Black Magic capture cards

Black Magic cards add extra inputs and outputs to editing programs. They do not tend to add acceleration to any program, like a Matrox card would, for example, and for that reason they are relatively cheap.  A Black Magic Intensity Pro will add component and HDMI HD and SD capture for £125 +VAT in resolutions up to 1920 x 1080 - a Matrox MX02 Mini has the same inputs and outputs and adds extra acceleration to Adobe Premiere Pro CS5, as well as a range of Matrox effects, the ability to upscale and downscale footage on capture and, if you add the MAX version, faster H264 encoding.   The Matrox Mini is £318+VAT

Black Magic have a capture card that adds HD-SDI for under £300!

In addition to adding extra i/o Black Magic cards have a couple of extra programs.  The first is a stand-alone capture program which can be used to capture into uncompressed, Black Magic's motion JPEG format, and some variations of MPEG footage .  Also, when used on an Apple Mac, some of the cards have a program that lets you overlay graphics on live video or even mix between pictures playing on two cards in the same machine.

Black Magic cards work with:

• Adobe Premiere Pro (on both Mac and PC). Black Magic have been working with Adobe software for many years. Traditionally we have preferred Matrox devices for Premiere Pro because Black Magic tended to not work so well with the Adobe MERCURY PLAYBACK ENGINE.  However this has changed with the latest Black Magic drivers and Adobe Premiere Pro CS5.5. There are still reasons why you may prefer Matrox over Black Magic (or AJA over Black Magic) which are outlined on their product pages. Matrox for example, add extra filters to Adobe Premiere Pro, and have a decent capture format, Matrox MPEG I-frame, which does a better job than Black Magic MJPEG codec when capturing analogue footage. However, Black Magic devices are generally cheaper, they have USB3 devices that work on laptops where as the Matrox MX02 and AJA devices need an express card socket not found on modern machines, and some of their devices, like the Extreme 3D, support 1080 50P output and higher resolutions, where as Matrox are limited to 1080 50i (the highest resolution acceptable for Blu-ray)
• Sony Vegas- version 9 of Vegas, released in May 2009 supports the Black Magic cards; version 8 worked with the cards but the support was always classed as "beta"- version 10 of Vegas is not officially support by Black Magic although it "generally" works.   Click here to read more about Sony Vegas and see specs of typical DVC bespoke editing systems here.
• Grass Valley EDIUS - with version 6.06 you can now capture into EDIUS using a Black Magic card. You cannot output the picture as you edit, this can only be done using Grass Valley hardware, like the HDSPARK, however, adding a Black Magic card to your system is a cheap way to be able to capture footage with EDIUS.
• Avid Media Composer - With Media Composer 6 Black Magic cards now will capture and playback with Avid Media Composer. You have access to all the standard Avid codecs and the devices work from within Media Composer - just like AJA and Matrox. The only devices which do not work are Black Magic's USB3 Intensity Shuttle and Ultra Studio Pro.
• Final Cut Pro - Apple's editing program supports the Black Magic cards and as well as capture into Black Magic formats you can also capture into Apple Pro Res.  Like Vegas, FCP performs exactly the same with a Black Magic card installed meaning it is a great way to add cheap i/o to FCP

BLACK MAGIC CAPTURE FORMATS

Decklink cards can capture standard definition (PAL and NTSC) and high definition, through a variety of different connections. They capture into 2 main formats:

Uncompressed footage

Uncompressed gives you the best quality but uses a lot of space.  Uncompressed 8 bit HD takes up around 400MB for an hour and you will need at least 2 SATA hard drives striped together on a proper controller to get enough drive speed. 10 bit uncompressed takes even more space.

Black Magic MOTION JPEG

MJPEG is a codec that has been around for many years and is essentially a video version of the still format, JPEG.  The quality produced is reasonable, although you may notice some artefacts on fast moving footage.  Black Magic's version is fixed at a specific datarate (with some cards you can very the rate to get a better quality).  The good news is that HD files captured into MJPEG are a reasonable size and you can capture onto a normal SATA drive. 

Depending on which program you use they can also capture into other formats:

MPEG MXF files

(In Sony Vegas) A recently introduced format, you can capture into the same kind of files as made by Sony XDCAM camera - a MPEG2 HD in various sizes.  As the computer is compressing footage as it captures you need a reasonably powerful machine to do this but most modern computers should be capable.  This produces reasonable-sized files and will work on a single SATA drive.

10bit DPX RGB files

A variation of an image file which cab be captured using Black Magic Media Express.

DVCPro HD

Capture into Panasonics HD format inside of Adobe Premiere Pro, or using FCP

Apple Pro RES

If using Final Cut Pro you can capture directly into ProRES, Apple's own format.

Editing card based media

If you film onto card based media (XDCAM, P2) or edit HDV you will not convert the footage but use it natively, so the various inputs and capture formats are largely irrelevant.  What you will need is a way to monitor the timeline on a proper screen when editing - the Black Magic cards will do just that.

8 bit and 10 bit

Black Magic cards capture into both 8-bit and 10-bit formats. Most common video formats (like DV and HDV) are 8-bit. For better quality you can use 10-bit.