Thanks Boglein, thats what I was looking for.. but I'm surprised to find very little in english.
thmaster1 I got it for a lot less, and the seller was friendly. Those specs were both attractive and off putting. Ironically Grass valley at the time was promoting it as a 'budget' card with some unusual options no other card could offer. But nothing else was in its class at the time (or price range.. at the time).
The Canopus HQ was not so much the definitive reason I was interested in the card. But its much more interesting than DV.. and its not
Huffyuv or Lagarith..(on the other hand its embedded hardware compression).. it is more in the Huff and Lag class of codecs though. It captures 4:2:2 not 4:1:1 in NTSC hence why it looks more interesting than DV.
It came and went according to the Expandore website that used to track all things Canopus very closely, at a time when every manufacturer was offering their own proprietary intramediary codecs.. per usual around 2010-2011 squarely targeting XPx32 and Win7x64 -- its 1x PCI express (!?!)
outside the US the cards still go for over $400, I got this one from inside the US
also per usual for the time.. it has a custom capture app dedicated to this card based on DirectShow
the HQ codec also has a generic DirectX redistributable to allow software decompress and compress, so things like Adobe Premiere or any third party could in theory use the HQ codec
its a strange and interesting mix
very strange.. at the time H.264 hardware compression on a capture card was rare, but not that elusive
it seems to fill a niche between DV and direct to H.264 capture before many people gave up and just went full on uncompressed capture or straight to H.264
at 5:1 (5 to 1) compression for DV or HQ versus 20:1 (20 to 1) compression for H.264 its chief difference appears to be that it was 4:2:2 instead of 4:1:1
that it supports SD and audio sync management may be what keeps it currently viable, if not expensive and hard to find
I could see how this would compete with Matrox LE on Windows or Aja IOHD on the Mac with their proprietary intramediary hardware / software codecs
too bad there was never a hardware assist
Huffyuv or Lagarith 'generic' capture card.. i dislike lock-in
but
i dislike huge uncompressed files as well
i. guess.
I am developing a respect for Ingest intramediary codecs, that I never had before
I thought.. meh.. don't need them, uncompressed or try not.. go straight to H.264
maybe its time to let that simpleton 'fuzzy blanket' go
Actually I ('like') that they call out and specifically stated CGMS-A, CGMS-D, Macrovision and HDCP will not record.. better the devil you know.. as compared with "maybe it will.. maybe it won't"
If those CP systems are a known problem.. it also appears there are known work arounds.. if appropriate