Possible to use laptop as external recorder?

GravitateMediaGroup

This may be a dumb question, or it might open up some ideas (but I'm sure a million other people have thought about this) Is it possible to use a laptop as an external recorder? If I had to guess it would not be able to boost 8bit to 10bit and higher bit rates. Obviously this wouldn't be a great idea for documentary style shooting, but for long events it may come in handy.

andyharris

I used to use a M-Audio interface on a MBP direct into garageband for audio. It worked perfectly.

The reason I stopped was the sheer wear and tear on the Mac Book. Not a good thing to have on set!

Meierhans

Its quite easy. Either get a lappy with USB 3 and the Blackmagic Shuttle, or same way but via thunderbold, or as mentioned above via Expresscard slot. What you can do is to record in a (visually) lossless codec like Cineform. You wont be able to stretch 10 bit outta 8 bit output from GH2, nor will the quality much better than 24H. Actually you dont gain much beside when shooting 25 FPS.

GravitateMediaGroup

What would it take for a laptop (and a laptop only) to be able to give you the goodies that most external recorders are giving now days (higher bit rates, 10bit + color, and so on) I'm pretty sure this ISN'T possible just yet, but just for fun what would it take? I'm sure it would require some crazy hardware, but if the laptop was top of the line could some serious software pull of the job?