While it is clearly possible to achieve high levels of processing performance in a portable laptop solution, the major limitation will be professional level I\/O.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00c2\u00a0are few simple solutions, but a fair number of possible work-arounds.<\/p>\n
The simplest solution that provides HD-SDI input to a laptop is the Motu V3HD<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Connected via Firewire, it allows capture of digital and analog High-Definition video signals at DVCPro-HD quality.\u00c2\u00a0 Limited to 1280 pixels in width,\u00c2\u00a0and 100Mb\/s, this is a lower end HD solution, but bears mention none the less.\u00c2\u00a0 I have not personally used one, but it is supposed to be compatible with Premiere Pro CS3, as well as Final Cut Pro.\u00c2\u00a0 The data rate and processing requirements allow this format to be used on most high end consumer laptops, but those looking for full resolution 1920×1080 solutions must look farther.<\/p>\n The next solution is currently only available to Mac users in Final Cut Pro, but is a significant\u00c2\u00a0 technological development.\u00c2\u00a0 AJA’s “I\/O HD<\/a>” is a Firewire800 based solution that can capture and playback full resolution material, with 10bit color, in Apple’s new ProRES codec.\u00c2\u00a0 Although not a PC based solution, it does\u00c2\u00a0enable mobile users to capture\u00c2\u00a0high quality, full resolution footage. A company named Magma<\/a> has developed a solution that really opens up\u00c2\u00a0the available options.\u00c2\u00a0 Their ExpressBox Pro<\/a> product allows a PCIe card to be inserted and connected to a laptop via\u00c2\u00a0an ExpressCard slot.\u00c2\u00a0 At the very least, PCIe x1 cards can be expected to work, and ideally higher end PCIe x4 based\u00c2\u00a0capture cards may function properly as well.\u00c2\u00a0 After all, the HD\u00c2\u00a0video data itself is usually well under 200MB\/s, depending on\u00c2\u00a0the specific settings and format.<\/p>\n The first option that comes to mind\u00c2\u00a0are the Intensity<\/a> cards from BlackMagic Design.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0They allows full resolution capture of 1080i\/p at up to 10bit color in the 422 YUV colorspace, over HDMI or analog on the Intensity Pro.\u00c2\u00a0 Convienently, Blackmagic also makes an HD-SDI to HDMI converter, the HDLink<\/a>, so we can use this to pump HD-SDI into the Intensity<\/a> card.\u00c2\u00a0 Blackmagic also\u00c2\u00a0has a MotionJPEG codec that we can capture directly into, so it would seem that they offer a fairly complete solution to our problem.<\/p>\n Another option using the same hardware is to use Cineform<\/a> compression, as detailed here<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0In my experience Cineform’s compression results in a higher quality final picture than Blackmagic’s current implementation of MotionJPEG codec.\u00c2\u00a0 The downside of using Cineform is that they don’t support live playback, out of the Intensity card the way Blackmagic’s codecs do. If you have an external monitoring device available, this can be a very helpful option\u00c2\u00a0when trying to edit on a small laptop screen.\u00c2\u00a0 To Cineform’s credit, they allow you to use the secondary display output from your laptop as a full screen video output if your graphics card supports it.<\/p>\n Our next PCIe x1 based solution is the RT.X2<\/a> from Matrox.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Although I have not been able to confirm that this has ever been successfully used in this capacity, it remains a theoretical possibility.\u00c2\u00a0 The RT.X2 <\/a>would be advantagous in that it would offload much of the compression processing from the laptop CPU to the PCIe card.\u00c2\u00a0 It would allow analog HD capture, but would be limited to 1440 horizontal resolution, and would allow preview via DVI or analog HD.\u00c2\u00a0 On the positive side, with hardware acceleration, Matrox’s MPEG I-Frame codec would probably give the best creative editing performance of any of the solutions we are examining here.\u00c2\u00a0 Realtime effects and exporting would be advantagous for the editing process, but the original footage acquired would not be as high quality to begin with.<\/p>\n In theory, the Magma ExpressBox <\/a>could support other cards.\u00c2\u00a0 While the bandwidth is limited to the 2000Mb\/s (200-250MB\/s) of the ExpressCard’s PCIe x1 bandwidth,\u00c2\u00a0the phyical connector in the box is a PCIe\u00c2\u00a0x16 slot.