Blackmagic Intensity Questions

StormMarc schrieb am 11.06.2008 um 18:50 Uhr

Hello, I'm trying to figure out if the Intensity card is worth adding to my system but I'm a bit confused and could not find sufficiant info on the BM site.

I'm starting to do the color correction of an HDV project that will end up on both NTSC and Blue Ray. I am checking my footage on both a Sony Broadcast monitor and Ben Q secondary monitor that can display full HD resolution. (I alternate between the two).

Question:

1. Does the Intesity card work for previewing cineform NEO files in 1080i?

2. Will the intensty card give me a more accurate preview to my Ben Q (which does have an HDMI input) as compared to using the Vegas secondary monitor feature?

3. Can the Intensity Pro send a simultanious signal to both my Sony Broadcast monitor (in NTSC) and my Ben Q in HDV?

4. Is using the Intensity pro analog outputs more accurate (color wise) then using the firewire to my Canopus ADVC-100 for NTSC previews?

Thank you, Marc

Kommentare

John_Cline schrieb am 11.06.2008 um 23:28 Uhr

1.) Yes.

2.) Yes. But the Intensity is acting as a Vegas preview device and doesn't have any sort of acceleration, so it works at the same speed as using the Vegas Secondary Display. The Intensity operates in 720x486, 1280x720 or 1920x1080. If you've got 1440x1080 HDV on the timeline, Vegas will have to up-scale it to 1920x1080 and that takes some CPU horsepower. Perhaps this will be addressed in a later version of the Intensity drivers. Their documentation says that the Vegas v8 portion of their drivers are still in the beta stage, but for the most part, they work fine.

3.) No, it's either/or, but easy to switch. The Intensity will up/downscale very well so you can view NTSC on the BenQ or HD on the Sony NTSC monitor.

4.) Probably not.

StormMarc schrieb am 12.06.2008 um 00:04 Uhr

Thanks for the answers John.

So is the preview to the Ben Q monitor more accurate using the Intensity card because of the HDMI input?

Leopardman schrieb am 12.06.2008 um 09:16 Uhr

I am also currently looking at aquiring the Black Magic Intensity Pro card. It is my understanding that during capture/digitizing of HDV files, it can already be upscaled (decompression can be/is done by the Blackmagic card) to 1920x1080. Thus editing in Vegas could be done directly in 1920x1080 format.

Wolfgang S. schrieb am 12.06.2008 um 12:06 Uhr

I configurate my Intensity Pro also to 1920x1080 for HDV2 material - so the upscaling seems to be done by Vegas, since the handover to the Intensity is done at 1920x1080. Theoretically that should take away a little bit of performance, but that effect seems to be not so significant.

Funny enough, I have seen much lower performance when I reduce preview quality, since that seems to require extra processor performance. Is a different behaviour, that I see here, compared with my graphic card or the internal preview.

The major benefit of the Intensity card is the significant improved preview quality, compared with a grafic card. On my 40-inch full-HD HDTV, the picture looks much better, even if my graphic card has also an output of 1920x1080. The graphic card picture looks like if you would have added a light blur.

megabit schrieb am 12.06.2008 um 12:12 Uhr

OK. so back to the subject (some of you guys might remember I've kept trying to make up my mind about the real benefits of getting the Intensity Pro - exclusively for a better preview, as capturing I am not interested in, using the XDACM EX file-based workflow).

The 2 new important factors involved in my decision-making process are:

- soon, I'm going to use the 50 or 100Mbps, 4:2:2 format from the nanoFlash; no plans for 10 bit as this is only going to be available as an (expensive) upgrade to the Flash XDR (already expensive as is, and too bulky for me)

- with the uncertain future developments in the ATI/nVidia video overlay capabilities under Vista (which doesn't support it per se), it may soon turn out that my current method of viewing Full HD Vegas preview in Best/Full mode will not be possible using my 50" HDTV plasma, connected as the Theater Mode secondary display to my HD3870 ATI card

So, considering the above, how am I supposed to benefit from adding the Intensity to my current ATI? Will it make the "Theater Mode Overlay" Vista problem irrelevant (it probably will, if Vegas allows to configure it as a separate display, as opposed to the Windows Secondary Display). Also, do I really need the Pro version - I mean, HDMI is always going to look better than component on my plasma - see further below).

