Re: Do I really need a capture card for editing hdv? Help!

The two important things you'll need to consider are not only getting your footage into the computer, but also how you'll be getting it out again. You'll need no expensive cards for getting footage from the EX-1 in, and as long as you use it's native format, you won't need big RAIDs or anything else.

Even if you want to do grading in Color (if you opt for Apple's Final Cut Studio), you can use the ProRes codec and work with a single fast SATA drive or a small RAID. I've been doing quick changes on location with a MacBook Pro (the older model with ATI graphics), a small e-SATA RAID (300,- €) and a calibrated monitor from Quatographics (about 5.000 €, my most important and most expensive piece of hardware). The director and DOP where bouncing with joy all over the place, having worked with film before…

BTW, you can work with graded ND filters and the like on a EX-1 too. It's highly recommended, considering the lower latitude of video vs. film and the massive compression. Plus, you can tweak saturation and other parameters in the camera. But with Color you can do things you could never do in a camera.

That said, you may need an output card to record onto a tape machine for delivery to clients (Matrox MXO is doing a great job), and you may want to invest into a RAID5 for 3 or 4 K$ not as much for speed, but for safety. Shooting on cards, I don't even trust these and make a backup all the time, so I'm happy with my small RAIDs.

Regards,

Uli

Director of the Institute of Media Research (IMF) at Braunschweig University of Arts