I was looking into it at one point as a portable Cineform recorder which is definitely viable as long as your laptop has an expresscard slot and enough processor to compress to Cineform (2.66 or higher core duo as I recall), disk speed is not really an issue. For uncompressed you would just have to figure out the added complication of having enough disk speed for uncompressed capture. You might need a laptop with two expresscard slots or internal raid 0 (do such things exist?) or you would have to do a small form factor portable computer instead of a laptop to get a system with adequate i/o speed. Again, nothing as compact and practical as the CD products, but if you really want uncompressed...

Hi Mike:
My laptop is an HP nw9440 workstation class machine. The nw9440 does not have a built in Express Card 34 slot. However, I edit with this laptop plugged into the HP advanced docking station, and the docking station has a built in Express Card 54 slot. It is my understanding that you can plug an Express card 34 into a 54 slot, but not vice versa. I run an external FW 800 Raid 0 drive via a firewire express card plugged into my base stations's express card slot and all is well.

I looked at the Magma industries external PCI E expansion chassis, What I want to know is will this work with the Express card slot in my laptop's docking station ?

Regarding the Blackmagic decklink SDI card, will this card fit in the Magma's external box ? I would think I would need the 2 PCI E card enclosure, since I also need to plant a Sata controller card in their for the hard drives, and the 2 card box has extra room for hard drives.

Regarding the Blackmagic SDI card's ability to record via HD-SDI, does this card have it's own capability to capture uncompressed video, or do you need to use it with final cut pro to make it work ? I couldn't get a clear idea from the website. The cards do come bundled with software, but it also mentioned it's designed to work with Adobe Premiere and FCP.

Mark,

I did not get that far along in figuring such a system out, I am just aware that it is an option (that unfortunately wouldn't have worked for what I want to do with my nano). Also, I was looking at Cineform capture, which results in a compressed stream that can easily be recorded onto the laptop's internal drive.

Back when I was looking at it there were a number of discussion forum threads on the topic that were instructive, you could look for those, the product manufacturers may also be helpful. I do know that the blackmagic card is the most inexpensive HD-SDI capture interface, there are also some other products from manufacturers such as Matrox or AJA, and the Magma PCI boxes were what people were talking about using with the blackmagic cards and a laptop.

Can you really transfer a stream of 10-bit uncompressed over firewire 800? Unless my math is off that doesn't seem possible. I thought 10-bit 1080p24 would be ~995 Mbit/s versus 800 Mbit/s for the firewire, but I could be getting my math confused somewhere.

Hi Mike:
I don't think you can Record using FW 800, but you can copy over to it what was recorded on another device. I can *Play* one uncompressed stream in my Avid on my laptop but that is all. I was asking about the 2 PCI E card enclosure because in order to record 10 bit uncompressed I will need Sata drives striped Raid 0, At least three in the stripe and preferable large chached 10,000 RPM drives. This would do it for recording uncompressed.