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be interesting to know if it would support an AJA LHe <\/a>or a Decklink HDPro<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 The AJA card would allow 10bit capture into the Cineform ProspectHD codec at full resolution, and Decklink might allow RGB 444 capture at 24fps.<\/p>\n There is one\u00c2\u00a0more Blackmagic\u00c2\u00a0based option that I know isn’t fully developed yet, but seems\u00c2\u00a0very close.\u00c2\u00a0 The Blackmagic Multibridge is based on the same technology that allows the Magma ExpressBox to work, external PCIe.\u00c2\u00a0 If an ExpressCard could be fabricated that interfaced the\u00c2\u00a0ExpressCard PCIe x1\u00c2\u00a0bus to the DVI shaped cable that the Multibridge uses, that would be a great solution.\u00c2\u00a0 When the first Multibridge Extreme was released, it was listed to be compatible with PCIe x1 slots, at least at SD resolutions.\u00c2\u00a0 PCIe x1 has the bandwidth for HD if used efficiently, and the Multibridge<\/a> has many I\/O options, so I think it would be the ideal portable solution.\u00c2\u00a0 I know it can capture to MotionJPEG, and I believe Cineform includes capabilities to capture from it into their codec as well. \u00c2\u00a0I have not been able to confirm that, but it is\u00c2\u00a0implied on their website.<\/p>\n The last option I will mention has been discussed and rumored about for years, but I have yet to see a product hit the market.\u00c2\u00a0 Why not have an ExpressCard with HD-SDI\u00c2\u00a0I\/O directly on it?\u00c2\u00a0 Heat will be an issue that needs to be overcome, and mini-BNC connector could be used to improve the form factor of the physical connections.\u00c2\u00a0 Ideally if it was a Blackmagic product,\u00c2\u00a0it would support live capture into MotionJPEG, Cineform, and ProRES on a Mac, for maximum possible market.\u00c2\u00a0 If\/When it gets developed, I know it will sell well, assuming it functions correctly in an established normal workflow.\u00c2\u00a0 Realtime compression will be required for any laptop solution, but this doesn’t have to be accomplised in the card itself, it just has to be compatible with it being done by the CPU.\u00c2\u00a0 I look forward to seeing a product like this released, as it would greatly enhance the workflow for portable post-production solutions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While it is clearly possible to achieve high levels of processing performance in a portable laptop solution, the major limitation will be professional level I\/O.\u00c2\u00a0 There\u00c2\u00a0are few simple solutions, but a fair number of possible work-arounds. The simplest solution that provides HD-SDI input to a laptop is the Motu V3HD.\u00c2\u00a0 Connected via Firewire, it allows […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[18,12,15,24,22,14,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hd4pc.com\/techblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAnything beyond that will involve a bit of\u00c2\u00a0creativity, and what follows is highly\u00c2\u00a0speculative.\u00c2\u00a0 Newer laptops have replaced PCMCIA card slots with ExpressCard<\/a> slots.\u00c2\u00a0 The new formfactor is much simpler, and has two basic internal variations.\u00c2\u00a0 The slot has pins available to interface directly into the USB subsystem (480Mb\/s) or directly into the Southbridge via the PCIe x1 interface (2000Mb\/s).\u00c2\u00a0 The PCIe interface provides\u00c2\u00a0an ExpressCard\u00c2\u00a0slot with enough bandwidth to support uncompressed HD video, at least 10bit 422 at 1080i\/p.\u00c2\u00a0 RGB 444 might even be possible at 24fps, but that would depend on how much overhead was imposed by the interface itself, among other things.\u00c2\u00a0 This bandwidth has been utilized in the design of the ExpressCard option for the CalDigit HDPro<\/a>, but having a single slot with the capability of transfering video at uncompressed data rates leaves us with a problem.\u00c2\u00a0 If\u00c2\u00a0the ExpressCard slot is being used to connect some form of\u00c2\u00a0video I\/O interface, how do I connect my\u00c2\u00a0storage at uncompressed speeds.\u00c2\u00a0 Unless you find a laptop with two ExpressCard slots, you will not be able to use both at once.\u00c2\u00a0 I guarantee that the\u00c2\u00a0capture card is necessary for realtime full resolution HD acquisition, so how can we do it without using the high speed storage?\u00c2\u00a0 Compressing the video becomes the obvious solution.\u00c2\u00a0 So a capture solutionis needed\u00c2\u00a0that allows realtime compression, and can be jury-rigged to connect to an ExpressCard slot at PCIe x1 bandwidth.<\/p>\n