Me too Terence RE that expresscard -> PCIe 1x box.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

Hold the presses...

I thought the Black Magic Intensity card had HDCP issues and it did *not* work with the HV20?

Are you saying that it works!?

What changed? Was there a new firmware release for the HV20? Software update for the Intensity card?

If this is not an April Fools joke (a bit late) put me down for a laptop solution as well!

Thanks!

Rob Robinson

our hv20 was bought last week along with the card.

its possible that older versions of the cam/card didnt like each other, i have no idea. i just know that what we have works flawlessly.

the notebook thing isnt an april fools joke. the expresscard slot on most new notebooks is a pci express x1 and usb 2 interface combined. its possible to map the pins back to a standard x1 slot with a little effort. thats what im doing, then stuffing the x1 slot in a small case sized specifically for the intensity and using a cable to connect back to the pc. it will be something like a portable 2.5" hard drive in size/shape.

ill try to get a mock up done asap, but im swamped with work til mid next week so i doubt it will be before then.

terence

expresscard -> PCIe 1x box.


A commercial solution will be available for this pretty soon (though it's pretty expensive, retail price is around 700-800$!):
http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/

yup, thats what motivated me to do this. thats ones big and clunky and needs external ac power. mine will be more usable for carrying on your person and dedicated solely to the intensity.

it should also be cheaper (i hope)

terence

Terence... put me down for one too.... :-)

Also, on the Intensity card, is it the standard or Pro card... what software version are you running with the card?

According to the manual, not necessarily. Here's what it says:

Page 69
"Correct operations cannot be guaranteed when connecting the camcorder to DVI monitors."

And more ominous:

"Some HDTV's have their HDCP digital content protection configured so as not to allow the playback of personal content (video recorded for personal uses). If you cannot play back the video recorded with this camcorder on your HDTV using the HDMI connection, try connecting the camcorder using the video component connection -1connection type- instead."

I just got my HV20 a couple weeks ago and I wanted to see how the first video I shot looked. I connected it to my 32" HD monitor via the HDMI and it played and looked fine. I believe my monitor is 14xx by 1080 so it couldn't have played the full 19XX but I thought it looked pretty good.

were using the standard, dont have need for the analogue (i imagine some people do though) driver version is 1.3

terence

Terence,

You wrote : "this should make everything nice and portable for shooting with the mjpeg compression."

be warned that the M-JPEG codecs in general have a lot of edge artifacts, therefore are not commonly used today in post unless very high data rate are used. Attached is a comparison but CineForm High quality and the Blackmagic MJPEG codec. Here is right up by another user that compared the to :
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=638156&postcount=1
Please make sure you allow user to select nicer codecs.

P.S. CineForm has pulldown extraction to 24p from the Intensity card as a feature of all our products.

Terence,

You wrote : "this should make everything nice and portable for shooting with the mjpeg compression."

be warned that the M-JPEG codecs in general have a lot of edge artifacts, therefore are not commonly used today in post unless very high data rate are used. Attached is a comparison but CineForm High quality and the Blackmagic MJPEG codec. Here is right up by another user that compared the to :
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=638156&postcount=1
Please make sure you allow user to select nicer codecs.

P.S. CineForm has pulldown extraction to 24p from the Intensity card as a feature of all our products.


yeah, i second that. use cineform. otherwise when i buy your box i'm just going to have to go through an extra step to convert it to that. :)

hey there.

im just making a box :) it will be up to the user to config their laptop the way they please. compression(of some kind) is only a must at this point only due to hard disk performance limits (25-30mb/s sustained write for the fastest notebook drives).

if someone would make a notebook with 2 express card slots, this would not be an issue as a "pocket" raid system could be added.

does cineform work with the canon hv20? from what i read on your site, you need prospect hd to get the 10 bit 1920x1080, and that canon 24p was not supported "yet". as well, small notebooks are usually limited to 1.6-2.1ghz dual cores at the moment, your minimim specs on your site would stress these little ones to the limit.

we were looking into cineform as a possible solution for pulldown removal on the fly. any thoughts?

terence.

me want express box. uga uga....

does cineform work with the canon hv20? from what i read on your site, you need prospect hd to get the 10 bit 1920x1080, and that canon 24p was not supported "yet". as well, small notebooks are usually limited to 1.6-2.1ghz dual cores at the moment, your minimim specs on your site would stress these little ones to the limit.

we were looking into cineform as a possible solution for pulldown removal on the fly. any thoughts?

terence.

