Intensity Pro Cineform FX1 Non-RAID

johnmeyer wrote on 11/13/2009, 5:26 PM
I need to capture from my Sony HDR-FX1 camcorder without compressing to HDV. However, this is a one-off deal, so I'm looking to minimize the cost.

I've researched, but can't quite figure out if I can do what I want.

Here's my question:

Can I connect the Component Output (Y-Pb-Pr) from my camera to a BlackMagic Intensity Pro and capture the result to a high-quality compressed format like Cineform? And, can I do this on a non-RAID disk?

I need to capture to a format that does not do inter-frame compression (like HDV) but instead does intra-frame compression like DV or Cineform. I don't need, and do not want, the size and disk requirements of uncompressed.

I tried looking at the Cineform site, but their site and product descriptions have always confused the heck out of me, and I can't seem to get any answers by looking there.

Thanks!

Comments

John_Cline wrote on 11/14/2009, 12:00 AM
John,

The Intensity has component as well as an HDMI input for both SD and HD. (It has composite and S-Video for SD only as well.) Natively, it will capture either uncompressed 4:2:2 1920x1080 59.94i YUV at around 120 megabytes/second or MJPEG inter-frame 4:2:2 1920x1080 59.94i at approximately 13.2 megabytes/second. Obviously, capturing MJPEG is easily within the capability of any modern hard drive and it looks quite decent.

What comes out of the component and HDMI outputs from the FX1 camera when shooting live is uncompressed 1920x1080 4:2:2 along with 48k 16bit stereo PCM audio, it only gets rescaled to 1400x1080 and compressed to 25 megabit MPEG2 HDV when recorded to tape. Shooting live into the Intensity via HDMI or component HD looks much better than HDV even when using MJPEG compression. It looks pretty spectacular when recording uncompressed YUV, but that requires a fast RAID-0 array and about 421 gigabytes/hour.

In order to capture to Cineform with the Intensity requires Cineform's ProspectHD for $749. Unfortunately, their $129 NeoScene package does not support capturing HD with anything but HDV via Firewire.
johnmeyer wrote on 11/14/2009, 8:15 AM
John,

A+ for that response; it is exactly what I needed to know. Very useful. Thank you.

I actually don't need Cineform for this project, so if the MJPEG capture software that comes with the board works, I'm home free. The only question that remains is whether the Intensity Pro and the software that comes with it can compress the component output from the FX1 (this camera doesn't have HDMI) at 60i and actually keep up. Even with a really good computer, it appears from what I am reading that captures can keep up with 24p, but often choke on 60i.

I'm going to keep looking at DVInfo.net and other sites to see if someone has actually done this 60i capture to MJPEG. Unfortunately, most people with the FX1 and Z1 are in the prosumer category, so only a very tiny number have ever taken this extra step of capturing the raw video prior to compression to HDV.
jabloomf1230 wrote on 11/14/2009, 10:47 AM
The only way to really know for sure if your hard drives and CPU will consistently keep up with the Intensity Pro capture is to run the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test utility that comes with the Intensity Pro. My relatively new WD 1TB Black drives barely write at that speed (120 MB/sec), so I generally capture uncompressed to a RAID0 array of WD Raptors. Most mid to high end solid state drives will also write at acceptable speeds, but you will pay for what you get:

http://www.driverheaven.net/reviews.php?reviewid=776&pageid=8

Now, if you at least have quad core CPU (I think that you said previously that you do.), as John C said, you should have no problem with MJPEG, as a quad will easily encode the BMD MJPEG fast enough and not be the bottleneck. But a dual core CPU, combined with a non-RAID capture disk is too slow and you will drop frames at 60i.

Another excellent freeware disk speed utility is the ATTO disk benchmark, which I have found, matches up pretty closely to the BMD Speed Test:

http://www.attotech.com/software/files/drivers/Benchmark.zip

Of course, this only measures disk write speeds and will not tell you anything about the time it takes for the CPU to encode each frame.
John_Cline wrote on 11/14/2009, 1:34 PM
John,

Yes, the Intensity will easily capture full 1920x1080 MJPEG through the analog component inputs at the full 60i frame rate. I do it all the time and I've never dropped a frame. I have the Intensity installed in a two-year-old machine with a 2.66Ghz Intel quad-core processor.
johnmeyer wrote on 11/14/2009, 9:28 PM
Thanks to both of you. It sounds pretty certain that I can capture MJPEG 1920x1080 60i analog input to an Intensity Pro card to a simple hard drive in my 8-core 3.2 GHz. Intel i-7, but that my extremely old 2.8 GHz P4 won't be able to encode 60i fast enough. I'll just have to move the film equipment into the office with the fast computer (this is for full-speed HD capture of 16mm film).
David Newman wrote on 11/21/2009, 2:36 PM
While Neo Scene doesn't support Intensity, Neo HD does, you don't need Prospect HD. The quality of Neo HD live encoding is significantly better than M-JPEG and you get all the RT color correction benefits of First Light that comes with (Neo HD.) Neo HD is a very popular tools live Intensity acquisition, because it will not drop frames like the MJPEG solution on lower end PCs (which I still don't think is threaded -- so multi-cores do not help.) CineForm Neo HD will capture 60i on any Core 2 Duo 2Ghz+ -- the encoder is n-way threaded, using all the core your have as needed.

P.S. No RAID is needed.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm

johnmeyer wrote on 11/21/2009, 3:02 PM
David,

I always appreciate your taking the time to answer questions. I sometimes find your product grid a little confusing, so this is very useful to now be able to zero in on Neo HD.

Since part of my engineering tradeoff is the desire to capture on a lesser computer, the information on system requirements is also very useful.

Thanks!.

John
David Newman wrote on 11/21/2009, 4:37 PM
If you have Neoscene, you can update to Neo HD for retail price difference -- which $370. There is a 15-day trial period that we always recommend you use. Neo HD support quality levels up to Filmscan 2, which is reproduces sensor noise and film grain to an accuracy that you can't which in the original even when excessively pushly in color correction (we internally call this mode overkill.) Neo HD also adds Filmscan 1 -- NeoScene is limited to high.

David Newman
CTO, CineForm
jabloomf1230 wrote on 11/21/2009, 5:55 PM
BMD finally got all the bugs ironed out of the Vegas capture. The newest version of their software for the Intensity Pro (3.4) will capture to either uncompressed AVI or Sony XDCAM HD 422 (MXF) under Windows 7 x64 from within either version of Vegas 9.0c.