommended option if you can come up with $129. The higher Cineform products are intended for better than HDV source.
http://www.cineform.com/products/NeoScene.htm

All of the above work with standard OHCI IEEE-1394 hardware interface.

[SCDVD]

Thanks edDV. By coincidence I was surfing around looking for other options and was looking at NEO Scene on Cineform's web site. I was impressed by the description. It's good to hear your recommendation. It looks like what I am looking for.

[2Bdecided]

It's just that editing is faster with a lossless codec.

You're not talking about "lossless" codecs. Editing is far slower with lossless codecs.

You're talking about near-lossless editing codecs.

As edDV has said, these codecs aren't free, and come with the software to capture HDV directly into them in real time. You just need a standard firewire card.

(You can do true lossless captures via HDMI ilve, but this requires a black magic intensity card, and a hefty PC).

Cheers,
David.