Questions about HDV rack

[Alex Raskin]

Nope - shutter is 60, I'm shooting 60i, and I was simply shooting out of the window and recording a NYC skyline.

First test was at night, another one at day time.

The same "pulsating" effect on both HDV Rack monitor and its Waveform monitor.

Weird.

[John Mitchell]

Just wondering if anyone is using HDV rack for live shooting as a monitor - I'm wondering with a minimum half second delay how you could possibly accomplish this?

I know HDV rack is for checking things like critical focus and levels (and recording to disk!), but I'm guessing that you can't shoot off it in the same way as you could with a production monitor like a Marshall or Sony?

If anyone has any experience on this I'd be interested in feedback - thanks.

[Seth Bloombaum]

I'm OK with the delay aka. latency of the HDV display to the DVRack monitor. Of course it's a little disconcerting and I wish it would be less.

But I wouldn't want to put a client in front of the DVRack monitor on an HDV shoot. I'd sooner take a downconverted DV (which still has some latency) to DVRack, or downconverted composite to an SD monitor, or HD component to a rented HD monitor.

[John Mitchell]

Thanks Seth - I was wondering how you could follow live action and I guess the bottom line is you can't - by the time you move the camera head your subject is likely to have moved even further...

[Seth Bloombaum]

Right, guess I misunderstood your original question.

You're correct, DVRack in HDV mode would be unsuitable as a primary monitor/viewfinder to move, zoom or focus camera to follow action or even very small movement of the subject.

[Marc Colemont]

It's mainly usefull to checkout the camera settings on the scopes, to verify the focus, and to capture in the background while shooting.
For real live preview, there is indeed a considering lag through the HDV protocol.

[Steven Hoffman]

Im using the FS-100 hard drive with Premiere pro and It doesnt support either of the two formats the FS-100 records in.

I was told that HDV rack would work, however, the similar Aspect HD software(free trial) does not. Im wondering if anyone can confirm that HDV rack combines well with the FS-100? Can it convert files NOT on a camcorder?(IE ones on a hard drive already)

And which formats does it support?


Any help would be appreciated.

[Marc Colemont]

Hi Steven,

HDVrack has not to be seen as a conversion tool. It is to checkout your video signal through the scopes and the possibility to record through firewire.
If you connect the FS-100 harddrive to your computer it will be recognized as a harddrive and not as a camera.
Since the new version they added a great feature, were you can drag and drop files into the HDVrack software to checkout footage without streaming it from your camera only. But this still doesn't convert your footage.
If Adobe Premiere doesn't even recognize the files from your FS-100, that's odd.
Are you using the DV mode or the DVCPro mode of the FS-100?

[James Huenergardt]

Hi,

I'm looking into purchasing a laptop for the primary purpose of running DV Rack HDV.

I'm shooting with a Z1U and want to use all the cool tools DV Rack HDV has to offer.

However, I am a bit concerned as a friend downloaded DV Rack HDV (demo version) and it crashes his new high-end Dell Laptop quite regularly.

What I don't want to do is buy a laptop (which I don't really need for anything but DV Rack) and DV Rack HDV only to find out I just spent almost $3,000 on something that isn't going to work.

Anyone from Serious Magic have any comments or suggestions?

I wish I already had a laptop that I could try it on, but I'm going to buy a laptop especially for DV Rack HDV.

Thanks,

Jim

[Richard Andrewski]

I'm not from serious magic but I wouldn't buy a software product if it crashed on a computer and you can try it out before you buy it. The real problem is that it may not be the software but the laptop that is more the culprit and its hard to take a laptop back usually once you've bought one--so you're just stuck most of the time. If you can find a way to borrow the laptop and then try the software--that's best.

[Eugene Kim]

I've read that while there is a slight firewire delay using DV Rack to monitor SD, it is more or less real time and full frame rate useable for live focus on moving shots.

However, with HDV content, I've read that DV Rack simply isn't useful for anything except static monitoring for say sit-down interviews, just too much lag...until, of course, computer horsepower catches up to the times.

Would say a Core 2 Duo, 2ghz, with 2gigs ram, and 5400rpm hard drive, with say ATI X1400 video card, be sufficient to get the lag down to a non-detrimental level, sufficient enough for live focus?

How much difference would a 7400 rpm drive make? I'd prefer 5400 for reasons of greater hard drive capacity.

[Patrick Synnott]

Not true - having shot numerous sit down and action visuals, the sytem performed flawlessly on an Inspiron 5160 laptop. Which is/was a system spec'd originally when purchased, and continues to run flawlessly with the latest HD2 update.

[Eugene Kim]

Great news, thanks for the heads up. My current laptop is right on the bubble, and I added 2gigs of ram, and a 7200rpm hard drive, I think it'd suffice until summer. At which point, I believe the core 2 duo successor should be out, hence, I think obviously a better time to buy a new laptop.

[Luiz Murillo]

I'd like to know what are the alternatives for HDV Rack and what are their prices/specs, if anyone know,

Thank you very much, Luiz

[Keith Johnston]

look at scopebox.com

its for APPLE though