The one I was looking at (Intensity Pro) has A/V analog in and out along with HDMI I/O. I have a capture solution now (through a camera to firewire) but was looking to get something better and something that could capture uncompressed HD. They mention all the NLE's that it works with and out of the long list, Vegas is not one of them.

I'm just concerned it will use some strange file format that Vegas can't read.

I talked to the guys at Black Magic at NAB this week. The guy told me that he thought Vegas could handle the Intensity files just fine, but Vegas can't currently capture the files.

I'm going to pick up an Intensity Pro card regardless, I have Premiere, so I can capture in it for the time being. I have a V1 and it outputs the full 1920x1080i uncompressed out of it's HDMI port before it gets compressed to HDV. The Intensity captures in Premiere to what they call "Online JPEG" at 12MB/sec with 4:2:2 color sampling. Of course, this is only true for live video, from tape, it's already taken the HDV quality hit.

Vegas supports some of Black Magic's other cards, so I hope that the Vegas software engineers are looking into integrating the Intensity. I wouldn't think it would be too difficult and this should be a "no brainer" for them.

John

All of the BlackMagic cards I have used included a standalone deck control application. I don't know if this would apply to the Intensity as it does not have RS422 machine control. The deck control app captures uncompressed video as Quicktime files with the BlackMagic codec. These play fine in Vegas provided you have the disk throughput for uncompressed and the codec properly installed.

If you are capturing from a camera such as the V1, I believe Connect HD can capture using the Intensity card directly to a cineform intermediate file. That is probably your best bet for getting an easily editable file into Vegas.

As for using the card for previewing, I don't think you will be able to do this with Vegas. I was told that the Intensity requires DirectShow compatibility for Windows applications. Since Vegas uses VfW, that would imply that it won't work at least not in the traditional sense. Again, Blackmagic cards usually install themselves in such a manner that they show up as another video display card. If the Intensity installs in the same fashion, you may be able to hook a TV to the HDMI out and extend your desktop to it. At that point, you would set Vegas to use desktop preview and select the "monitor" that was actually the TV. You might run into a problem with the TV's resolution not accurately detected by Windows. There is a possible solution for that, but it is a bit of a pain. If you do try this, I would love to hear if it actually works.

You all made up my mind. I'm going to go for it. All-in-all, it seems like a good deal and if I have to use PPro, so be it...

Thanks for the good info!

This conversation has made me think more about the actual capture process. Is it more than just zeros and ones?

Does the capture card make a difference in the quality of the images being captured?

I am currently using a 3 port fire wire card and I am curious if the "high-end" cards are simply more robust and flexible (i/o interface) or if they actually effect the image quality of the captured image. I am speaking specifically to SD.

Thanks

If you're doing a true digital capture, from a digital source, the type of card should make NO difference whatsoever in the quality of the capture. For SD capture of DV material in Vegas, any OHCI-compliant firewire card should be just as good as any other. I use the cheapest one New Egg had in stock, and it's always worked flawlessly.

Now, of course, all this changes if you're capturing material that originated from an analog source (such as, say, from a Hi-8, VHS or Beta-SP tape). Then your quality will vary with the quality of the player, the capture card quality, and the codec you choose to use. If you have a DV camera or deck that supports "E-E" conversion, you can also just plug into the analog in jacks and pump out a DV stream via firewire. If you do this, once again the quality of your firewire card should have no effect on the final image quality.

I'm not doing HD yet, so I can't comment on how that works in the HD realm. I'd be surprised, though, if cards like the BlackMagic offerings, do any transcoding of the original digital HD data. If they just do a digital transfer, then the same principle as with SD should apply.

Brian,
you're entirely correct. In either HD or SD once a Digital Video signal is recorded that's it, the best you can hope for is a 1 to 1 digital transfer on capture.
As such the Intensity card offers nothing, in fact quality wise you're probably going backwards and enduring a LOT of pain in the process.
What the Intensity is designed for is live recording from the camera head, prior to the video being encoded and recorded to tape. The pain required to do this may give you a better image. Part of the pain is that HDMI isn't really designed to run very far at all so you endup needing your PC pretty close to the camera.
A better solution is the Convergent Design 'HD Connect Nano', that converts HDMI to HD-SDI which is good for 100M on a single coax.

Bob.

"on a single coax"

Is that like a co-ax? :P

or is it more like a, "come on HD-SDI, come to me, come on" ?

Dave