looking for a hd capture device

budget? may be much more important than easy and reliable to use.

what "hd signal" are you trying to capture?

check out the HTPC area they will have a lot of recommendations...I almost bought an OnAir device until I found a Sony HDTV DVR at a price I couldn't pass up.

Any hardware that can capture uncompressed HDTV is going to be in the thousands. Then you need to store that data which is in the terabytes for a 2hr movie.

It can be done but not for under $20K all in.

Allow me to make some clarifications here. Im a professional documentary editor and work with both SD and HD.

Two points:

1) if all you want is a standard def 16x9 (anamorphic) widescreen DVD, then you dont have to capture an HD signal at all. Here is my workflow where I do EXACTLY what you are looking for:

A) Set your HD-DVR to output a down-converted anamorphic (squeezed) signal out the S-video standard def output. My Dish VIP-622 can do this in a menu setting.

B) connect to a DV camera or DV converter box (set for S-video input) and connect the FireWire to your computer (in my case a Macintosh)

C) open a video editing program that can capture and tag an anamorphic DV movie. I use Final Cut Pro, but iMovie may work as well.

D) capture the footage as an anamorphic DV QuickTime clip. These are about 12 Gigabytes an hour.

F) open the movie in QuickTime Pro ($30) and use the Command-J keyboard shortcut to open a control panel. Change the visual settings from 720x480 to 854x480. Save and close. This un-squeezed the anamorphic image.

G) use iDVD 6 to make a "widescreen" DVD and pop in your QuickTime file. And then burn!

Your DVD will look great! It will be a letterbox on a SDTV and will fill the frame properly on an HDTV if the DVD player is set up properly.

This works. I do it all of the time.

2) Glimmie may not have known about this, but you can buy an HD component capture card from Blackmagic or AJA for between $1000 and $1500 for your PC or Mac. You can then capture to the DVC-PRO HD codec at around 12-14 MB a second. Its compressed, but not nearly as bad as MPEG-2 or 4. And you do not need super fast RAIDs to capture this footage. Use Final Cut Pro for this on a Mac.


This works.

-Christopher

$249 for the Intensity card. It will be released on Oct. 15th, according to the press release.

It can capture HDMI. Although it cannot capture component directly, there are ways to convert component to HDMI first. For example, there are A/V receivers (by Denon, Yamaha, etc) that can do the conversion.

UPDATE: The Denon AVR3806 receiver always encrypts with HDCP when it converts from component to HDMI, so the Intensity card cannot capture HDMI from it.

Right but be careful, the Intensity card may require a tag in the signal that says "its OK to record this HDMI signal", and that converter may not add that tag.

Also, i dont want your post to mislead the original poster, he can still get the $1000 version with Component in right now and it will work.

-Christopher

I thought those cards take in HDSDI. You will need an Aanlog to digital convertor to feed it which will cost aboy $2500. Also you will need storage to buffer the compression engine. You usally need to input the entire project as HD then compress it.

Or do these cards do DVCpro in real time. If so, then it's a lot more cost effective.

Hi,

Yeah, they do analog component input as well AND convert to DVCPRO-HD on the fly. Amazing, huh? You dont have to touch uncompressed huge files at all. Very slick.

So lets see:
Mac tower with PCIe slots: $2500
HD capture card: $1000
Final Cut Pro software: $1000 (Blackmagic or AJA might have their own capture tool, so u may not need FCP)
600GB FW hard drive $ 450

So, yeah, it costs money, but not as much as first reported here. Hopefully you can use this set-up for work for it to make sense. I use mine for documentary editing.

Wow...that DeckLink card looks amazing. I've got the Mac and the massive storage available---might have to look at this option.

Which card does both?

The AJA XENA LH has HD analog input, but it does not mention DVCPRO-HD.

The Blackmagic Design DeckLink HD can do DVCPRO-HD, but it does not mention HD analog input (although it mentions SD analog input).

I've looked over the docs and the Blackmagic support board at creative cow and from the posts I'm reading it can most definitely capture HD analog. Plenty of talk there about capturing 720p and 1080i (from an xbox 360 of all things )

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/pro....asp?prodID=18

The breakout cable on the Blackmagic card has the analog HD component connectors for both input and output.

AJA only captures uncompressed.

The DeckLink cards require a converter like the AJA HD10A to capture HD analog component video. The breakout cable is only SD.

http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/specs/

That's exactly what I thought.

So there still does not appear to be any card that does both HD analog input and compression (such as DVCPRO-HD).

Damn. So ~$800.00 for a HD10A (or 890.00 for an HD10AVA--add analog audio) plus 1K for the card. Assuming one has the other necessary parts it's not too bad---way less than I originally thought!

Might have to consider going Gefen Component to HDMI then into the upcoming Blackmagic Intensity for alot less money (200+250.00). But seems like the other route would give me so much more functionality.

Christopher, have you seen a web site that suggests the Intensity might need a flag set to record? I'd understand that a HDMI signal that is encrypted won't record, but I'm wondering if someone has forced another flag into the Intensity card?