We support the HV20 if the Intensity does, we haven't confirmed if new Blackmagic drivers address the HV20 yet. Of course your box would also work with the Sony V1 which is confirmed to work fine with CineForm pulldown and real-time compression.

For capture a user could use NEO HDV which will encode to 1440x1080 (resizing the source to fit the encoder license) or NEO HD for 1920x1080. Both less expensive than a Prospect HD licence for Premiere. As for the minimum system specs, they are old, modern systems do very well at lower clock speed. I would expect most 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo laptops would hande 24p encoding. My 2.33Ghz Dell laptop encodes 1920x1080 at 36+fps for high quality and 39+fps for medium -- this is for extremely demanding StEM footage, data from consumer cameras is easier.

Hey Terence, put me down for one of those boxes as well. Sweet.

I believe it has been said in other threads that most of these cameras only output 8bit over HDMI anyway so cineform not supporting more wont be a big thing, if anything, that's less data to deal with. Or is cineform expanding it the 8bit to 10bit anyway? I, too, am very interested in whether core2duo mobile processors in the 1.6-2.13ghz range are adequate for capturing from the intensity from an hv20. Perhaps in low quality mode? 2.33ghz core2duo mobile cpus are $600+ just for the cpu, and the 2.0 ghz version is like 1/3 the price. I guess overclocking might be an option for some. But if it is not necessary for capturing, it could make a big difference. I am interested in building a portable miniITX capture device using the intensity, so knowing exactly what cpu will give us the results we want for the lowest price will help a lot. Unfortunately I doubt many ITX boards can be easily overclocked. As much as i'd love to buy neo hd and an intensity card and test it on various mobile processors, I dont think I have the disposable income to afford it if the cpu's I buy dont end up being enough for reliable capture.

NEO HD seems a bit pricey even for all the things it does. David, any cineform fanboy discounts for posting on forums all day about how great cineform codecs are? :P Is it possible to use NEO HDV to capture from the intensity? will that just force resizing to 1440x1080? or are there also other limitations?

btw i think i tried using some trial cineform software to convert 24p@1080i hdv to cineform 24p (with inverse pulldown) on my core2duo mobile 2.0ghz cpu and it seemed to be able to do so in a little less time than the length of the clip (just faster than realtime). It was close, so im not sure I'd trust it, but capturing from HDMI might be easier on the cpu since its not decoding hdv while encoding cineform at the same time. it was something like 20sec to convert 27sec of hdv. im not sure if im remembering some of that correctly, but its a start.

Yes Noah, it is very good sign that you can convert an MPEG faster than real-time. Your laptop will have no issues live capturing. As for the cost, there is always someone you thinks we charge too much, yet last month the equivalent to NEO HD was $3000, and still a good deal, so $599 is a steal. Remember there is not equivalent on the market today. As for 8-bit vs 10-bit, we upconvert all sources to 10-bit, it just looks better. Yes NEO HDV ($249) will also work with the Intensity, automatically resizing to 1440x1080.

We have plenty of fanboys, we don't need to give up $$$ to recruit more. ;)

Hey Blackmagic company folk, since you're reading this thread, I hope you have noticed the lengths we are going to in order to get an Intensity card attached to a laptop... why don't you just make an Expresscard version?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

david, ill try the demo for neo hd and test the pulldown removal on the hv20. if it works and can be happy on a 2ghz core 2 duo, then it sounds like a very viable option.

price is always a concern, but you have to weigh it against what you are gaining. realtime pulldown removal and higher quality compression can justify $600 for alot of people who need to make money of the process.

im sure ill get a few people telling me the expresscard box is too expensive and want a fanboy discount :-P

terence.

