Blackmagic Design announces affordable Thunderbolt HD video capture solution by VR-Zone.com
Apple has always had a claim to fame when it comes to its computers and video editing, although with the industry moving towards HD, the good old FireWire interface is starting to show its age and the camera support is dwindling. However, it seems like Thunderbolt is ready to come to the rescue, at least if you don't mind capturing video the old fashioned way, via the video output on the camcorder.
Blackmagic Designs new Intensity Extreme is a fairly simple device in terms of looks with what appears to be only four connectors, all of which are located on the front. Naturally it has a Thunderbolt port, but it also sports a pair of HDMI ports, one for input and one for output and finally a breakout cable connector. The breakout cable adds component video in and out, a coaxial S/PDIF/AES out and stereo RCA plugs for audio in and out. That's it as far as we can tell, although the specifications don't mention if a power adapter is required or not, which may or may not be the case.
If you start to look at little bit closer, the Intensity Extreme looks near enough identical to Blackmagic's Intensity Pro PCI Express card and we wouldn't be surprised if all the company has done is to stick the PCI Express card in an external enclosure with a Thunderbolt chip in it. The feature set is identical between the two products, although the Intensity Express is of course only compatible with Mac's that have a Thunderbolt for now.
With Apple's lack of support for the AVCHD standard and several other HD video standards, the $299 Intensity Extreme might still prove to be popular with Mac users, as although it can only do real time capturing, it might be as fast as having to re-encode your video into a suitable format for editing on a Mac. The Intensity Extreme will be available later this year and it is as far as we know the cheapest Thunderbolt video capture solution out there.
Source:
Blackmagic Design