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  1. I'm behind the times and need to catch up so I'm asking here....
    Can one capture HD over firewire? I've always used canopus firewire gear to capture DV in the past but that's only SD and I was wondering what the new norm is for capturing 1080. I did a search on google but the devices I saw all use onboard hard encoding which puts me off a bit, I've always favoured the reliability of firewire and an unprocessed video capture. Thanks for any advice.
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    HDV makes use of FireWire, but that's about it. It's a legacy standard now. Most current workflows for HD (and above) either use card/ssd recording and file transfer, or capture via HDMI (consumer, prosumer) or SDI (pro only).

    Scott
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  3. thanks for your feedback, HDV seems all a bit grey and vague, I can't work out whether it will fulfill my needs or not. I suppose the better standard for HD capture is an SDI-to-thunderbolt device.
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    By Thunderbolt, you categorize yourself as a Mac user? If so, I would first look into products by Aja, then Blackmagic Designs.

    Why SDI? Do you already have pro equipment that uses SDI? If not, you would be more likely to use HDMI (assuming you don't have any Copy-Protected material, which is unlikely in an original/live capture situation).

    Scott
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  5. no I use a PC, but I understand one get get thunderbolt pci cards. I don't have anything that's SDI, I just want to be aware of these things ahead of needing it. I know about HDMI but doesn't that involve encoding? The reason I always stuck to DV capturing is it's raw and untouched video, I'm wary of capturing pre-encoded video.
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    Originally Posted by neuronetv View Post
    no I use a PC, but I understand one get get thunderbolt pci cards. I don't have anything that's SDI, I just want to be aware of these things ahead of needing it. I know about HDMI but doesn't that involve encoding? The reason I always stuck to DV capturing is it's raw and untouched video, I'm wary of capturing pre-encoded video.
    No, it's not.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV
    "DV uses lossy compression of video while audio is stored uncompressed."
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  7. The video signal that is transferred via HDMI is uncompressed, either RGB or YUV. Of course, nearly all sources of HD video are already compressed before they get to you (satellite, cable, terrestrial broadcast, IPTV) and are decompressed when sent over the HDMI cable.

    HDV, what you will get with an HD Firewire capture device, is MPEG 2 compressed.

    If you want uncompressed (or losslessly compressed by the computer) capture of HD sources you want an HDMI capture device that can output uncompressed video. Keep in mind that most HDMI capture devices will not record HDCP protected sources -- which means they will not record nearly everything you might want to capture. You will need an HDCP stripper to remove HDCP from those signals before capture.

    In the USA you can use an ATSC capture device to "download" over-the-air broadcast TV, or a clear QAM capture device to "download" cable TV (it won't work for encrypted channels). I'm not sure exactly what you need in the UK.
    Last edited by jagabo; 31st Oct 2015 at 09:59.
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    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    In the USA you can use an ATSC capture device to "download" over-the-air broadcast TV, or a clear QAM capture device to "download" cable TV (it won't work for encrypted channels). I'm not sure exactly what you need in the UK.
    The equivalent standards are DVB-T for Freeview and DVB-T2 for Freeview HD (over-the-air broadcast TV), DVB-S and SVB-S2 for Freesat (satellite TV), and DVB-C for digital cable. There are TV tuner cards for those. This is one example: http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_hvr5525.html

    DVB-C TV tuner cards work for non-encrypted digital cable but I would guess that cable in the UK is mostly encrypted. I don't know if there are any PC TV cards which can accept a conditional access module for any of the paid TV services available in the UK.
    Last edited by usually_quiet; 31st Oct 2015 at 11:18. Reason: clarity
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