Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro HDMI Editing Card with PCI Express

Technical Details

• True HDMI Digital Connections: Intensity features HDMI-in for connecting to cameras and digital set-top boxes for the highest quality capture.
• Go Beyond HDV Video Quality: HDV video compression suffers from not being full 1920 HD resolution and the extra processing
• Live Production with On-Air 2.0: Experience the incredible excitement of filming events live. Included with Intensity is Blackmagic On-Air 2.0
• Windows and Mac OS X Compatible: Plug into Windows or Mac OS X computers with the same card and use your favorite software, including Final Cut Pro
• The included break-out cable connects Intensity Pro to all types of analog video and audio equipment. This gives you full compatibility with analog component, NTSC, PAL, S-Video and analog audio.

Product Description

The Blackmagic Design Intensity Pro HDMI Editing Card is an excellent choice for your digital and analog capture needs. The card fully supports NTSC, PAL and HD video via HDMI, component, composite or S-Video. It supports two channels of embedded, RCA or S/PDIF audio at television-standard sampling rates. The Intensity Pro supports 4:2:2 color sampling for superior chromakey performance. The card can work with both Windows and Macintosh computers, making it an excellent choice for your editing needs regardless of your operating platform.

Customer Reviews

By H. MCWHORTER

Hardware:

I have put together 4 SATA drives in a RAID 0 configuration that maintains a minimum of 180Mbyte/s. It's running on a 3GHz Xeon processor and 16GB of RAM. I'm using a video scaler that can basically translate the component input into (almost) any kind of HDMI signal which feeds into the Intensity's HDMI input.

Software:

This product has some good points and some issues. In an effort to be thorough I downloaded the manual several months before I bought the product. There was no mention that a software program named "Blackmagic Media Express" was included. While this program is a simple capture/replay screen, it has limitations in the configuration and setup. There are actually TWO configuration programs: 1) a control panel addition named (appropriately) "Blackmagic Control Panel" and 2) Edit->Preferences inside Media Express. The Blackmagic Control Panel selects the types on inputs and ouputs and pre and post processing. The Media Express Preferences sets captures at a) "Uncompressed 8-bit YUV" or b) "Compressed Motion JPEG".

Issue 1:

Initially I couldn't get any audio thru whatsoever. I had HDMI audio or analog audio and nothing would work. Tech Support said that this has happened to a lot of people and asked if I had on-board audio. I do. They suggested adding an audio card and turning off the on-board audio. This partially worked, but I can't use HDMI audio, only analog. And I had to buy a new audio card!

Issue 2:

I consistently had a problem with video/audio synchronization after 31 minutes of recording. You could watch the output and Media Express screens get more and more frames apart until, after 31 minutes, a message comes up and says "Frames have been dropped". Tech support has not offered any solutions, and said that they do not buffer video/audio. I can't believe that my RAID can't keep up w/ the recording of an SD signal.

Issue 3:

While I don't think that Blackmagic actually SAID that 1080p is supported, I somehow thought it was. But, after further investigation, here's what they do support:

HD 1080 PsF 23.976

HD 1080 PsF 24

HD 1080 PsF 25 (and other formats)

So any recording of 1080p 50 or 60Hz is out of the question.

Tech Support:

I've emailed them several times and they seem to wait a week to get back to me! The person explained that while the hard drive performance test shows different sample rates, it's just for show. They can only sample at 8 bits. (Aren't high bandwidth ADCs common?). After I told them that I finally got some audio thru on the audio card (see Issue 1) but that it was analog, and that HDMI audio didn't work (even though the HDTV played it perfectly), tech support provided no other diagnosis or suggestions. Also, w/ Issue 2 above tech support blamed it on my computer and had no diagnosis or suggestions.

Overall:

I can record in 1080i60 just fine. Tech support helps somewhat, but mostly you're on your own. I'm a little disappointed in the fact that they don't get involved in customers' problems more. Overall I'm still glad that I got the card, but when something better comes along I'll probably list this one on ebay.

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