"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).

Sorry, that doesn't make sense. Please do your own tests if you can, rather than rely on a third party who doesn't know what setting he used. We have no quality mode called "best" and we have never used those terms as would lead people astray. We have quality names Low, Medium, High, Filmscan1 and Filmscan2, so that user will not automatic click FS2, they mostly use High. Even at "Medium" quality we out perform MJPEG is all measurable characters, visual quality, PSNR, reduced ringing etc. Wavelet is a superior compression technology than DCT, particularly at these datarates. Please re-read and observe the MJPEG compression artifacts here http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showpost.php?p=676017&postcount=59. Also I must point while some might like the ringing look of MJPEG at 10:1 compression, as it adds a dithering noise not in the source, others will benefit from choosing quality other than our second lowest and capture more of the information delivered by the camera. I haven't used Medium for any project in years -- it was handy for really slow systems. At Filmscan 1 (around 5:1 or 6:1) we are have quality than exceeds a Sony SRW1, pretty much the industry standard for digital acquisition. The whole point of using live HMDI capture is to get a great looking image, so please do some experiments that try to do that.

"We have no quality mode called "best" and we have never used those terms as would lead people astray"

indeed, you are right :) but he said he didnt use medium, he used high. at this point i dont care really, the test was to see if the pulldown worked.

anyhow, i find it odd that we are the only people using the hv20 and intensity together. i also find it odd that people adamantly believe it doesnt work and that my setup is something special, yet no other person with this actual setup has said boo, here or anywhere else ive seen (not that ive scoured the net).

if the black magic people are watching this, some sort of comment is in order maybe to reassure potential customers there will be no issues.

anyway, i gotta get back to my pci express box. "i wants" are stacking up :)

terence

Please don't think that we are ganging up on you Terence! I certainly am not at any rate, but within these forums several people have tried and failed with an HV20/intensity setup and indeed the people at Blackmagic have come out very openly and honestly to say that the pair do not work together and that they are working on a fix. I certainly have nothing against your success but like a person cured of an uncurable disease I wonder if the intricacies of your setup hold the answer to getting this to work for everyone.

"We have no quality mode called "best" and we have never used those terms as would lead people astray"

indeed, you are right :) but he said he didnt use medium, he used high. at this point i dont care really, the test was to see if the pulldown worked.

So that others are not confused: this bit-stream is medium. The quality control settings are embedded in the bit-stream so I can determine what settings where used -- this is a handy debugging tool. Have your tester post a clip at High or better Filmscan 1 -- in front of a greenscreen if he has one. People want to know how well you can pull a key from an HV20.

Hi all,
very interesting thread !
as many others here, we'd like to capture from our HV20 "plugged" to one of our computers (mobile studio like) :
- getting the highest Resolution (High Def)
- if possible in 4:2:2 uncompressed

As long as I have understood, so far, the "best setup" would be to :
- capture in HDMI
- have a BM Intensity (assuming it will work soon with the HV20) inside a powerfull workstation (with a Raid 0 - 4 disks, 16 MB cache,BM says with 8 disks it would be better...)
As we have no computer like this one, it means we would have to spend at least $2000 to have one.

A "cheaper" way (easier to manipulate too), might be to plug one MagmaPCIe+Intensity box to one of our laptop ?
Black Magic says that :
- for a compressed JPEG stream in 1920x1080 : the data rate is 13,19 MB/s
- for an uncompressed 4:2:2 stream in 1920x1080 : the data rate is 120 MB/s
Magma says :
- that the stream between their box and a laptop can reach 200 MB/s
BUT my laptop says (Dell Inspiron) :
- Disk test, Linear speed test : 21,4 MB/s
Please tell me if we can capture uncompressed 4:2:2 with this setup ? I guess we cannot !
maybe it can capture compressed JPEG in HD ?
but is there any real interest to spend 800 $$ for this quality ?

Then, I see that the CineForm apps could help, David please could you explain me where they could be "positioned" in our workflow ?
do they change anything in the acquisition data rate which seems to be the Critical parameter ?