Terence -

> so if anyone would is interested in this little express box, post here and i may be persuaded to make it a priority project.

I'll take one!

- Rick Thornquist

our hv20 was bought last week along with the card.

its possible that older versions of the cam/card didnt like each other, i have no idea. i just know that what we have works flawlessly.

terence

I just confirmed with Black Magic (from Kristian Lam) that they have not made any changes to their card and still claim that it doesn't work.

"Intensity is currently not compatible with the HV20's HDMI output for capturing 1080 video. We're still investigating."

Perhaps then there is new firmware on your HV20? Can you verify the firmware on your camera or perhaps the serial #? I wonder if Canon was able to change the firmware on newer shipments?

Thanks!

Rob Robinson

Hey Blackmagic company folk, since you're reading this thread, I hope you have noticed the lengths we are going to in order to get an Intensity card attached to a laptop... why don't you just make an Expresscard version?

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

That would be AWESOME!

Rob Robinson

I don't know if anyone already asked..but Terence, can you provide us a sample video from your test shoot?

I know cineform is a steal considering there really isnt anything else that does what it can do. I just wish i could buy it now, but I probably wont be able to justify it until I have a real project that requires it. If it worked for OSX, I would have tried to get the company I work for to buy it instead of buying our expensive xserve raid for uncompressed HD. Unfortunately "uncompressed" seems to be a buzzword for a lot of people. the buzzword really should be "visually lossless". of course we had to downres and convert all our 2k dpx's to uncompressed HD just to get one stream to playback on our new $20k edit station. Makes you really appreciate what prospect/neo 2k does.

I've been monitoring the Blackmagic site daily for a software/firmware upgrade to the Intensity card. Software version still at 1.3 which was released March 21, 2007.

http://blackmagic-design.com/support/software/

I'm a HV20 user looking for a laptop, possibly backpack contained, HDMI uncompressed solution. So, count me in!

So how does what's being proposed differ from this...

http://www.magma.com/products/pciexpress/expressbox1/index.html

Also, Terence, can you please tell us what the firmware version of your HV20 is?

that device has been mentioned already, the differences are size, weight, power, and price. otherwise, yes, they do the same thing.

frimware version will have to wait till tomorrow. im actually in toronto, and the camera and card is in LA with my partner on this project. works out great :). ive ordered another bm card and will likely pick up another camera for testing next week so i dont have to do the long distance thing anymore.

terence

hmm, where would we find the firmware version. ive noticed that canon has not released any updates for this camera for public download.

terence

ok, so we tried the neoHD demo, and there is no pulldown removal option for anythig but SD dv. is that because it doesnt recognize the camera? or is the demo older and not have that function?

terence.

firmware version is...
1.0.0.0

so, one would assume thats what all cams have.
*shrug*

terence

ok, so we tried the neoHD demo, and there is no pulldown removal option for anythig but SD dv. is that because it doesnt recognize the camera? or is the demo older and not have that function?

In HDLink select the "Prefs" button, then select "Remove 3-2 Pulldown ...". If you are only getting 480i/p from the camera, that is the issue this thread is actually about. I recommend testing with a Sony V1U until the Intensity/HV20 issue is resolved.

we get 1920x1080 from the cam no problem. ill get him to check again tonight, i think he just wasnt looking in the right place.

thanks
terence

ok, got it working.. sort of. the first several frames are messed up, not de-interlaced properly, after about 20 frames though, its perfect 24p.

hes going to shoot another clip later today. any thoughts on why its "confused" for the first second of capture?

if that can be fixed, or we can predictably discard the first 20 frames, then id say this is a good setup. sadly, my 1.86ghz pentium M cant handly the codec for playback (it cant to the BM codec either). time for a new lappy.


terence.

For playback on old laptops, go into the start menu and find CineForm/tools then select "Decktop Playback -- Fast."