Hi

So of course, the Intensity card can record any stream from any device that output dvi or hdmi. But, as the tech support from Blackmagic confirm me, if the provider put a encrypted code in a channel, this one will be be able to be recorded. So use a hdcp remover at about an another 400$.

Unless you have a high def disk recorder, expensive media, and player and you want to archive whatever you've captured you still have to down convert and re-encode the content anyway (I guess you could put it on tape) So right now for aprox 3500$ (pretty close to the cost off all those hi def disk/hdd combo players they've announced or released in Japan) you can capture and get it into a computer but what do you do with it then? I've had very good results outputting an HD recording from the S-Video out on the sony hdd250 to a pioneer DVR, editing out the commercials on the hard drive and recording it to dvd-r. The quality is easily DVD. Somebody educate me on the upside of cobbling together a system to do it on the cheap if you don't work with hi def video for a living..

Because the Toshiba HD-DVD player can play HD content that's recorded to a regular DVD-DL.

See here:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=705146

Two notes tonight. I believe there might be some confusion in the above posts.

1) The questions about the cards: BOTH Blackmagic and AJA make cards that record uncompressed, OR DVCPRO-HD, or even other codecs. And they BOTH do it by digital SDI and *analog component*. I am sure of this. Here are the models and prices.

AJA Kona 2, AJA Kona 3, and AJA Kona LH, all for around $1500.

Blackmagic Decklink Extreme $1000

I have worked with both lines of these cards on G5 Macs and I can tell you they do analog HD recording out of the box. And they record to DVCPRO-HD on the fly to normal speed hard drives. I swear on my mother's life.

2.) The "usability" of this system is in question. Well, it can be used just like a DVR (without the remote) if the computer is within cable length of your HDTV. I use Final Cut Pro and just hit the space bar to play and stop. It goes right out to the HDTV over beautiful component. No transcoding. No converting files. Just native playback to HDTV right after recording. One of the Blackmagic cards even now has HDMI outputs and analog inputs!

-Christopher

Oh and about using the Blackmagic Intensity card with a third party Component to HDMI converter box? Someone here do it and report back and tell us if you can record all your HD channels. Would love to hear a real-world report on this. I have only heard speculation in other discussions that the card wants to see a flag that says "I have my protection switch turned to off".

I wish it would work. That would be under $500 for both items, I think.

-Christopher

Sorry, point me to somewhere on the Blackmagic site that specifically says the Decklink HD Extreme will capture HD component video. I'm just not seeing it. They seem to be very good at juxtaposing mention of 10 bit HD SDI capture with analog capture without any detail on the analog side. 12 bit YUV component capture does not mean HD. I'm not saying it can't, I'm just skeptical.

Ask you shall receive: http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/hd/specs/

These analog inputs are how people are capturing HDV footage and turning into DVCPRO-HD on the fly. Many prefer editing in the DVCPRO-HD codec over HDV because it behaves better and has a higher color-space.

-Christopher

Hey Rcrach, you are right to be skeptical. There is an almost sheepishness to Blackmagic saying "Component-HD Inputs" in one sentence, but here are some more links, some written by acquaintances of Grant Petty, owner of Blackmagic, as well as actual users of the card who are using it for just that -- and in serious production.

Here are the links. And thanks for keeping me sharp!

http://www.digitalproductionbuzz.com...php?newsid=823

http://livefromnab.com/articles/publ...cle_1187.shtml

http://www.bosfcpug.org/beta/images/...hd_extreme.pdf

http://www.presentationmaster.com/ar...e.jsp?id=39966

http://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bi...863280&pview=t (this is about the card that is a hybrid between the Intensity card and the HD-Extreme card -- which maybe what we want here anyway)

-Christopher

Thanks Christopher,

It really didn't make sense that Blackmagic wouldn't keep the arms race going after AJA released the Xena. Now if one of them would include hardware based HD encoding at a consumer level price point (I'm thinking the ATEME AVC chipset boiled down to one SOC) I'd be buying, but that's probably at least a year away and by that time we should start seeing the combo style recorders selling in Japan released in the US (MPAA willing). Talman's link was interesting but way too cumbersome to get 2 hrs of HD on 3 double layer disks. Since I'm not a content creator just an enduser, putting a PC in the loop to archive stuff in real time from television is just overkill.

Rick

If you only want to do DVD then just get a (standard-def) TV-capture card like the Happauge or ATIs. $75-$150. You don't need Hi-Def, in fact it will be a huge waste if you're only outputting to DVD.

Interesting thread though. I looked into doing this very thing about 6 months ago but decided it wasn't worth the hassle, or the expense. So I went and got a $9 Firewire cable instead. Can't record 5c protected programs (not yet, common Vista!) but it takes a little pressure off the Comast DVR's tiny 120gb'er.

Right, that downrezzed HD makes very very good SD. And if you can figure out the right settings in your DVR box and your DVD authoring program, you can make nice anamorphic widescreen DVDs, which can look better than just plain ol' letterbox on your HDTV.

Has anyone got the Intensity card yet? I like the idea of using component to HDMI and just capture it via Intensity for the computer. Maybe I can finally play console games on my PC monitor w/o much issues.