[mythtv-users] Yes, I know there are no known consumer-level component capture cards. What do the professionals do?

[Brian Wood]

On Mar 9, 2006, at 10:47 AM, Jerry Rubinow wrote:

> On 3/9/06, Jerry Rubinow <jerrymr at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 3/9/06, Robert Kulagowski <bob at smalltime.com> wrote:
>>> Yeesh, that's a long subject line.  I was asked by someone "Assuming
>>> that money is no object, how could you capture component 1080i or  
>>> 720p
>>> output from a STB into an MPEG file, and can it be done in real  
>>> time?"
>>>
>>> Obviously there is professional equipment out there in use at  
>>> television
>>> stations and big A/V production houses.  And since there are  
>>> folks that
>>> spend $50k for a home theater setup, I would think that there  
>>> must be a
>>> pro-sumer equivalent available.  Does anyone know for a fact that  
>>> you
>>> can purchase widget Foo and connect it to widget Bar from ConHugeCo,
>>> plug it into a linux system and go on from there?  Googling shows a
>>> bunch of messages that reiterate "it can't be done"; however there
>>> appear to be cards for Macs and PC from http://www.ajavideo.com  
>>> that at
>>> least allow component input (but don't create real-time MPEG-2  
>>> streams)
>>> and there are also component -> SDI converters.
>>
>> Here's some hardware/software that looks like it does realtime
>> conversion between many formats.  Windows-only though:
>>
>> http://www.canopus.com/products/EDIUSNXforHDV/hardware.php
>
> And here's a company that has an open source, linux-based, hd
> capture/playback system based on those Aja cards you mentioned:
>
> http://www.lmahd.com/
>
> It's not clear whether it real-time compresses the input stream.


Lucent makes some very nice encoders. They are fed by optical GB- 
ethernet or FDDI, and can do a nice job of real-time encoding any  
video you can throw at them.

Of course you will need to mortgage your house to purchase one, the  
$50,000 figure I saw mentioned wouldn't even get you started with the  
rackmount enclosure, power supply and backplane, never mind the  
actual encoders :-)