• Blackmagic Design

  Looking to purchase intensity – a few questions…

  Posted by Philip Johns on March 21, 2008 at 2:24 pm

  Hey guys,

  I’m looking at purchasing the Intensity or Intensity Pro cards and I’m wondering if before I leapt into it I could pick your brains to know what people think of it. Do you experience many bugs with it and is the quality substantially better capturing via HDMI vs HDV?

  What is the disk usage when working either in uncompressed or the next step down?

  I’d also like to know if this means I have to downgrade my operating system to 10.4.8 and also downgrade Final Cut Pro to 5.1.2 from 6.0.2? I’ve spent money upgrading my software and it seems strange that I should have to downgrade.

  FInally a lot of my work now ends up going to audio post and is thrown to Dolby Digital 5.1. The Intensity card does not support more than 2 channels output. Is there another card that will work in with the Intensity card to deliver 5.1 to my amplifier?

  Thanks for your input!

  Phil

  Philip Johns

  Philip Johns replied 18 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  John Gyldstrand

  March 26, 2008 at 10:27 pm

  Phillip,
  As far as the Intensity cards go I have not heard of any bugs so far, I do not believe that you have to downgrade your operating system either, you can go to the website and download the manual go to page 22 to look up what the disk usage might be,
  when transfering via HDV I believe your 1920×1080 goes to 1440×1080.It is also my undrstanding that you will probaly have to go to a multibridge or decklink to get your 5.1 audio because of the card only being 2 channel.
  Please call me at 714-374-4944 or e-mail me johng@maxxdigital.com and we can discuss this in further detail.
  All the best John G
• 

  Kristian Lam

  March 28, 2008 at 10:00 pm

  Hi Philip,

  If you capture Uncompressed, you will be dealing with data rates of about 120 Mb/sec at 1080i60. Of course, you can also capture to compressed codecs such as ProRes, DVCPRO HD etc.

  No, you do not have to downgrade to Final Cut Pro 5. Final Cut Pro 6 is perfectly fine.

  regards

  Kristian Lam
  Blackmagic Design
• 

  Philip Johns

  March 29, 2008 at 6:51 am

  Thanks guys,

  My only reservation about going decklink is that it’s SDI – not that I have a problem with SDI except for the expense associated with the equipment that I have to purchase such as tape decks etc. The multibridge would be ideal – would this make my HDMI card obsolete? Again, though, if I go a multibridge I would then have to purchase an AES-EBU interface in order to route the channels to 5.1. Pity the box doesn’t have an optical audio output for monitoring to 5.1.

  I was going to get a deck in order to play my HDV tapes out via HDMI but budget may not allow this in the immediate future – in order to digitize via HDV firewire into the mac and output it via the HDMI interface card, does the media need converting to a different cocec beforehand? Does it do a good job of monitoring HDV media? Also have people noticed a significant difference between capturing via the HDMI card VS capturing via firewire?

  Thanks again,

  Phil

  Philip Johns

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