I posted this in non-linear editing on Mac, but occurs to me this would probably be the better forum:

We've been contemplating buying an Intensity Pro card to capture our V1U footage through HDMI instead of Firewire, so we can more efficiently transcode HDV to ProRes, but haven't been able to find definitive information that this is an advantage of the Intensity Pro. Obviously, shooting through HDMI card has its uncompressed advantage, but I can't find a clear answer as to whether importing through HDMI makes better ProRes footage and/or is faster than letting FCP do it. I know that you can't log and capture with either method so that's a wash. Is the Intensity Pro transcode 1:1 real time instead of with FCP delay? Does it ultimately look better? Anyone know?

I can't tell you if there is a qualitative difference, but the Intensity card is relatively inexpensive and it has the added utility of connectivity to an HD monitor. The BlackMagic Intensity website (specifications tab) indicates that you can capture via HDMI, and use FireWire for device control. So you may be able to batch capture after all. They have reduced Intensity Pro to $199 so you get analog inputs as well.

Capture via FireWire is to ProRes is free. When I upgaded to a 2.8Ghz Mac Pro, eight-core, I noticed that capture is in real time. I also have an Xserve RAID which helps I'm sure.