Hands On: Capturing HDMI video

At some point, every hardware enthusiast will encounter an issue and wonder if there’s a device, adapter or cable that will fit the bill.

Maybe it’s for a weather station, a media PC enhancement, robotic control, or simply connecting an old piece of kit to a new system.

What normally follows is a trawl around specialist suppliers, or a search for like-minded individuals on forums.

Sometimes the search proves fruitless; other times a solution is weighed down by caveats that effectively render it unusable.

Occasionally, though, you’ll strike gold with a product that not only fulfils your requirements, but goes way beyond – that’s why this article is devoted to one of the neatest peripherals I’ve tested in recent times.

HDMI capture
My search began with a desire to capture video from an HDMI source – not protected movies from a Blu-ray player, but for grabbing video and live menu graphics from a new breed of digital cameras for reviews and video demonstrations.

A search for HDMI capture cards brought me to the Intensity from Blackmagic Design ($249). Intensity is a short PCI Express card that requires a single-lane slot, but also works in x4, x8 and x16 lane slots. It features a pair of HDMI ports that can be used for capturing video from one HDMI source while outputting a signal to an HDMI display.

Intensity can capture unprotected HDMI content at the full 1,920x1,080 resolution under Windows PCs using either a Motion JPEG or uncompressed recording format, along with grabbing still frames if desired. At this point, my initial requirement was fulfilled. Intensity could grab HD menus and graphics from cameras such as the Nikon D90 over its HDMI port – but the card offered a few additional possibilities.

While HDMI has become the standard interface for connecting domestic HD components, you may think the ability to capture it on your PC would have limited use – especially as protected content is ruled out. HD camcorders playing your own content are a possibility, but most people use Firewire or USB ports for getting such footage onto their computers.

Capturing over HDMI does have a neat advantage, though. Video enthusiasts will know that while most modern HDV camcorders feature sensors with 1,920x1,080 resolution, the HDV format itself squashes it into a lower resolution 1,440x1,080 frame to save space. Footage that has already been recorded to tape will be fixed at this resolution whether you capture over Firewire or HDMI.

But most HDV camcorders output a live signal over their HDMI ports at the full 1,920x1,080 resolution, and cards such as the Intensity can capture it, giving you 33 per cent greater horizontal resolution. Obviously, it’s not practical to lug a PC around on holiday just to capture the full resolution from a tethered HDV camcorder, but there are many studio-based applications that can exploit it.