Hands On: Capturing HDMI video

In practice, this really works. I tried it with a Canon HV30 and found that live video captured over HDMI had a quality advantage over recorded HDV footage.

You will need to switch the HV30’s TV screen option to ‘off’ and toggle the display button to eliminate the on-screen icons, though.

Intensity will also capture a wider colour gamut with 4:2:2 sampling, and you can record the signal with milder compression than HDV, or even none at all.

While both will obviously consume more storage than heavily compressed formats, you’ll save processing time when editing.

Since DVI shares the same video specification as HDMI, there’s also the possibility of capturing a PC’s desktop image with an adapter. This isn’t guaranteed to work, but if you set your desktop resolution to a typical HD mode, such as 1,920x1,080 or 1,280x720 at 60Hz, the Intensity stands a good chance of capturing it. Video editors will also appreciate the ability to preview projects over HDMI to a TV set rather than a PC monitor.

A few caveats
There are, of course, a number of things to watch out for. First, you’ll need plenty of fast storage at your disposal. The mildly compressed 1,080 capture mode consumes about 12Mbytes/sec, while the uncompressed version gobbles 119Mbytes/sec. In contrast, HDV nibbles away at 3.125Mbytes/sec. You’ll also only exploit the maximum quality if you’re capturing the live output from a device over a tethered HDMI connection; again there are still speed benefits when editing less compressed footage.

The Intensity card is a flexible product with some neat features for video enthusiasts, and the Pro version will additionally capture analogue video from composite, S-video and component sources, again in standard or high definition, along with the option to up- or down-scale.