Hi all,

I've not found an answer to this question elsewhere.

In principle both these solutions are similar right? They capture to their own codec for greatly reduced file sizes.

So, Cinemform talk about the resultant realtime performance in Premiere. Does this álso apply to the Blackmagic capture? Will I see similar benefits in editing speed. I'm not clear if Cineform offers a rendering advantage or not...


Thank you

The solutions are quite different. Blackmagic uses 8-bit M-JPEG (DCT based), CineForm developed a post-production codec from scratch for 10-12bit precision (Wavelet based), and much more performance. You can capture live from Blackmagic card to CineForm and the editing performance is high. Yet most choice CineForm for quality over performance. Note: We have yet to integrate Blackmagic for Premiere output -- working on that.

As your question -- "Cineform Or Blackmagic Intensity?" -- best answer is both.

As an amateur, the primary advantage that I see of blackmagic cards is that I can capture HDMI at a full 1090 rather than 1440 - but only if I capture live.

The blackmagic card may also remove a few idiosyncrasies with respect to windows failing to see a firewire device (yeah, that happens sometimes).

Cineform, regardless of what else you use, provides a better intermediate editing format. The stand alone version provides better compression than the standard version included with Vegas, which is why I use it.