Magma + Intensity Pro + Laptop: which laptop?

[Richard Leadbetter]

Originally Posted by Eric Larson

A more elegant and cheaper solution to the expensive Magma is if you get a Thinkpad laptop (I just got a T61p top of the line for $1300 (T9300 2.5 and Quadro FX 570m), one of the few laptops "certfied" by Avid) is the Advanced Dock that lenovo makes for their laptops.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPa.../dp/B000BTN1EC

It can house a PCI express card like intensity and has ultrabay slot for popping in a 2nd hard drive.
I haven't actually tried it myself but I'm serioiusly considering it. And since the laptop locks into the dock it would be more "portable" than carrying around the Magma, a second hard drive, power cables, etc.

There's no logical reason why this would not work, but you really need to bear in mind just how bloody huge the advanced dock is in comparison to the rather svelte Magma chassis. Another thing to bear in mind is that the dock is VERY fussy about the graphics cards it works with. While this may be an OS issue or not relevant to other expansion cards, it could equally be down to the foibles of the dock.

Try before you buy would be my advice.

[Jack Zhang]

Originally Posted by Henry Olonga

Hi Alex,
I upgraded the CPU from 1.6 Ghz as that was dropping frames but 2.4 flies.

Now, (sorry if I posted this for the nth time) I have a Quad core Q6700 and I still drop frames in MJPEG with my Intensity Pro... Is Cineform more efficent with high-end processors? And would it prevent dropped frames for my newly upgraded quad system?

[Henry Olonga]

Originally Posted by Jack Zhang

Now, (sorry if I posted this for the nth time) I have a Quad core Q6700 and I still drop frames in MJPEG with my Intensity Pro... Is Cineform more efficent with high-end processors? And would it prevent dropped frames for my newly upgraded quad system?

Jack - I am surprised as that is a good CPU.Perhaps any of these suggestions may help.Forgive me if I state the obvious.Do the optimisations I suggested earlier in the thread.Make sure the HDD can keep up with the data rate.Make sure you have the latest BM design drivers.If you need to clean unistal everything before upgrading.Get Cineform definitely - it is multi thread aware and will use all cores on encoding.I haven't had a dropped frame for months now - not one.I am using my laptop just for video though so if you have other stuff that causes conflicts loaded it may impede performance i.e virus scanners etc.

[Richard Leadbetter]

A 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo will perform well with CineForm at 'high' quality level. A 2.66GHz Core 2 has more than enough horsepower for just any situation the codec will have to deal with using Intensity Pro.

Your Q6700 will give phenomenal CineForm performance, although I have to admit extreme surprise that your system is dropping frames with Blackmagic MJPEG.

[Jack Zhang]

Me too, The only possible ways this could make sense is My Vista memory score is only 4.8 while the rest is 5.8-5.9 or my hard drive is VERY fragmented or I should use a seperate capture drive.

And I think the latest drivers might be causing problems instead of fixing them. I haven't yet done a test capture in 720p but HDMI 1080i went a minute with no dropped frames on 1.8.4. It only took 20 seconds to drop frames in 720 on 2.0 software and so far, no one from Blackmagic is willing to reply to my support requests.

I wish I could get Cineform, but we've blown our budget on the upgrade, I also wish it would be easier to purchase Cineform for instance like the "Steam" digital distribution technique where purchasing is all managed by the software. Cineform should launch a similar platform to get their software out to more people.

And it'll be $170 for a hardware PCI SATA RAID and 2 250GB Seagate HDDs. Cheaper than Cineform...

[Jack Zhang]

Update: It must be a hard drive issue or software issue cause I just captured 1min of HDMI 1080i footage again in 1.8.4 on a defragmented system drive and it never dropped a single frame. I'll try 720p60 again later.

720p results: still dropping frames... Even on 1.8.4. This time it's 5 seconds before it quits on the system drive.

Revised results: Finally, installing a separate capture drive via SATA solved this problem. I went 1:35 without dropouts. The 20 second one was to the same drive but interfaced through USB 2.0, making it slower.

[Alex Raskin]

Switched to EX1, and selling my complete mobile HDMI HD capture computer + Intensity card + HDTV monitor in Pelican rolling case for $999.

See here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/private-c...i-monitor.html

[Eric Larson]

I finally got around to getting a Thinkpad Advanced Dock and a Intensity card and successfull captured some footage using cineform HDLink. Running Vista 64.

So for $170 at the Lenovo outlet, this seems like very economical solution.

It doesn't really make the laptop setup that much bigger, adds about 7 inches behind the laptop.

[Alex Raskin]

Eric, do you have a link? I found it at 2x the price you quoted.

Also, this is only for IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad laptops, correct?

Which Intensity card did you use - would it work with Decklink HD Extreme? What laptop specs would support it?

[Eric Larson]

It's in the outlet part of Lenovo, goto main lenovo webpage, click on "outlet products" on the bottom left. Here is direct link
ThinkPad Advanced Dock: CA250310U Lenovo Outlet

Yes only thinkpad models. The only limitation seems to be half length PCI card, and 1x speed wise. Not sure on the specs of the card you mentioned. Oh and limit of 50 watts drawn power wise. But that is probably not a problem with these kind of cards.

I got around to doing more experiments, the only problem I've run into is I can't boot the computer with the camera plugged in. So I have to wait for it boot up, then plug in the hdmi. Minor problem though.

[Alex Raskin]

Eric, I understand that you are capturing directly into Cineform.

Aspect or Prospect?

What is the CPU utilization during HDMI capture with that port replicator?

Is sound in-sync on clips longer than 10 minutes?

Thanks.

[Eric Larson]

I'm using Aspect right now, will upgrade soon.
Did some test with sound synch, and I'm definietely having issues. Even with short 1 minute clips. Does this mean the computer isn't fast enough? The cpu is hovering around 90%

[Henry Olonga]

Glad you have it working - the footage that this little card can produce is stunning.Is Vista optimised?There is a lot of stuff that you don't need.I mention this earlier in the thread.The other thing I mentioned in this thread here

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/cineform-...quirement.html

is that my cores sometimes do get to 90 % but not at the same time.This is when recording to FilmScan 2. It see saws between them. Average is 70% when capturing to the High setting with my optimised laptop.No dropped frames.Sound Sync issues?Make sure you have the latest drivers for the intensity and also the latest build of Cineform.
I have Neo HD not aspect so I use HDlink.Is that what you use?

[Eric Larson]

I've done some tests with the mediaexpress application that comes with the intensity card and successfully captured mjpg compressed footage without sound sync issues.

I went ahead and put a bare XP install on a hard drive to do the following tests:
intensity control panel and turned on HD to SD down conversion and have successfully captured with cineform, SD footage. So this tells me everything is "working".

I have moved to an external firewire drive, which has reduced the cpu usage about 8 %, down to around 80%. But when capturing 1080 footage, the sound can't even stay in sync for 30 seconds.
Interesting enough, the cpu usages goes down another 5% if I capture film scan vs medium. But still out of sync.

It seems my laptop is not quite fast enough to capture HD 1080. I wish I had a source to test 720p.

[Eric Larson]

Just hooked my Apple TV up to the intensity card and put it in 720p playback and played a podcast and successfully captured it in cineform without any audio drop out.

So now how to get 1080