skytoast
Videomaster
The Blackmagic Intensity card will probably be the best one for you. It's decent card at an affordable price {relative of course compared to other Professional solutions out there but it has gotten cheaper} and works with both PC or Intel Macs. I've been using it since it was first released a few years ago across 3 different PC platforms - Windows XP, Vista 64 and now on Win7 64. And contrary to the above post, I have no issues with the card with an i7 system. Just make sure you have a decent rig to handle HD if that's what you want to capture - basic specs like at least a dual core system, plenty of RAM (as much as you can throw at it), and large fast hard drive. Because of the already stated above requirements for HD, it would be ideal to use a disk array (RAID-0 or equivalent) - or at the least a dedicated scratch drive just for video capture. Either way, its best to have your operating system and apps on the main drive - then at least have separate drive(s) dedicated just for video capture. Otherwise at the data rate required for HD capture you may run into problems (drop frames, crashes, etc) because your capture feed in trying to write to drive will be competing to share resources with your operating system and applications slowing the whole process.
Another thing to note - Soul Calibur IV's highest resolution is natively 720p @ 59fps (60p). 1080i or 1080p for this particular game is upscaled by PS3/Xbox 360. Not that this will be a problem but something to note.
I use Cineform a lot with my workflows but it probably wont be practical for you because the codec package alone will cost you more than capture card (and possibly your computer too) depending on which one you get (NeoHD/4k/3D ~ProspectHD/4K discountinued~ cheap NeoScene wont work for capture solution). It's great that it can cut down size of uncompressed HD down to about 15%-20% of original size. It's not only a codec however, since now with latest version, there is an added layer attached to each video file (metadata) that allows you to perform color correction, tweak levels, white balance, hue, contrast, etc on the fly without rendering or making any permanent changes to the original file. This saves me a whole of time working on projects but again you probably wont need this if you just want to capture. Be warned however, as an avid user of Cineform, every now and then I have had to deal with an occasional headache getting it to all work properly because they are always adding new stuff and tweaks. Their support is excellent if you run into issues and for the most part it runs great. But you may run into occasional glitches every once in a while after updates - dont ever update in the middle of a project. But yes, when it does work, the codec and what it has to offer is GODLIKE.
Capturing uncompressed video is well... you can't get anything better than that. But again, the hardware requirements and drives space is pretty demanding. The supplied MJPEG will probably be decent enough to work with. Infact, I did some comparison tests recently with the updated firmware, software drivers and codec updates from Blackmagic. My opinion of MJPEG use to be CRAP because it had some pretty bad aliasing issues, jaggy edges along fine lines especially with titles and such. But I went back and played back some old MJPEG comparison video captures and they actually look really good using the latest driver/software package from BMD. I'm not sure what has changed, but under Win7 64 it looks really good. Gone are the obvious jagged edges. I still need to do more testing and I'm not sure if BMD implemented a better decoder (whether software or hardware driven), using graphics acceleration components (Nvidia CUDA) or if its something different under Win7. But I had to check it twice, three times that I was actually playing back the correct file making sure it was MJPEG and not uncompressed, Cineform or another intermediate equivalent.
If you got a Mac, you're set (well maybe). Cuz you can use Pro-Res supplied with Final Cut Pro.
You may be wondering why not just capture directly to MPEG 4, H264, xvid or some other popular codec? Well yes you can do that but there is difference to what these codecs are used for. These are distribution codecs and heavily compressed giving them the advantage of smaller size for playback on media, DVD/Blueray, the web, etc. There is some sacrifice to quality but you can still get a really great picture (i.e. Blueray MPEG4) depending on settings. The problem is to do all of this in realtime with the current state of technology would even require greater hardware and system requirements (especially at HD resolutions/quality) because of all the calculations your computer needs to do to optimize and efficiently encode the moving images used by the codec. Try encoding a full DVD movie tweaked with optimized settings to small H264 mp4 file. Depending on your system, it'll probably take a while. Want to edit a bunch of high quality H264 files in Premiere Pro? Forget it, at the present time, it'll bring the best systems to a crawl. Decoding the finished product is easy since all your computer has to do is read the data during playback. That's why intermediate codecs such as MJPEG or Cineform are used. It's easier on your system.
