I want to try capturing 'straight of the chip' with a long HDMI cable to a black magic intensity card, bypassing the HDV codec. Has anyone had experience with this..?

Is it full 1920x1080
Is it 4:2:2 colour space..?

Highly unlikely, but check the location of the HDMI chipset in relation to the DSP or whatever chip is responsible for the MPEG encoding. If it located before that chip, yes it is 422 1920x1080, If it it is located after the chip, no, it is 420 1440x1080.

Remember that transferring video data over HDMI means you lose all timecode and metadata and requires at least a 4 disk raid0 setup for the receiving end, as well as a pretty beefy PC.

Not sure how to check the location of the chipset..? Would I need a screw driver..? in the Z7 documentation it states its 4:2:2 from HDMI.. but wasn't sure if this was iffy.

Would an 8 core, 8 gig mac pro (intel), with a 500gig firewire 800 drive be able to capture prores 720p through a black magic intensity pro pci-e card..?

The Mac is beefy enough, the HD may well be the problem. Even with FW 800 it is still slower than a SATA disk, but I admit, I'm not familiar with Macs or FCP, so I don't know if you can manage with that setup. On a PC with PP the disk would definitely be a major bottleneck.

first off, unless you want an expensive paper weight, don't pick up your screw driver. (take the lens & battery off the Z7 & there is very little space left which Sony fit a camera into. I'm impressed of the size of the thing, which means it probably doesn't have much room to poke around in.)

I have been really wanting to try this myself, but my PC is too old to really handle it & I know of no way to record HDMI on my year old MacBookPro. (I wish black magic would release something for the MBP)


I have done DVCPro-HD (4:2:2 / 100Mbps) capture to a FW800 using a MBP in FCP w/o any trouble so I wouldn't expect that you'd have any trouble there.

let us know how things go