Black Magic Intensity Shuttle Performance

Hey all, I'm having some trouble with what appears to be disk write performance. I have a 9 month old laptop with all the specs to handle recording and then some, but when it comes to disk performance, the disk utility doesn't recommend I do anything greater than NTSC and when I record with the dropped frames preferences on, it stops immediately. Obviously, it seems that the hard disk is the weakest link in this chain. As a result, my videos, no matter what codec I use, always look either juttery or really washed out because of interpolation.

I'm (trying to be) recording at 1080i x 30/60fps and I'm trying to think of workarounds. This hard drive is only 5400 rpm I believe, so I'm wondering what are some best practices here. 10,000rpm drives? Solid state? Is it even possible to just plug a USB 3.0 flash drive into my other slot and let it record there?

So your drive will not even sustain recording using the MJPEG codec? The MJPEG codec is only 12MB/s and should be in the range of most newer HDDs.

I have a shuttle on USB3 in one port and a SIIG USB3 to ATA/SATA enclosure in the 2nd port. The HHD in the enclosure is a 5400RPM WD320GB, that reads and writes at 40MB/s. I can record and playback to that drive just fine using the Media Express application set to MJPEG.

You may need to figure out what USB3 controller you have an make sure you are running the latest motherboard BIOS and USB3 driver. I had a down level USB3 driver that made the USB3 HDD operate like a USB2 drive. Once I updated the problem went away. You can use whatever SATA drive you want, I just had this old laptop drive available. You could even put an SSD in that enclosure if you think you need to try and get to uncompressed capture. Of course there are other USB3 external drives you can try as well.

Here is drive I am using:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136566

Here is the enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817270043

So your drive will not even sustain recording using the MJPEG codec? The MJPEG codec is only 12MB/s and should be in the range of most newer HDDs.

I have a shuttle on USB3 in one port and a SIIG USB3 to ATA/SATA enclosure in the 2nd port. The HHD in the enclosure is a 5400RPM WD320GB, that reads and writes at 40MB/s. I can record and playback to that drive just fine using the Media Express application set to MJPEG.

You may need to figure out what USB3 controller you have an make sure you are running the latest motherboard BIOS and USB3 driver. I had a down level USB3 driver that made the USB3 HDD operate like a USB2 drive. Once I updated the problem went away. You can use whatever SATA drive you want, I just had this old laptop drive available. You could even put an SSD in that enclosure if you think you need to try and get to uncompressed capture. Of course there are other USB3 external drives you can try as well.

Here is drive I am using:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136566

Here is the enclosure:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817270043

Hmm, that's odd because the disk test was giving me 62MB/s write speeds, but still said I didn't qualify for anything better than SD performance. I'm ending up with raw video files that are 250GB/hour, which seems pretty gargantuan for a codec that's only 12MB/sec.

The Speed Test is for recommendations on uncompressed recordings. Also, it sounds like you're also capturing in uncompressed, as your files come out to 71MB per second. Make sure you're selecting the MJPEG codec in whatever software you're using.

Yeah. Try using the BlackMagic Media Express application. Under Preferences, make sure the capture file format is set to "AVI Motion JPEG", and the capture audio video files is set to the right drive. You should be seeing more like 44GB/h.

Very interesting solutions, but the Black Magic Media Express software only allows me to save in Native format in H.264 MP4, it has no options for MJPEG. I'm using version 3.2.

That doesn't sound right, as the Intensity Shuttle doesn't do H.264 encoding.

It should only offer:

10-bit YUV Uncompressed
8-bit YUV Uncompressed
8-bit Motion JPEG

And if you have any NLE software installed, it may offer:

NTSC DV
DVCPro50

That doesn't sound right, as the Intensity Shuttle doesn't do H.264 encoding.

It should only offer:

10-bit YUV Uncompressed
8-bit YUV Uncompressed
8-bit Motion JPEG

And if you have any NLE software installed, it may offer:

NTSC DV
DVCPro50

Yep, you're right! I thought I was being clever not having my Shuttle attached. Ha! Thanks everyone, will check this out!