Denis

hi denis

the magma box is basically the same as what im making. with a black magic card plugged into it, you will be able to stream back uncompressed 4:2:2 at 30fps (60i) to a notebook. this is approximately 150megabytes per second.

the next problem is what the heck to do with that stream. the fastest notebook drive (seagate momentus 7200.2 160gb sata) has a sustained write speed of a bit over 30 megabytes per second. obviously theres no way that this can save the uncompressed stream.

so you have 2 options:
1: compressed the stream, either with the blackmagic on card codec, or a third party real time compressor like cineform. both can get you to a bit rate that will fit within a fast notebook drive's ability.
2: raid. raid on a notebook is fairly simple. an E-SATA express card and a silicon image "steelvine" transparent raid 0 box will do the trick. a customized casing for 5 seagate notebook drives and the raid controller ($130 off the shelf part) would bring you to a little over 150mb/s and able to store full uncompressed 4:2:2 or any form of compressed stream while still being very light and portable.

there is one hitch with this system i havent found a suitable solution for. you need 2 expresscard slots. one for the black magic card, one for the raid card. ive not found a notebook, big or small, with 2 slots. the chipset specifications on most notebooks allow 2 (usually 4 actually) express cards in theory, but noones bothered implementing more than one.

there are however a few (usually larger) notebooks that support 2 sata ports. in this case it may be possible to have one of the ports wired out to the raid card. because the raid in this case is transparent (the host pc sees it as one drive) it doesnt matter if the notebook natively supports raid.

so, uncompressed is in theory possible on a notebook, but at this point, rather cumbersome, so using a good compression method will be much more feasible.

terence

rob, i had only read a few threads where people speculated that it didnt work due to hdcp, but none that had first hand experiene. guess i didnt read enough :)

anoyhow, our system isnt special i dont think... its a basic amd X2 machine, 2gb ram, windows xp64. were ran both adobe premiere 1.5 and cs3, both were just fine. black magic drives as we said were v1.3, canon firmware 1.0.0.0

i can only imagine that either the other people has older bm drivers, or they something screwed up (i cant imagine what, theres not much too screw up). did these same people try hooking the camera up to an hdtv as well?

im at a loss, we didnt do anything the least bit magical here. just plugged it in.

terence

Thks Terence !
very useful your answer.
I'm interested in the "box" you would build !! keep me updated
To conclude : it sounds that with your box (or Magma's one) + an intensity +
a CineForm codec we would be able to get a nice stream ?
not uncompressed 4:2:2 but maybe not so far ?

Then, I see that the CineForm apps could help, David please could you explain me where they could be "positioned" in our workflow ?
do they change anything in the acquisition data rate which seems to be the Critical parameter ?

We position our products for more quality and more editing performance below 20MB/s data rates. While this acquisition to laptop isn't concerned the editing characteristics like multi-generation, which we excel, it is still import that the first compression generation be as high quality as possible for the available data rate. We have a range of quality levels to adapt to the recording conditions.

anoyhow, our system isnt special i dont think... its a basic amd X2 machine, 2gb ram, windows xp64. were ran both adobe premiere 1.5 and cs3, both were just fine. black magic drives as we said were v1.3, canon firmware 1.0.0.0

terence

Hey Terence, thanks for posting that footage.

It's great that you got the Intensity working with the HV20. If it's not a canon firmware issue (since we all have the same cam), or black magic driver issue (I've tried v1.3) then it must be something else in your pipeline that is allowing it to work. Strange... yet, one thing I've learned is PCs are very quirky to say the least.

You say you're using XP64 with AMD chips? I wonder if the operating system would have something to do with it as I've only tried XP32 on a Intel... anyone else tried XP64bit or AMD processor?

Also, if you don't mind answering a few questions, maybe it'll help the community here figure out what is going on...

1. Do you know what brand of HDMI cable you are using?
2. What graphics card are you guys using?
3. What kind of monitor? Is it a DVI connection?
4. Have you tried putting the Intensity card in another computer and testing that or trying another HV20?

hi derek,

1. Do you know what brand of HDMI cable you are using?
not a clue, ill ask later. cables are cables, theres nothing that should prevent it from working other than a faulty cable.

