Intensity pro

Widetrack wrote on 4/12/2008, 12:22 PM
I've read all (well, a lot, anyway) of the posts on the BD Intensity Pro card, but still have a strategic question.

I'm still using DV, but will be upgrading to HD soon. In the meantime, I need to capture and edit a bunch of Beta SP tapes.

I'm wondering if I should buy the Intensity pro, use it to capture the SP, then have ready for when I upgrade to HD.

your thoughts?

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 4/12/2008, 12:47 PM
I jumped on the Intensity Pro bandwagon very early and there were some issues between it and Vegas that have only been recently resolved. The Intensity Pro is a pretty versatile little device. If you need to capture and edit BetaSP, it's a no-brainer. The Intensity Pro will capture and edit component 4:2:2 analog using either uncompressed YUV or MJPEG. This will look MUCH better than capturing to 4:1:1 DV.

Just make sure to download the v1.8.4 drivers (or higher), these are the ones that fixed the Intensity/Vegas issues. (Unfortunately, the v1.8.4 drivers are not yet available for 64bit version of Windows.)
Widetrack wrote on 4/12/2008, 1:31 PM
Thank you John. succinct and to the point as usual!

And i can edit either format with V8 with no modification to my monitors or impact on system performance? (I run XP on a core 2 with 1GB RAM and lots of disk)

Do you know the size differential between DV and uncompressed or MJPEG files?

Best,

WT
John_Cline wrote on 4/12/2008, 2:32 PM
4:1:1 DV is just under 13 GB/hr. Uncompressed 720x486 4:2:2 YUV SD is about 75 GB/hr, it's about 18 GB/hr using MJPEG.

The Intensity Pro manual has a chart that shows the datarates and file sizes of all the Intensity's possible formats. Download it in .PDF format here:

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/downloads/manuals/IntensityProMan-en.pdf

The higher datarate will have an impact on system performance, but I think your system should be up to the task of editing SD material.
Seth wrote on 4/12/2008, 3:22 PM
Wasn't there a work-around for 64-bit systems involving the copying of a file from a 32-bit installation to the Sony shared plugins folder?
John_Cline wrote on 4/12/2008, 3:27 PM
Hmmm, I hadn't heard that. Each driver version also has a firmware update associated with it as well, so I'm not exactly sure how that would work. If you can find a reference to this workaround, I'd appreciate having a look at it.
Widetrack wrote on 4/12/2008, 4:23 PM
Great info guys. thank you.

This is probably a dumb question since Vegas has always been an amazingly capable omni-format NLE, but...would I be able to drop both DV clips and uncompressed or MJPEG clips into the same project for eventual rendering to MPEG-2 for DVD?

Thnx
Seth wrote on 4/12/2008, 4:28 PM
I'm sorry, I was referring to the support for Vegas external preview on the Intensity, not MJPEG playback.

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?Forum=4&MessageID=559267
John_Cline wrote on 4/12/2008, 4:31 PM
Yes, you can use pretty much anything on the Vegas timeline. One thing that might trip you up a bit is that DV is 720x480 whereas SD captured with the Intensity Pro is D1 standard 720x486. Standard DVDs are 720x480 Vegas will take care of this for you though, just something of which to be aware.

External preview in Vages using the Intensity and the v1.8.4 drivers works fine.
Seth wrote on 4/12/2008, 4:31 PM
Yes, Widetrack, you would be able to.