Within first 10-frames the IVT is still trying to determine the pulldown. Remember this is a live ITV algorithm, the alternative is to buffer a 100-200MB for data then determine the cadence than try and catch up which can lead to audio sync and performance implications. We under most shooting conditions (particular slated) this is not an issue.

sweet, i figured it was "guessing" the pulldown. so thats predictable, and i guess that means this all works :)

yay.

we made a sample clip, will see if we can upload in a bit, its 160mb.

terence

heres a short (11 second) clip for those who want to see.
http://www.loloproductions.com/24P_Cineform.html (160mb)

terence

heres a short (11 second) clip for those who want to see.
http://www.loloproductions.com/24P_Cineform.html (160mb)

terence
I can't get anythig to play it.
WMP, VLC, Quicktime, Vegas...nothing

hi, you need to download the cineform neohd player to see it (its free).
http://www.cineform.com/products/NeoHD.htm

terence

File works great, nice little promo. :)

Ian, You will need a decoder. Download NEO Player from www.cineform.com to install the needed decoder(s) for free.

Thanks Terence, Plays great on my computer... brought it into PP2 and it edits fine also..

Terence,

I noticed you only used Medium quality, while still very good, it is the second lowest setting of five. High was the old "best" of Aspect HD and Connect HD, now there is Filmscan 1 & 2. High is the recommended setting for live capture -- Filmscan1 for extreme keying projects -- Filmscan 2 for playing tricks on friends and asking them to point out which is uncomressed and which is compressed. Don't every use Filmscan 2 for real projects you will be just wasting diskspace. :)

oh, he told me he recorded to high quality. ill have to go kick his a** now :)

terence

and offline?

offline?

if you mean the video, it should still be up.

terence

offline?

if you mean the video, it should still be up.

terence


No P2k has an Offline option under FilmScan 2

"I noticed you only used Medium quality, while still very good"

he confirmed that he used the setting labeled "best". if "best" is 4th from the actual best quality, perhaps you need to do some renaming of the settings :)

in my initial observations though, at the setting used, its roughly the same datarate as the black magic, and id rate it as notably inferior quality. large flat colour areas, like the plant leaves and even his face seem blotchy, the bm codec does not have this artifacting. (dont have a sample clip, sorry)

knowing a good bit about compression and codecs, i think each one will excell in different areas, though cineform has as you say, higher quality setting with the sacrifice of datarate while the black magic codec is rather fixed.

anyway, i think this discussion has served its purpose, the canon hv20 works with the black magic intensity, and cineform neoHD can remove 3:2 pulldown on the fly. so people have (at least) 3 choices when using the hv20 and intensity together. choice is good.

terence

Thanks for posting that video. Could you tell us what your hv20 settings were? cine? contrast? i assume the sharpening is in camera not somewhere else down the line? could you do some moving footage? i mean mpeg2 can do still tripod footage of someone talking, how about some high motion or rippling water or something :)

This is exciting, I've been waiting for intensity to support the hv20. Looks like it might be about time to build that portable capture computer ive been wanting to build...

Terence has Blackmagic attempted to contact you at all? I am still very confused as to why your setup seems to be the only one in the world that is currently working. Obviously you are getting good results, the video looks fantastic. I also know that the BM people are on this thread so I wonder if your working setup could give them any clues on how to get the rest of us up and running with a HV20/Intensity combo.

anyway, i think this discussion has served its purpose, the canon hv20 works with the black magic intensity...


Umm...That's an overstatement. You could say that YOUR HV20 works with the Intensity.

I don't think there has been a single other report anywhere of another HV20 working with the Intensity. At least from the standpoint of firmware version (thank you for posting yours), you would appear to have the same camcorder as everyone else. You would have to have the same Intensity card and drivers as everyone else.

I think this discussion has had a mystery added to it.

No, the HV20 does not work with the Intensity

Just as Rob here, I have to wonder if anyone from Blackmagic has taken notice of and interest in your claim.