The HDMI jack carries a live signal from the camera to a special BMD card that also has an HDMI jack.

The BMD driver can then store the video in different formats (codecs).

There was some grumbling here recently about Vegas not using Directshow yet, so there may be an intermediate step before getting the footage into Vegas, search recent posts here.

I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. So once it goes to tape it's over. Your stuck in mpeg 2 land. And thus this card is of no use (editing wise).

If you plug your camera into this card WHILE SHOOTING then you will then get uncompressed HDMI. Can todays computer handle that bandwidth?

Sort of...
The camera processes/decodes slightly differently when using HDMI output vs Firewire output, and there *is* a slight difference overall. The signal is converted from 4:2:0 to 4:2:2 when going HDMI vs 1394. Different camcorders will manage this differently. So far, I've only tested the HC3 and V1U camcorders. As others come on line, they'll obviously be tested as well. Bear in mind that captured file sizes are significantly larger, and you need a faster RAID setup to use the HDMI output, just as though you might be using HD/SDI output from the camcorder, or converting component to HD/SDI.

Yes, once it's recorded, it's recorded/compressed. Bypassing that, or using a different routing for the decode makes a difference. It's not a huge difference, but there *is* a difference, and it's a good one, IMO.
If you output LIVE/while shooting, you'll need that mo' honkin' RAID and a computer on-site to capture uncompressed streams.

Thanks Spot/DSE!

ve got a HC3 and am quality conscious. Is that an oxymoron?

All joking aside, what kind of quality improvements are we talking about? What are the raw files called and what do you render to? Is archiving to Blu Ray the way to go?

I've got a: Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo E6700 2.67GHz FSB1066MHz 4MB LGA775 ASUS Motherboard P5NSLI LGA775 CONROE NVI NF570 SLI DDR2 PCIEX16..thank god for copy and paste! RAID 0 2 Seagate 250 gig drives.

How much worse will my computer perform with HDMI? Just wondering what the quality vs convenience ratio is.

Thank you!

Well the files the BMD card write natively are QT .mov files normally.
Capture via Vegas produces .avi files using the Sony YUV codec.
You may well find editing the YUV files smoother than editing HDV, the lower compression needs less CPU grunt and things are much simpler as there's no temproal compression. This assumes your HDD system can keep up. For SD the SATA RAID 0 seems to work quite nicely off good controllers, HD does need a much higher data rate. There's some free test utilities and specs on the BMD site.
Of course the amount of data storage needed for 10 bit 4:2:2 HD is rather daunting!
I don't know how BMD are handling things on their HDMI card or specifically what comes down the HDMI feed form the HC3. However Spot did mention the HD SDI feed from the XL H1. Now in that case what comes down the SDI feed is 10 bit 4:2:2, it has to be to be compliant. But the catch seems to be that the camera is only taking 4:2:0 and converting that, so you're potentially not getting the full deal.

How much do you gain?

Well playing back the HDV tapes down HDMI, as Spot said not very much and you could probably do the same conversion in software and avoid the need for fast disks and cards to keep up with the data rate.
Coming straight off the camera Before the HDV compression you gain more, just how much with a camera like the HC3 I couldn't really say. In anycase this isn't a very practical solution outside of shooting set pieces in a studio. Those big RAID arrays need plenty of power and are bulky. No doubt some will do it but that's a lot of work and money that'd probably be better spent on a better camera in the first place.

Bob.

Read BMD's requirements on their site. They specify the amount of RAID you need.

If you're coming off the tape then it's 4:2:0 transcoded to 4:2:2. If straight out of the camera live then it's hoped to be straight 4:2:2 encoded by the BMD capture software into whatever codecs they make available. A 2-disk array is probably not enough for HD 4:2:2.

For other people thinking this'd be a great way to output from a commercial HD-DVD or BD, don't get your hopes up. HDCP should shut down the output on that front.

Rob Mack

For other people thinking this'd be a great way to output from a commercial HD-DVD or BD, don't get your hopes up. HDCP should shut down the output on that front.
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Ah, that one was cracked long ago, even before content was available.

Bob.

Yes but you're going to have to hunt down and apply the crack. I'm assuming that if you defeat AACS then your hardware is never going to be asked about HDCP.

Of course a fine upstanding Vegas user would never try to rip off copyrighted material.

Right?

Rob Mack

The solution is way, way simpler than that, nothing dodgy apart from the breach of copyright part.
The company that makes the HDCP chips are quite happily selling them to anyone. So at least one company has been showing off a box that does HDCP to component, goodbye protection.
Said box has a legitimate reason for it's existance, a lot of gear already out there isn't HDCP compliant, projectors etc are on thing that comes to mind. Also broadcasters have legitimate reasons to dub material off every form of media.

Actually, component output at full rez is a perfectly "legal" option. There's a flag that can be set in the AACS protection that can either allow ful rez analog, reduced rez analog (960x540, I think), or no analog whatsoever. I think over time it'll be more and more restrictive but probably most commercial HD content will allow full rez analog.

What they're deathly afraid of is people just writing the digital output directly to disc. They're slightly less concerned with transcodes to analog.

But of course you're right that things will be hacked pretty fast. Part of the AACS protection is supposed to block playback on players on a hacked list, which just means that maybe new titles (post discovery of the hack) won't play on the hacked player. So if they find that some particular Toshiba player is hacked and they block it from all future titles they'll hear a lot of screaming from owners of that player who never hacked it but still find themselves blocked.

Sorry, I've been swimming in this stuff for the last few days because I'm supposed to write some training on it. Of course we're supposed to be describing what it all does, not how to hack it. Hear no evil, see no evil, yada yada yada.

By the way, good morning!

And good night.

Rob Mack