Also, I'm assuming you're going to be capturing these and possibly displaying these somewhere like on the internet? Well if that's all you want to do, then you can probably get away with cheaper solutions. Sure it wont be as pretty as 1:1 or near it. But it wont matter. Even after getting all this gear, your video will probably get encoded multiple times before people see it somewhere like on Youtube since these sites will encode it again using their formats. Sure the quality is decent now that lots of site offer "HD" but it'll be nowhere close to what it looks like on your HD TV screen. But if you want that kind of quality to archive or do something more creative then the Intensity Pro is a good option.
Another thing to note - Soul Calibur IV's highest resolution is natively 720p @ 59fps (60p). 1080i or 1080p for this particular game is upscaled by PS3/Xbox 360. Not that this will be a problem but something to note.
I use Cineform a lot with my workflows but it probably wont be practical for you because the codec package alone will cost you more than capture card (and possibly your computer too) depending on which one you get (NeoHD/4k/3D ~ProspectHD/4K discountinued~ cheap NeoScene wont work for capture solution). It's great that it can cut down size of uncompressed HD down to about 15%-20% of original size. It's not only a codec however, since now with latest version, there is an added layer attached to each video file (metadata) that allows you to perform color correction, tweak levels, white balance, hue, contrast, etc on the fly without rendering or making any permanent changes to the original file. This saves me a whole of time working on projects but again you probably wont need this if you just want to capture. Be warned however, as an avid user of Cineform, every now and then I have had to deal with an occasional headache getting it to all work properly because they are always adding new stuff and tweaks. Their support is excellent if you run into issues and for the most part it runs great. But you may run into occasional glitches every once in a while after updates - dont ever update in the middle of a project. But yes, when it does work, the codec and what it has to offer is GODLIKE.
Capturing uncompressed video is well... you can't get anything better than that. But again, the hardware requirements and drives space is pretty demanding. The supplied MJPEG will probably be decent enough to work with. Infact, I did some comparison tests recently with the updated firmware, software drivers and codec updates from Blackmagic. My opinion of MJPEG use to be CRAP because it had some pretty bad aliasing issues, jaggy edges along fine lines especially with titles and such. But I went back and played back some old MJPEG comparison video captures and they actually look really good using the latest driver/software package from BMD. I'm not sure what has changed, but under Win7 64 it looks really good. Gone are the obvious jagged edges. I still need to do more testing and I'm not sure if BMD implemented a better decoder (whether software or hardware driven), using graphics acceleration components (Nvidia CUDA) or if its something different under Win7. But I had to check it twice, three times that I was actually playing back the correct file making sure it was MJPEG and not uncompressed, Cineform or another intermediate equivalent.
If you got a Mac, you're set (well maybe). Cuz you can use Pro-Res supplied with Final Cut Pro.
You may be wondering why not just capture directly to MPEG 4, H264, xvid or some other popular codec? Well yes you can do that but there is difference to what these codecs are used for. These are distribution codecs and heavily compressed giving them the advantage of smaller size for playback on media, DVD/Blueray, the web, etc. There is some sacrifice to quality but you can still get a really great picture (i.e. Blueray MPEG4) depending on settings. The problem is to do all of this in realtime with the current state of technology would even require greater hardware and system requirements (especially at HD resolutions/quality) because of all the calculations your computer needs to do to optimize and efficiently encode the moving images used by the codec. Try encoding a full DVD movie tweaked with optimized settings to small H264 mp4 file. Depending on your system, it'll probably take a while. Want to edit a bunch of high quality H264 files in Premiere Pro? Forget it, at the present time, it'll bring the best systems to a crawl. Decoding the finished product is easy since all your computer has to do is read the data during playback. That's why intermediate codecs such as MJPEG or Cineform are used. It's easier on your system.
Also, I'm assuming you're going to be capturing these and possibly displaying these somewhere like on the internet? Well if that's all you want to do, then you can probably get away with cheaper solutions. Sure it wont be as pretty as 1:1 or near it. But it wont matter. Even after getting all this gear, your video will probably get encoded multiple times before people see it somewhere like on Youtube since these sites will encode it again using their formats. Sure the quality is decent now that lots of site offer "HD" but it'll be nowhere close to what it looks like on your HD TV screen. But if you want that kind of quality to archive or do something more creative then the Intensity Pro is a good option.
