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  1. I have some betacam sp and digital betacam tapes I want to capture to hard drive. Which device on the market can allow me to capture it in Uncompressed 10-Bit 422 HD, Apple ProRes 422 HQ, DNxHD, H.264 HD?

    I'm currently looking at Blackmagic Design Intensity Shuttle for USB 3.0.

    I don't have a SDI capable playback device, do I have to get one to get the most out of betacam sp and digital betacam? I would like upscale the SD video to HD too as an option.
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  2. Member
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    I would look at the AJA KONA LHe Plus.
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    This might also be worth looking at too: http://www.magewell.com/pro-capture-hdmi/

    One of our pro members, Cornucopia, thinks Magewell makes some very good capture devices.

    Upscaling should ideally not be done during capture. Upscaling should one of the final steps done prior encoding to a distribution format.
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  4. The Magewell device seems to be less demanding than the AJA which is nice. How about an external device if I don't have an available slot? Or is an external device not recommended at all?
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    Originally Posted by digicube View Post
    The Magewell device seems to be less demanding than the AJA which is nice. How about an external device if I don't have an available slot? Or is an external device not recommended at all?
    Magewell makes two HDMI 3.0 capture devices, but one is HDMI only and the other is SDI only. They are an excellent choice to use with an HD camera for videoconferencing (software sees them as a webcam), but the specs say nothing about 10-bit color. http://www.magewell.com/usb-capture-family
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  6. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I'm using 43 Magewell HDMI->USB3 (external box) converters and all have worked flawlessly since we got them early this summer (and they're in use virtually every day). They put out UVC 1.1 UNCOMPRESSED 1080p60 "YUY2" 8bitYUV4:2:2 or RGB24 (not MJPEG or h264 compressed), & LPCM 48kHz audio, which for web use is more than adequate, in fact looks fabulous (in Webex, Skype, BlueJeans, Panopto, as well as Virtualdub, VLC, etc).

    Due to the huge bandwidth necessary for uncompressed HD, it absolutely requires a true, complete USB3 connection (incl. cabling & ports & drivers), but as long as you don't try to skimp on that, you'll be fine. If you DO try to skimp, you'll be left with max settings of 1080p3-8 (yes, that's not a mistake: THREE-to-EIGHT frames per second!), or 720p7-15, regardless of the app or post-compression used.

    Scott
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    Oops... I looked at the wrong section in the spec. It looks like the Magewell Pro Capture HDMI outputs 4:2:2 8-bit YUY2, but not 10-bit.
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  8. Are SATA 3Gb HDD and Core 2 Quad CPU fast enough to capture pro codecs and uncompressed videos?
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  9. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    No problem with the cpu, as that is just passing through a frame at a time.

    For storage of uncompressed hd video (e.g. 1920x1080 @ 60fps 8bit YUV4:2:2), we're talking 1898Mbps (aka 237MBps). Should not be a problem with decent SSDs, or decent RAID 0 or RAID 10 SSD or HDD bundles. Whether single standalone HDDs can handle it (in real-world, sustained usage) will greatly depend on the performance capability of the drive. Rpm, optimized sata subsystem, vintage, etc. Some could handle it, some would be iffy/occasional, some couldn't.

    Most pro codecs are slightly lossy, so they ease the burden on the storage/bandwidth, making it more likely to be ok with single modern drives (though for multi-track editing, ssd and or raid is still preferable).

    Scott
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  10. "3Gb HDD"? Hopefully you mean 3TB!

    Older, smaller HDD's (even high performance models) are always slower writing than newer, > 1TB HDD's.
    Watch out for green/low-power HDD's as they don't have sustained high performance, even if they benchmark well.
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  11. Formerly 'vaporeon800' Brad's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by digicube View Post
    I don't have a SDI capable playback device, do I have to get one to get the most out of betacam sp and digital betacam?
    Yes. If you don't capture SDI, you're adding an unnecessary D-A-D step. Even with the analog Betacam source, since your deck is always going to use a digital TBC that processes analog sources at 8-bit.

    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    For storage of uncompressed hd video (e.g. 1920x1080 @ 60fps 8bit YUV4:2:2), we're talking 1898Mbps (aka 237MBps).
    Refer back to the OP: his sources max out at 10-bit SD, not 8-bit 1080p.

    digicube: You don't need any special storage to capture 10-bit SD lossless, which you should be doing instead of uncompressed anyway. Capturing uncompressed is a pointless headache.

    Originally Posted by raffriff42 View Post
    "3Gb HDD"? Hopefully you mean 3TB!
    "SATA 3Gb". Which is pretty much an irrelevant piece of info for mechanical drives anyway.
    Last edited by Brad; 30th Oct 2016 at 13:00.
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  12. Originally Posted by raffriff42 View Post
    "3Gb HDD"? Hopefully you mean 3TB!
    I should have been more clear. I meant SATA II (3Gb/s). SATA II 7200RPM hard drives should be fast enough for lossy pro codecs at standard definition.
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