HD PVR or Black Magic?

[Jonny]

Hay there.
After having a job now for a fair while, and saving up quite a bit, I thought that I would treat my self to a new capture card.
The main two that I am between is the HD PVR and the Black Magic Intensity Pro.
Now I know that hands down that a lot of people will go for the PVR, but this is only because either they have one, someone they watch on YouTube has one or they have never heard of the black magic.

Now.. A few facts...
Currently, online, they are both the same price, give or take a couple of pence.
The black magic can capture upto 1080p30 where as the PVR can only capture 1080i60. Now the HD output from the Xbox is in 1080p60, which neither of them support, and so I would end up recording in 1080i60. And to be honest, on YouTube does not make much difference.

They both have their pros and cons, such as the PVR does not have HDMI I/O - only component but it does have an external power adaptor meaning that your computer does not have to be turned on to see your Xbox on your tv screen when not recording.

The black magic does have HDMI I/O but does not have an external power, meaning to see the picture on the tv screen whilst plugged into the cap card means that your computer had to be turned on, or switch cables at the back of your tv.


You may think that every big gamer on YouTube had a PVR, but this is not true. SeaNanners, WoodysGamertag and all of the computers in the macinema offices have the black magic.


So in other words, what I'm asking is that if you were me, which one would you go for?

 

[Sgt Jax Mehoff]

Avermedia PVR thing... Look them up there cheaper and just as good.

 

[Krier023]

yeah. avermedia makes apvr type recorder, and a device like the black magic. The black magic is a better recorder, but you need a fair amount of CPU power. You need much lesswith the hauppage. Wait until Odin replies because I believe he uses a black magic for all his videos. At that good quality it doesn't matter much just edit in Vegas. Quality well be about the same, just get whatever is on sale. though, it doesn't MD

 

[odingalt]

I have been using the black magic intensity pro PCI card.

It has caused two hard drive crashes. My setup suffers from sort sort of occasional IRQ conflict with this card. Being on the second-from-newest drivers as of a couple weeks ago and haven't had the problem, but there are other bugs. I'm unable to switch between component HD and HDMI HD - the audio freaks out. I have the XBOX360 connected via HDMI and the PS3 connected via component (since PS3 + HDMI = content protected).

Support is non-existant and I've spent the last two years waiting for a driver/software release that would finally fix all the bugs, but it never happens. I haven't thrown the card away yet, but, I can tell you that the next time I purchase a card, it won't be from the people at black magic!

Otherwise, recording quality = A++. Features vs. cost (when I bought this two years ago) A++. Software buggyness and the extreme nightmare of having your RAID array crash (literally one hard drive had a hardware failure due to repeated conflicts with this card): F. Software in terms of general annoyances and features: C. You'll also need to invest in Vegas or Premiere to do anything useful with this card, the stock software is virtually useless. You can record to disk but only in compressed JPG (uncompressed recording requires a hard drive that's about 3x faster than your current average SSD). You can't really do editing. You can patch the video through to an external TV which is nice.

If it weren't for my hard drive IRQ conflict and the extreme nightmare I went through losing 4 1/2 years of e-mail no thanks to ****ty software from black magic, I would recommend this card. There's a good chance the issue is fixed in latest drivers, but I'm still testing.

 

[Jonny]

Thanks for the reply guys,
Odin, What do you mean by 'IRQ conflict'?

I'm leaning more towards the back magic as it has HDMI, but what is now putting me off is the hard drive crashed Odin just talked about.
I currently only have 1 hard drive, a 500GB Western Digital, SATA-II 3.0Gb/s - but i am soon looking to invest into an SDD (solid state drive), only around a 50GB just to install my operation system on and those big programs onto (such as Cubase (music creation software)) and so if i was to get it i would be slightly buggered if it messed up my only hard drive...

I mainly only plan to record in compressed video format as i only have around 150GB spair on my hard drive, but im not too sure about this feature on the Black Magic.
I know on the pvr i does the compression on the actual hardware so it doesn't eat your cpu up, but you can only get compressed video - not uncompressed from it.
(I have an Intel Core i5 CPU 760 @ 2.80GHz, RAM: 6.00 GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 802MHz (9-9-9-24) and i do know how to install pci cards as i built my computer from scratch)

As for the software side of things - i know my cousin has some decent video software, can't remember the name of it though but ill probably have a chat to him and see if i can borrow the installation disks ;P
I do know a bit about software such as Adobe premier pro, Adobe after effects and Sony Vegas after using them in media and drama in the early years of secondary school many years ago, and i still sometimes have a play about with it on our school system.
I believe that with the HD PVR you can only use the software that comes with it to record with.

Anyone else have any other thoughts?

 

[GJUnLeAsHeD]

if space is a problem you could always buy a backup drive a terabyte is only around 70$. I have a hd cap card and im also looking to move up but im going to get the pvr so i can cap with my laptop. As far as importing goes not to sure about that i have used Nero to import my dazzle before but im not to crazy about what it looked like when i was done so i stuck with pinnacle.