Videoguys #8 Product of 2007
What is the Intenstiy Pro? I think it's the coolest new hardware capture device to hit the market in years – and it's under $350!! Intensity Pro allows you to capture uncompressed video (HD or SD) into your PC or Mac via component video or HDMI. HDMI is that clever little jack that allows you to run both digital audio and video over a single cable between your high-end home theatre equipment. With Intensity Pro you can output directly from your Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere Pro timeline directly onto your gorgeous new flat screen plasma or LCD HDTV.

Many of the new HD camcorders have HDMI output like the new Canon HV20 HDV camcorder (more on that later in this article). The Intensity Pro card lets me capture uncompressed HD footage from the HV20 via HDMI directly into my computer. WOW! Just make sure you've got a ton of really fast storage to put it on.

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Note: If necessary, reinstall the Intensity software after installing Premiere Pro.

Setting up
1. Launch Premiere Pro.
2. Open a New Project
3. Select the appropriate Blackmagic preset for your project. e.g. NTSC or PAL
4. Type the name of your project.
5. Select your disk array as the location for your media and click OK

Playback
As a quick test to make sure everything is connected correctly, use the Premiere Pro test media(bars and tone). Copy a test clip, which matches the format of your project e.g. NTSC 8 bit. Take your media from within your Premiere Pro project and drop it into the timeline. You should now see the image on both your computer desktop and your Intensity Pro HDMI output. If you can’t see any video on your Intensity Pro output, check the HDMI connections again.

Note: Your HDMI display needs to be powered on before starting your PC. If necessary, restart your PC to ensure Intensity Pro detects the display during startup.

Capture
To capture choose: File > Capture (F5)
To immediately capture, click the red record button [G]. If you wish to log the clip using device control, enter the desired “In and Out points” using either the “In” and “Out” buttons, or manually, by typing in the timecode and clicking “Log”. The empty clip will now appear in the bin window. Repeat this until you have logged all of the clips you wish to batch capture.

Note: If you can’t see video in the capture video, switch off your video source (e.g. camera or deck) then switch it back on to ensure it detects the Intensity Pro card.

First, open Adobe After Effects and select the television standard frame size and frame rate you wish to work with.

How to use Intensity Pro as a preview output frame buffer To allow your Adobe After Effects composition to be displayed in real-time from your Intensity Pro, go to Edit > Preferences > Video Preview. Select Blackmagic RGB and the appropriate video standard. This lets you view your Adobe After Effects compositions in video colorspace on your broadcast monitor as you work. This means you will always see the correct color and interlace when working, and you don’t have to wait until your composition is rendered to see what it looks like when output as video.

Create a New Composition
Go to the “Composition” menu and select Composition > New Composition. (Control + n for PC or Command + n for Mac) In the dialogue box, select an appropriate television standard from the pulldown menu. Click OK
For all HD standards select upper field first.
For NTSC and NTSC DV use 720 x 486 and select lower field first.
For PAL 720 x 576 and select upper field first for uncompressed video.
For PAL DV 720 x 576 and select lower field first.
For HD 1080i select 1920 x 1080 and select upper field first.
For HD 720p select 1280 x 720 and select “none” in the field render box.

Rendering
When you have completed your composition, you will need to render to a pixel format supported by Intensity. Below is a list of supported codecs:
Blackmagic 8 Bit QuickTime™ (uncompressed)
Blackmagic 8 Bit AVI for Windows (uncompressed)
Blackmagic Motion JPEG AVI for Windows (compressed)
Apple QuickTime™ PhotoJPEG (compressed)
Apple QuickTime™ DV - NTSC (compressed)
Apple QuickTime™ DV - PAL (compressed)

“Easy Setups” for Final Cut Pro will have been added automatically during the Intensity installation
process if Final Cut Pro is previously installed. It’s important to install Final Cut Pro before installing the Intensity software.

Note: If necessary, reinstall the Intensity software after installing Final Cut Pro.

Setting up
1. Launch Final Cut Pro.

2. The Easy Setup window will appear.

3. Click on the popup menu named Setup for and select a relevant Intensity Easy Setup. For each TV format (NTSC, PAL and HDTV) you will find a range of compressed and uncompressed file formats you can choose. For example, if you are working in NTSC format, you could choose one of the following “Easy Setups”:
Intensity NTSC Uncompressed
Intensity NTSC - DV

The “Easy Setup” you choose will be dictated partly by the speed of your disk array and partly by whether you already have movie clips in a particular format. If you have a fast disk array, you can choose uncompressed video for the highest quality video. If you only have a single disk for storage, you could choose either DV, DV50, DVCPRO HD or JPEG for professional quality compression. JPEG often looks better but unfortunately Apple have not yet implemented RT Effects with JPEG. If you need to add RT Effects, then DV, DV50 or DVCPRO HD would be a better choice.

4. Click on the popup menu named Primary Scratch Disk and select your disk array from the popup menu. Then click OK

5. Final Cut Pro will finish launching.