Magwell capture

Skulpture

Anyone used of these? USB3 HDMI capture.

http://www.magewell.com/hardware/dongles/xi100dusb-hdmi/xi100dusb-hdmi_features.html?lang=en

Looking at @michel in particular :)

DusX

Looks very interesting.

Skulpture

Yeah there is an SDI one (with in and out) also. Google tells me there is nowhere to by in UK though... hmmmm...shame.

keftaparty

Hi Graham, it's more expensive than a blackmagic equivalent. Do you see anything better on this one than on the Blackmagic shuttle ?

Skulpture

I am just interested in the automatic HDMI detection stuff. I dislike how BM stuff makes you select from a drop-down list and stuff.

At my latest gig in Glastonbury I just needed plug and play and I don't feel BM stuff is up to it 9although I have just bought one)

I like that it's USB3 - a bit more flexible and user friendly perhaps?

I can't find much about it in regards to mac though only windows.

DusX

If it makes find your signal easier, that would be great.
My experience with BM is that you don't always now that you are getting from a video card (HDMI standards?), and finding the magic settings can take a good while.

Skulpture

I find the I/O numbers jump around. Don't know if it was a bug with the old beta I was using but we had input 2 showing input 3's live feed. I think blackmagic numbering system is weird. Too many brackets and dashes, etc know what I mean?

Fred

technically USB 3 has just enough bandwidth to capture HD (it should come in uncompressed and then be compressed by your cpu if needed). USB3 capture cards are pretty picky with their chipsets, many usb3 chipsets don't give full bandwidth so if you want to get uncompressed input (as opposed to using it in USB 2 mode which will give you a compressed H264 stream you have to decode to use).

This unit also has onboard processing which means you will get a compressed stream (it seems to suggest you get an option for this ie sending compressed or uncompressed but it is unclear)- this is great for recordings or viewing, as soon as you need frames (as we do for Izzy or any processing) there is a lot over overhead decompressing the signal- in this case Blackmagic gear (or anything that send uncompressed video) will give you a good performance advantage (but as above you really need the full USB3 bandwidth to make use of this which most laptops do not offer). I see this with logitech HD USB 2 webcams, in full HD as they send a compressed signal that must be decompressed as it comes in the frame rate drops significantly.

As for reliability with blackmagic inputs, they are super reliable but Isadora is still using very old technology to capture. If you use them with current technology (actually it is now a few years old so we are a little behind in izzy- unfortunately it also contains the GPU decompression that would make these kinds of capture units useable) ie. AVFoundation capture they are perfectly reliable (actually I have no trouble with them in Izzy either - there is just a hitch that in SD they default to NTSC but Izzys setting save function can get by this). In general however I see much better performance with AVfoundation based capture (keep up to date drivers?? I am unsure what problems you guys experience with the BM gear - mark recently updated to a less archaic capture method to allow for the new retina webcams this would MAY have given you an input ordering change, as do some of the updates to BM drivers - very few of them and different hardware models also changes the input numbering but without changing the drivers or capture libraries it is rock solid- I hard coded it into quite a few apps and they run every time). As for the video card settings, BM takes broadcast video standards but admittedly they do not have a good EDID control stack on their HDMI inputs, having said that across a large number of macs and PCs I have never had any trouble feeding BM gear as long as you know what you should be sending to it and send the right thing- just basic settings.

At any rate it would be good to test this device- I would guess as it is quite new it is also created to make use of current technology to decode its compressed stream (not the outdated quicktime or QTkit frameworks we get in Izzy). Does not look so hopeful for Izzy right now though.

primaldivine

I had a support ticket from someone today that reports using one with the latest mac beta, and it was working well according to him.
This is the model he had: http://www.magewell.com/hardware/dongles/xi100dusb-hdmi/xi100dusb-hdmi_features.html?lang=en

Michel

@Skulpture no I have never used or heard of this one :-).

keftaparty

@Fred :

I personnaly never had ay problem with the usb3 chipsets and Blackmagic gear.

With pre-Haswell CPUs, you need a NEC chipset.

For Haswell ( and I hope future ) CPUs the integrated usb3.0 ports work for me with Blackmagic hardware.

Can someone confirm for mac hardware ?

Mehdi

primaldivine

This is a useful forum link for info on the Blackmagic USB3 compatibility with PC laptops that were early adopters of USB3 etc
http://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4277

Alexserrano

Hi

I am using one of those and works perfectly. Really plug and play. No problems on detection at all.

best

nick

These places looks promising

http://www.streaminghardware.co.uk/magewell/100DUSB_HDMI.asp

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Magewell-XI100DUSB-HDMI-Video-Capture-Dongle/dp/B00I16VQOY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429952053&sr=8-1&keywords=magewell

http://www.zenvideo.co.uk/magewell.htm

One of the amazon reviews suggests it may perform in exactly the way you need - change video input res gives brief pause and then video resumes