2. What graphics card are you guys using?
xfx geforce 6600gt, pci express.

3. What kind of monitor? Is it a DVI connection?
its a cheap 17" widescreen lcd, i believe its analogue, ill ask again later.

4. Have you tried putting the Intensity card in another computer and testing that or trying another HV20?
nope, havent tried in another pc. im getting another card wednesday (so they say) which will go into my pc here, which is a dual amd opteron, 4gb ram, dual geforece 6800 ultras, xp64.

the black magic drivers are different for xp64. different meaning 64 bit drivers have to be recompiled. that would be a highly unlikely, but i guess possible answer to this issue. we have no 32 bit system to test on though. wheres them black magic people when you need em :)

terence

oh, and we have another peron we know that got the hv20 and intensity a few days before us, and its fine as well. ill have to find out what his system specs are.

terence

hi derek,

1. Do you know what brand of HDMI cable you are using?
not a clue, ill ask later. cables are cables, theres nothing that should prevent it from working other than a faulty cable.

2. What graphics card are you guys using?
xfx geforce 6600gt, pci express.

3. What kind of monitor? Is it a DVI connection?
its a cheap 17" widescreen lcd, i believe its analogue, ill ask again later.

4. Have you tried putting the Intensity card in another computer and testing that or trying another HV20?
nope, havent tried in another pc. im getting another card wednesday (so they say) which will go into my pc here, which is a dual amd opteron, 4gb ram, dual geforece 6800 ultras, xp64.

the black magic drivers are different for xp64. different meaning 64 bit drivers have to be recompiled. that would be a highly unlikely, but i guess possible answer to this issue. we have no 32 bit system to test on though. wheres them black magic people when you need em :)

terence

Terence, thanks for getting back about that... hmmm, I'm going to try installing xp64 and see what happens. It's worth a shot anyways. It's got to be something if you, and you say your friend now also, has it working. The only other thing I can think of is, it's a firmware thing with the HV20. My HV20 is from the very first shipment to BC. I noticed there's a missing feature-the demo mode-small thing, yes, but indicative of maybe an early firmware. Maybe they 'tweaked' the firmware after this first batch of cameras shipped but didn't bother to change the number from 1.0. If you guys don't mind, check if your HV20 has the demo mode. That might be telling. Maybe trading in my unit would be the answer then.

You could put two 15k rpm Seagate Savvio drives in dual drive laptop. Should be 160MBs or faster. Then magma breakout box w/ intensity. No external drives or anything crazy like that.

"You could put two 15k rpm Seagate Savvio drives in dual drive laptop"

unfortunately ive not seen any laptops that support SAS, let alone dual SAS.
but you also have the issue of your OS. recording to your system drive will cause it to be inconsistent, and as 2 savvios just barely meet the speed needs you may run into issues, particularly in the last half of the disk array.

then theres the fact that they are only 146gb combined, which gives you barely 15 mins recording time (20 with pulldown removed if that was possible on uncompressed in realtime).

there theres the cost of about $550 each and the heat they produce.

fun fun :)

terence.

not a clue, ill ask later. cables are cables, theres nothing that should prevent it from working other than a faulty cable.

terence

Dude, I. Can't. Believe. It.

It WAS the HDMI cable! It wouldn't allow a 1080 signal, just a 480.

ENERGY HDMI CABLE = BAD
VELOCITY HDMI CABLE = GOOD

Terence, you are a rock star! If you hadn't of joined this thread saying how yours was working, I would never have given it another shot, especially since Black Magic confirmed their HV20 wasn't working with the Intensity either.

So everyone who's having problems, time to pony up for some new HDMI cables. I'm staring at a glorious 1920x1080 HDMI signal on my monitor right now. COOL!

"You could put two 15k rpm Seagate Savvio drives in dual drive laptop"

unfortunately ive not seen any laptops that support SAS, let alone dual SAS.
but you also have the issue of your OS. recording to your system drive will cause it to be inconsistent, and as 2 savvios just barely meet the speed needs you may run into issues, particularly in the last half of the disk array.

then theres the fact that they are only 146gb combined, which gives you barely 15 mins recording time (20 with pulldown removed if that was possible on uncompressed in realtime).

there theres the cost of about $550 each and the heat they produce.

fun fun :)

terence.

