I want to capture video from my Hero3 directly to my iMac hopefully using HDMI

I will have this moved to the Final Cut forum for you as that would be the most likely place for you to get an answer.

I use FCE (older version) and would have no idea if you can do what you'd like.

You will need an HDMI video interface to connect between the camera and Mac using Thenderbolt

Blackmagic Design Intensity

I don't think you can ingest your GoPro's clip files into FCPX using HDMI. That's just a way of connecting video a playback engine to a video display. You must copy the files through a USB connection, WiFi, or pop the card into an external reader.

Blackmagic software is used to transfer to the Mac, not FCP X

Gary Scotland wrote:

Blackmagic software is used to transfer to the Mac, not FCP X

I do not believe the OP will understand the difference.

I believe any Blackmagic interface you buy comes with "Desktop" software (and other drivers) to install. Blackmagic Media Express is part of the software bundled on the installer DVD. Media Express will capture and organize your media. Probably the most cost effective interface is the UltraStudio Mini Recorder (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009D91314/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s01?ie=UTF 8&psc=1 — watch the video on the first customer review).

USB2 is WAY too slow to handle HD anything (so is Firewire 800, sadly). You need a fast drive (or RAID), at least USB 3 with a high data transfer (read/write) rate. I recommend building your own "fast drive" with a USB3 drive enclosure and a 500GB (you can maybe get by with a 240/250 GB) SSD. You should expect a write speed above 300MB/s and a read speed about or above 400MB/s with a USB 3 configuration (eSATA will be a little slower on the read speeds.) A thunderbolt drive enclosure would be better, but they're hard to find and still rather expensive. [Don't be fooled by the advertising. A lot of drive manufacturers that make Thunderbolt drives make a big deal about the 10Gbps "interface speed" — but there is no way a conventional "platter" style hard drive can deliver that kind of performance— it will still top out at about 120MB/s if you're lucky. The fastest drives are SSDs (solid state drives) and even they will bottleneck the thunderbolt interface. A thunderbolt interface would be excellent for a RAID 0 drive cluster though, if you can afford the setup.]

fox_m wrote:

I believe any Blackmagic interface you buy comes with "Desktop" software (and other drivers) to install. Blackmagic Media Express is part of the software bundled on the installer DVD. Media Express will capture and organize your media. Probably the most cost effective interface is the UltraStudio Mini Recorder

Way cooool. We had hugely expensive BM cards in our old MacPros. This little doodad looks like a great and affordable replacement. Thanks for the link.

fox_m wrote:

USB2 is WAY too slow to handle HD anything (so is Firewire 800, sadly).

Curious, why do you feel FireWire 800 is not sufficient?

FireWire 800 is 800Mb/s (100MB/s), Even if you need to use the heavy ProRes codecs -

ProRes 4444 @ 29.97 1080 is 330Mb/s (41.25 MB/s)

ProRes 422HQ @ 29.97 1080 is 220Mb/s (27.5 MB/s)

both well within Firewire 800 capability.

When I have to edit on location I routinely edit ProRes HD off a portable 2 drive raid connected via FireWire 800 with no problems.

MtD

Meg —

The key word in your last sentance is "raid". All my FW (800 and 400) are single platter. Not all have the same internal performance. Counting only the FW800 drives, the LaCies I have outperform the WD drives by about 10-20%. The WD has a write speed of 68MB/s and a read speed of only 42.5MB/s (which is quite disappointing for what is actually a newer drive than my last LaCie.) While this might be fast enough for capturing ProRes, it's very little headroom and according to the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test, not fast enough for anything other than SD (PAL and NTSC.)

I don't know why the math doesn't quite work out, but in general, a single spinning HD is usually not a good medium to use for recording/capturing HD video (the possible exception being a good fast internal drive [Fusion].) Perhaps I'm just passing along a general shared ignorance.

David —

it is a *very nice* little piece of hardware... once you get it set up. It defaults to SDI input, so once you set it up, go into System Preferences > Blackmagic Design and switch the input source to HDMI.