Blackmagic Intensity and Vegas 9 - Go or no go?

Streamworks Audio wrote on 11/21/2009, 1:03 AM
Hi guys....

I am looking at getting this Blackmagic card HDMI capture card and was wondering if anybody here has tried to use it within Vegas for capturing and if so does it work with Vegas 9 64bit?

I am not too concerned about being able to playback thru the device - mostly the capture. I need to do some live shots for a project (which we normally do not do) and I was thinking of using my AVCHD cam which is fairly decent... but my cam does not have a Mic input which will allow for better audio for the voice. So I was thinking of getting this card and capturing the video thru it while capturing audio via a Mic plugged into our MOTU interface in Vegas... can this be done?

Perhaps the Blackmagic comes with some software for capturing.

And while I am on the topic - are there any other capture devices you recommend that can take an HD video source from an HD cam via HDMI or Component?

Cheers,
Chris

Comments

jabloomf1230 wrote on 11/21/2009, 4:44 PM
Vegas 9 will not capture from the Intensity Pro, at least I haven't figured out how to do so. The device does show up in the capture window, but all you get is a black screen. My guess is that it works with only the higher end BMD products. EDIT: The most recent version of the BMD software (3.4) now does work with Vegas and the Intensity Pro.

The Intensity Pro comes with it's own capture program, BMD Express and you can capture either uncompressed, if you have a RAID0 disk setup, or MJPEG, if you don't. You can also use the freeware NLE VirtualDub (or VirtualDub x64) to capture.

The other options for capturing with the IP are Cineform Neo HD and Prospect HD, but those will cost you extra. There are a bunch of threads on the Cineform message board about those options.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 11/21/2009, 5:02 PM
can't you use your camera's firewire port? That will be the same quality.
Streamworks Audio wrote on 11/22/2009, 2:55 AM
This is a Sony AVCHD cam - for the connection to the computer it uses USB 2 and does not show up as a capture device when connected - only as a storage device to pull the files off it.

I can and have plenty in the past use Vitual Dub to capture. Could do that and use the Cineform codec when doing so (in fact for a test I captured to a cheap USB TV card with Composite from the cam in Virtual Dub but I do want the video to be at least 720p). Does Black Magic Express allow access to 3rd party codecs - or is it MJPEG and Uncompressed video?

Cheers,
Chris
Coursedesign wrote on 11/22/2009, 6:33 AM
can't you use your camera's firewire port? That will be the same quality.

The firewire signal is usually heavily compressed, while the HDMI is a clean uncompressed signal that won't fit on any small camera tapes or Flash cards.