I thought SAS and SATA were compatible. Guess not! :(

What about those new laptops with three drive bays? Apparently the new king of speed is the new "Travelstar 7K200" which claims 22% faster than the Seagate Momentus

3 x Travelstar 7K200 @ 50-60MB/s sustained = 150-180MB/s

" thought SAS and SATA were compatible. Guess not! :(

What about those new laptops with three drive bays? Apparently the new king of speed is the new "Travelstar 7K200" which claims 22% faster than the Seagate Momentus

3 x Travelstar 7K200 @ 60-75MB/s sustained = 180-225MB/s"

sas controllers can run sata drives, but sata controllers cant run sas drives.

3 drive bays in a notebook, ive never seen that. theyd have to support raid too (windows software raid may or may not work well).

i think youve confused maximum write speed and sustained write speed though. because a drive is a disk spinning at a constant speed, the begining of the writing and the end can have wildly different speeds. plus due to the controller etc it will fluctuate. for something like real time capture you need to look at the minimum write speed, which for the seagate 7200.2 160gb is a tiny bit over 30mB/s(http://images.tomshardware.com/2007/04/23/notebook_hdds_deluxe/image030.png) making 5 drives in raid 0 barely adequate (theres overhead in the raid too of course). the savvio can sustain 73mB/s. you can stick a partition on the slow end of the disk to keep speeds up, but you eat away your precious little disk space.

theres a few other quirks in this as well. sata in many notebooks chipsets is actually on the legacy pci bus, limited to 133mb's tops. most notebooks only support sata 150mb/s as well, making an external raid like the steelvine unusable because one sata port wont handle the bandwidth needed after overhead. the steelvine raid can sustain over 220mB/s on a single sata 300 port provided you have drives capable of this. the trick is getting a sata 300 port onto a notebook AND still be able to connect the black magic card.

theres a number of machines it seems with a spare pci express lane in the docking port. there may be a way to expolit this connection, but it would be notebook model dependent solution as they all have different connectors.

computers are your fun.. no, really :)

terence

derek.. what!?

thats nutty. i wonder what could be wrong with that cable that it would trigger the low res output.

good to know its working though and its something super simple for other people to check if they have issues.

terence

I think you may have stumbled onto why there is such a broad price range in HDMI cables. When I bought mine at Best Buy they went from one brand at about $60 to a Monster at $120 for a basic 6 foot I think. Guess I won't bother adding any to my toolkit with the off brand Internet HDMI's for under $20. Guess the old adage - "You get what you pay for" is pretty true in the long run.

derek.. what!?

thats nutty. i wonder what could be wrong with that cable that it would trigger the low res output.

good to know its working though and its something super simple for other people to check if they have issues.

terence

I know! who would have thought... what is really ironic about this is, I bought the Velocity cable first, but UPS screwed up my delivery so I went and picked up the Energy cable from Sears. When the Velocity cable arrived a week late, I threw it in storage not wanting to open the package because I was going to sell it since I already had another cable. You were the first person on the net to post about it working, so it got me thinking to trouble shoot the rest of the pipeline. So, basically, if my cable had of arrived on time, none of this would have happened.

Hey, with the NEOHD, are you able to get a signal on 10bit setting? I'm only getting a signal on 8bit.

I think you may have stumbled onto why there is such a broad price range in HDMI cables. When I bought mine at Best Buy they went from one brand at about $60 to a Monster at $120 for a basic 6 foot I think. Guess I won't bother adding any to my toolkit with the off brand Internet HDMI's for under $20. Guess the old adage - "You get what you pay for" is pretty true in the long run.

Yeah, I guess hey. The Energy was $40, I think it's 3 feet. The Velocity was around $80 but it's a 15 footer. From what I've read ALL HDMI cables support 1080i, which is what the HV20 is putting out. For a cable to only support DV resolution is insane. There's really no point since HDMI is all about HD resolution.

