Vegas with the Intensity Pro PCI-X card?

Sebaz wrote on 5/8/2010, 8:48 PM
I was trying to find out more about the other preview device solutions for Vegas and in looking for the Blackmagic Design Decklink card I came accross the Intensity Pro card from the same company, which sells for under $200 and has HDMI input and output:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/495426-REG/Blackmagic_Design_BINTSPRO_Intensity_Pro_HDMI_and.html

On its page in the Blackmagic website it only mentions FCP and Premiere, nothing about Vegas, but in the 60+ reviews on B&H there are users that says they use it fine with Vegas for output.

What I would like to know, if anybody has the card and can tell me first hand, is if the card outputs from Vegas to the TV set in real interlaced video, in the same way you would see it if you were connecting the camcorder to the TV set using the HDMI cable. Yes, yes, I know the TV doesn't really display interlaced content, blah, blah, blah, but you know what I mean. The output from Vegas using the Secondary Monitor preview is terrible, it either shows the two fields at the same time or just one if you select the deinterlace option. But it never shows the fields in the way they're supposed to be shown, in part because Vegas doesn't connect to the video rendering engine in DirectX, to the point where the color controls in the graphics card control panel for video are useless in Vegas.

My concern is that if Vegas doesn't use the proper rendering engine for the secondary monitor, it won't use it for the Intensity Pro, but some users in those reviews seem to be happy with it, so if anybody here has it please let me know.

Comments

Marc S wrote on 5/8/2010, 9:42 PM
Sebaz,

I have an Intensity and I do not like the quality. I get better interlaced 720x480 video using my firewire out through a Canopus ADVC-100 convertor. I also get better full screen HD to my Ben Q using my GeForce 8800 Dual monitor DVI output and the Vegas secondary monitor function. That's been my experience.

Marc
Sebaz wrote on 5/8/2010, 10:33 PM
When you say you get better interlaced 720x480 video, you mean your project is 720x480 and you output using the intensity? Or you mean your project is 1920x1080 and the Intensity output is so bad that firewire 720x480 output looks better?

If your projects are 720x480 that doesn't worry me because I don't ever work in 720x480, but if it outputs a 1080i project in SD, then it's no good.
Marc S wrote on 5/8/2010, 11:40 PM
I tried using it as a way to downscale my HD material to my Sony broadcast NTSC monitor but found that using the firewore out to Canopus worked better. I also tried using the HDMI output (full HD) of the intensity into my Ben Q monitor but found that the DVI of my NVidea coupled with the Vegas secondary monitor function looked better. So basically I don't use my intensity at this point. I plan on doing some tests with Premiere to compare.