woffle6452

Kind of a basic question, and I've been searching the forums without really wrapping my head all the way around it...

I have used standard def video camera streams to jit.qt.grab (via a dv->firewire cable) for a long time. Now, in the search for higher resolution, I'd like to use an HD video camera. It looks like most HD cameras have an HDMI output and an analog (composite and/or component) output. Are the analog signals Hi Def as well? DV standard cannot handle the resolution, but is there any other common port or protocol that could stream into a computer?

What is the best way to get this into my computer, hopefully to be picked up via jit.qt.grab? Would prefer to do this on a laptop, not a desktop. 720p is fine, only need up to 25 or 30 fps. Looking around the internet, it looks like getting HDMI into a computer takes a lot of expensive equipment. Any (affordable) ways to get the analog hi def signal in to jit.qt.grab?

I have used standard def video camera streams to jit.qt.grab (via a dv->firewire cable) for a long time. Now, in the search for higher resolution, I'd like to use an HD video camera. It looks like most HD cameras have an HDMI output and an analog (composite and/or component) output. Are the analog signals Hi Def as well? DV standard cannot handle the resolution, but is there any other common port or protocol that could stream into a computer? 

high-def-camera-to-jit-qt-grab

See the thread suggestions: external devices for HD capturing?.

While the thread is covering capture from Jitter -> computer, the Black Magic Intensity Pro card is a $200 card that comes with capture software than might work for you. If your laptop has a ExpressCard/34 slot, you can probably purchase a card that you could use to provide a HDMI port.

A note: I've been digitizing directly from a Sony HDV camera onto a SATA hard disk through a WIndows desktop for several years. It's worked fine. Note that this is not through a HDMI port though, and the HDV provides compression that uncompressed HDMI data doesn't have. If you go with the BMIP, and you have a fast laptop, your bottleneck may be your hard drive--Black Magic suggests a RAID, which is of course costly. But at 720p, you may be ok.

There are so many variables, I can't say for sure whether this will work for you. There are laptops and there are laptops. But it's one thing you could look into. My recommendation: don't buy before you try, if at all possible.

HI Dan,
See the thread suggestions: external devices for HD capturing?.
While the thread is covering capture from Jitter -> computer, the Black Magic Intensity Pro card is a $200 card that comes with capture software than might work for you. If your laptop has a ExpressCard/34 slot, you can probably purchase a card that you could use to provide a HDMI port.

A note: I've been digitizing directly from a Sony HDV camera onto a SATA hard disk through a WIndows desktop for several years. It's worked fine. Note that this is not through a HDMI port though, and the HDV provides compression that uncompressed HDMI data doesn't have. If you go with the BMIP, and you have a fast laptop, your bottleneck may be your hard drive--Black Magic suggests a RAID, which is of course costly. But at 720p, you may be ok.  

There are so many variables, I can't say for sure whether this will work for you. There are laptops and there are laptops. But it's one thing you could look into. My recommendation: don't buy before you try, if at all possible.


Just to clarify, this is for a live setup with live video input, so recording to hard drive isn't necessary, and portability is somewhat necessary (so probably not Black Magic Intensity Pro, since that looks to only be a card for a desktop). Will investigate ExpressCard hardware.

Would an HDV camera be able to stream over a DV cable in HD? I was under the impression that a DV->firewire could only ever carry SD resolution (720x480), but if that isn't the case (and if the decompression computational load isn't too bad) that may be the simplest option. Has anyone here ever done that?

Cool, thanks very much for the advice.
Just to clarify, this is for a live setup with live video input, so recording to hard drive isn't necessary, and portability is somewhat necessary (so probably not Black Magic Intensity Pro, since that looks to only be a card for a desktop). Will investigate ExpressCard hardware. 

If you have a HDV camera, and you're not recording to disk, you shouldn't have a problem with a firewire connection. You can get the data into your computer, what you do with it then (live, presumably using Jitter) will determine your frame rate of your output.

High Def camera to jit.qt.grab?