Last, but no least:

BlackMagic Technical support has informed me that one cannot use their Intensity cards to watch HD content which requires HDCP (i.e. any BD, including my own ones, will still require my current ATI HD, HDCP-compliant card). It will need to remain connected into one of the plasma's HDMI inputs. This make me ask: having all other HDMi inputs of my plasma already occupied (by the HD satellite, BD stand-alone player, etc) - is Component my only option for connecting Intensity? And if so, again:

- this would mean I need the Pro version, right?
- colour quality-wise, is it supposed to be comparable to HDMI connection - considering I'll mainly use it for colour grading in Vegas?

Any comments welcome, and appreciated!

Edit: Oh, and one more, quite OT: can Edius also make any use of the Intensity card? This one is perhaps not quite politically correct in this forum, but with the Thomson/Canopus guys being so blindly focused on their (outdated) hardware solutions, I thought I might bring it here...:)

John_Cline schrieb am 12.06.2008 um 12:59 Uhr

The only NLE that is fully supported by the Intensity on the Windows platform is Premiere Pro. The playback is flawless and full-speed. The Intensity also supports After Effects, Photoshop and Encore DVD. I'm hoping that Sony and Blackmagic continue to develop the integration of the Intensity into Vegas. Vegas could certainly use a high-quality HD monitoring solution as the secondary display option isn't really much of a solution.

Wolfgang S. schrieb am 12.06.2008 um 15:26 Uhr

I cannot imagine that ATI/nVidia will not support any more the overlay mode - and Vegas will continue to support the secondary display too. I would assume that this will be possible in future, but I cannot gurantee that, off course.

Vegas 8b allows to configurate the Intensity as a spearate display, that is separte from the windows secondary display. It is an additional choice in the selection window, after installation of the Intensity and the driver.

No, there is no must to take the Pro version, especially not if you wish to use hdmi only. My decision for the Pro was more from that side, that I have additional input and output capabiliites - also for SD. But if you are sure that you never will need that, hdmi is fine off course, and would be always the first choice. With the Intensity Pro, you could use component beside hdmi, with the Intensity you can use hdmi only.

In addition, given the digital transfer a hdmi connection should be always (a littel bit) better then an analog YUV connection. In real live I do not see a significant difference, when I compare material from Edius (+NX and HDV card) via component with the Intensity via HDMI. Edius generates a slightly better preview then Vegas does, but that is more a question of how Edius generates the preview (Vegas alway recompresses the material, Edius seems to be here better, but do not ask me how that works in detail).

And no - there is no way for Edius to address the Intensity card, as far as I have seen (I have both the Canopus NX and the Intenity in my PC).

For Premiere CS3 - one important point is that CS3 can adress the Intensity, but only when you use Intensity templates. And there is no Intensity template for HDV, for example - so here you have to use the 1920x1080 50i template, what is possible (but you get the HDV material marked as read). Vegas is here better - you always get the preview via the Intensity, regardless what template you use.

One advantage of CS3 is the support for capturing to the Blackmagic mjpeg-codec, what is not possible in Vegas - Vegas only supports the capturing to compressed material, what is huge. However, there seems to be also some issues with the Blackmagic mjpeg-codec, some people reported a loss in resolution.

From the codec side, the Canopus solutions together with an Canopus NX or SP offer much better solutions, the Canopus HQ codec is really great, for example.

So, at the end of the day I like the Intensity for Vegas - but mainly as preview card. Because here the preview capability is really great - on an full-HD HDTV.