It WAS the HDMI cable! It wouldn't allow a 1080 signal, just a 480.

ENERGY HDMI CABLE = BAD
VELOCITY HDMI CABLE = GOOD



When you say Velocity HDMI cable, do you mean the Cables to Go brand "Velocity" HDMI cable?

That's what I com up with on a web search.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=cat3&product_code=51382121&Pn=Velocity_HDMI_Cable

That's apparently their "cheap" model.

my friend is trying to fix his dvinfo account, he cant post for some reason. ill let him answer any usage questions, im sick of being middleman :)

hdmi will downgrade the signal if it doesnt get the right feedback from teh display(capture card in this case). the only thing i can think of is the cable not having the right impredence and the camera didnt like it. i bet most people who buy these cables cant tell the difference between HD and SD and wouldnt know to complain. i forced a best buy employee to hook up the hv20 to a 1080p tv for me, he couldnt understand why i wanted to do that because "HDV is an uncompressed format".

terence

Hey, with the NEOHD, are you able to get a signal on 10bit setting? I'm only getting a signal on 8bit.

Camera is only sending 8-bit, yet the compression upconverts it to 10 automatically. If you had a 10-bit HDMI source you can directly support that from NEO HD or 2K (not NEO HDV.)

From what I've read ALL HDMI cables support 1080i, which is what the HV20 is putting out. For a cable to only support DV resolution is insane. There's really no point since HDMI is all about HD resolution.

If a cable or certain cables work, it would have to be more a matter of a quirk between the HV20 and Intensity rather than being the case that some HDMI cables "don't support HD"

In my setup, the same cable that's not working between the HV20 and Intensity works fine between the HV20 and a 1080i HDTV.

When you say Velocity HDMI cable, do you mean the Cables to Go brand "Velocity" HDMI cable?

That's what I com up with on a web search.

http://www.compusa.com/products/product_info.asp?pfp=cat3&product_code=51382121&Pn=Velocity_HDMI_Cable

That's apparently their "cheap" model.

I don't think that's the same brand. The one I have is called IMPACT ACOUSTICS VELOCITY HDMI. I got it from a Canadian online retailer tigerdirect.ca

Camera is only sending 8-bit, yet the compression upconverts it to 10 automatically. If you had a 10-bit HDMI source you can directly support that from NEO HD or 2K (not NEO HDV.)

Hi David, I understand the camera is only putting out 8bit and the Intensity is only capturing 8bit, but, if I understand you correctly, you're saying if you set NEO HD to capture 1080 4:2:2 8bit, it'll upconvert the 8bit signal to 10bit anyways? Do I understand you correctly on that?

As a side observation, without the HDV compression masking the picture and seeing the uncompressed monitor picture so clean, it's sure ALOT easier to see the 8bit limitations and color banding from the 8bit signal.

"As a side observation, without the HDV compression masking the picture and seeing the uncompressed monitor picture so clean, it's sure ALOT easier to see the 8bit limitations and color banding from the 8bit signal"

you are probvably mostly seeing the limitations of the monitor assuming its an lcd, as they are prone to banding particualrly in the darks. the limits of 8 bit arent perceptable to the eye usually. every display outside a few higher end tv's inputs an 8 bit signal. notebook lcd's are 6 bit. the limits of 8 bit show up when trying to manipulate the footage, which is inherently reducing the amount of colour info.

saving as a 10 bit format, even if you only started with 8 bits will allow you some headroom in post. (similar to how its better to convert to 16 bit in photoshop to adjust curves and such, then switch back when completed) you dont gain any colour info, but you lose less.

its a bit dissapointing that the camera only outputs 8 bit, but based on the footage, i dont think the sensor has much more than 8 bits dynamic range anyway, so it wont make a huge difference.

terence.

3 drive bays in a notebook, ive never seen that. theyd have to support raid too (windows software raid may or may not work well).

i think youve confused maximum write speed and sustained write speed though. because a drive is a disk spinning at a constant speed, the begining of the writing and the end can have wildly different speeds. plus due to the controller etc it will fluctuate. for something like real time capture you need to look at the minimum write speed, which for the seagate 7200.2 160gb is a tiny bit over 30mB/s

The laptop with three hard drives has Intel's ICH8R hardware RAID. Very fast and efficient chipset. Supports SATA150/300 RAID 0/1/5. Laptop model is "CLEVO D900C" coming out in a few weeks.

http://www.clevo.com.tw/products/D900C.asp

And you are right about the write speed. Minimum should be closer to 40-45MB/s since it claims a 22% faster performance than the seagate 7200.2 you mentioned. 3x40MB/s is 120MB, which any overhead would bring it under the target rate for uncompressed. (very close though)

the target rate for uncompressed is 150mB/s for 10 bit. which is what most people would want i think.

edit: also 22% faster than 30mB/s is 37mB/s.
and that "notebook" isnt really a notebook. its a folding desktop. the batteries in the old version lasts 15 -20 mins tops. i dont see this one being any better with even more stuff in it and the hard disks under full load. it also weighs nearly 15 lbs.


terence

you are probvably mostly seeing the limitations of the monitor assuming its an lcd, as they are prone to banding particualrly in the darks. the limits of 8 bit arent perceptable to the eye usually. every display outside a few higher end tv's inputs an 8 bit signal. notebook lcd's are 6 bit. the limits of 8 bit show up when trying to manipulate the footage, which is inherently reducing the amount of colour info.

saving as a 10 bit format, even if you only started with 8 bits will allow you some headroom in post. (similar to how its better to convert to 16 bit in photoshop to adjust curves and such, then switch back when completed) you dont gain any colour info, but you lose less.

its a bit dissapointing that the camera only outputs 8 bit, but based on the footage, i dont think the sensor has much more than 8 bits dynamic range anyway, so it wont make a huge difference.

terence.

Actually, it's a CRT, I'm not sure how many bits of color those can display? It's really noticeable on a solid color. I was pointing the camera at my greenscreen and could clearly see where the mix of different shades of green broke down (I only had an overhead bulb on). I actually think this is a good thing, it should make keying easier because you won't have as many colors bleeding together from the HDV compression. Anyways, I will have more time today to start some more in depth testing.

Hi David, I understand the camera is only putting out 8bit and the Intensity is only capturing 8bit, but, if I understand you correctly, you're saying if you set NEO HD to capture 1080 4:2:2 8bit, it'll upconvert the 8bit signal to 10bit anyways? Do I understand you correctly on that?

Yes. We compress all YUV data as if it was in the 0 to 1023 range. 8-bit input are multiply by 4 before being compressed.

As a side observation, without the HDV compression masking the picture and seeing the uncompressed monitor picture so clean, it's sure ALOT easier to see the 8bit limitations and color banding from the 8bit signal.

True, noise and compression ringing can hide camera limitation, but now you have to opportunity to control that yourself. If you use AE PRo in 16-bit mode, adding 0.4% noise to your composite, after your grade, will add 1 LSB of 8-bit noise -- great for suppressing banding. This only work with a 16 composite, which required NEO HD or better.

David

I have tried to download the neo player but the email with the link has not come through. I have tried it with 3 differenct email addresses now and also checked the junk mail. Could you check to see if its working?

Thanks
Fergus

same with my email :(

Sounds like the email server is down. Unfortunately we can't restart it remotely, so it will tomorrow when you get your emails. Sorry.

Dude, I. Can't. Believe. It.

It WAS the HDMI cable! It wouldn't allow a 1080 signal, just a 480.

ENERGY HDMI CABLE = BAD
VELOCITY HDMI CABLE = GOOD

Terence, you are a rock star! If you hadn't of joined this thread saying how yours was working, I would never have given it another shot, especially since Black Magic confirmed their HV20 wasn't working with the Intensity either.

So everyone who's having problems, time to pony up for some new HDMI cables. I'm staring at a glorious 1920x1080 HDMI signal on my monitor right now. COOL!

Hi Derek,
I had a request for you since the intensity card is working with you.
I was wondering whether capturing a already taped footage over HDMI has some advantage compared to firewire or not.
Can you do a comparison and let us know?
Thanks!!

Ajit B.

Hi Derek,
I had a request for you since the intensity card is working with you.
I was wondering whether capturing a already taped footage over HDMI has some advantage compared to firewire or not.
Can you do a comparison and let us know?
Thanks!!

Ajit B.

I'm planning on it for sure. Unfortunately I don't own a resolution chart or color chart. I went to price them out today and I couldn't justify the $300 they wanted. If there's anyone out there in Vancouver that has a Sony or JVC cam with HDMI and wants to do a shoot out let me know.

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?

What mini-ITX motherboard can you recommend?
http://www.commell.com.tw/Product/SBC/LV-677.HTM
http://www.logicsupply.com/product_info.php/products_id/735
http://www.globalamericaninc.com/sbc/motherboard_sbc.php
Thank you in advance.

That is a good question. I'd tend toward the aopen boards since they have a built in power supply... although I suppose they still need a regulator for the 19v battery input... I've just had a bad experience with an itx board that eventually burnt out after i ran it off an m1-atx psu for a few months. Then again it might have been the lack of active cooling. The MSI doesnt have dual channel memory, and people from cineform have often said memory bandwidth is a big plus for capturing to their codec. Other thoughts are whether to get a mobile cpu or a desktop cpu. It appears the commell lv-674 can take core2duo desktop cpus, which are a lot less expensive and allow for more options than mobile cpus. It's hard to know about these itx boards though, they are not nearly as widely used and documented as ATX boards so troubleshooting could be problematic. But definitely look for anything that has pci-e x1 and dual channel memory. And if you are going for a mobile cpu, make sure the socket is right.

Check this mini-ITX mainboard based on intel Q965 Express chipset:
http://www.epiacenter.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1064

Well that would be a great option if it had pci-e....

You are right...
But now we can see a lot mini-ITX "santa rosa" based mainboards.
Like this http://www.ipc2u.de/catalog/P/PE/35776.html

I dont think that is santa rosa :)

Santa rosa is a designation for boards that take mobile cpu's and meet particular specifications. That board is LGA 775; santa rosa would be socket P i believe. Chances of finding a socket P CPU for sale right now arent great i would imagine.

but you are right, hopefully we will start seeing santa rosa boards. Probably not for a few months though. ITX is usually the last form factor to get new technologies.

My another mistake...
And next candidate: http://www.aicmicro.com/productdetail.asp?id=32090

i looked into more or less every mini itx board available. my conclusions was the a-open seemed to have the best setup for something like hdmi capture.

its got a pci express x1, sata 300, dvi, firewire. most every other board is missing something as they are geared to industrial use. the other benifit is that its a-open, and available everywhere and will be simple to get serviced.

on another note.. i got my black magic card, and may have found the answer to the "is the hv20 only 8 bit" question.

it doesnt matter.

the black magic hdmi input chip (analog devices AD9398) is only 8 bit. to some degree, who cares, its the only solution for now, but they do advertise it rather specifically as 10 bit, and its definitely not.

now ive got to work out my expresscard box.

terence

Yeah, I recall cineform tended to recommend the aopen boards a little while back when they were building their si-hd/2k body. Seems like itd be a good way to go. Probably a bit more documented than the industrial models in the same range. Anyone know a good way to run one of those off battery? I assume an 19v li-ion would be a problem as its voltage drops with use. maybe one of these would work?
http://www.batteryspace.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=2737

take it apart and fit it in a chassis?

AOpen's miniPC Duo MP965-VDR (http://club.aopen.com.tw/news/News_ShowAnswer.aspx?RecNo=9583)

unfortunately that particular pc is of no use for the black magic card. it has no pci express, or expansion capability at all.

hopefully their mini itx version will follow soon, which should be very very useful.

terence

while it is not really mini, i would recommend the shuttle SD39P2 .
It has everything you need. You need to find a VGA PCI card since the only PCIe will be busy with the intensity.
http://www.prodimex.ch/pInfos.asp?idxART=10929