Canopus Eduis 3.0 Vs. Liquid Edition 6.0 For HDV Capture and Real time editing. Which do you prefer if any?

joel

<<<Canopus Eduis 3.0 Vs. Liquid Edition 6.0 For HDV Capture and Real time editing. Which do you prefer if any?>>>

Between these two Liquid Edition is arguably a more advanced program, but Edius gives you a choice between "native" or high-quality editing codecs which can be useful, plus you can buy Edius with the NX for HDV hardware for better real-time capabilities. You may also want to consider Adobe Premiere Pro with the Cineform Aspect HD plugin, which appears to be the most efficient choice if you only have a single-processor editing system. (Both Edius and Liquid Edition reportedly need dual processors for effective results.)

noway on the aspecthd you got to render before you import i hate that, i wish i could edit natively in ppro 1.5 thats why i am shopping around. i think at this time i will be going with canopus edius 3.0.

I am currently using LE 6 for SD. I have played with some of the converted M2T video and it was slow until I set my project to 1440 height. Then it would play a single timeline in the preview with effects in RT. Still have a lot of work to sort out my habits vs settings for HD. Need to figure out why I keep putting SD transitions in instead of HD cross-fades. I never got a satisfactory WMV-HD export - trying to sort out the Profile Editor (WMV's) and Export using the profile before I needed to get back to work on video projects.

As far as capture goes, that remains to be seen. From those who have, they were using Live to capture from the Sony instead of IEEE1394. Don't know if this is resolved by SP2 (XP) though. SP2 ships with the PnP inf for the Sony and JVC HD cameras.

There are some 'interesting' 'features' in LE6 involving imported stills and rubberbanded audio (I think there is a fix for that one). SP1 for LE6 is looking like March and should resolve some of the issues (but I do not know of any that are not lacking a workaround).

<<<-- Originally posted by Joel Corral : noway on the aspecthd you got to render before you import i hate that, i wish i could edit natively in ppro 1.5 thats why i am shopping around. i think at this time i will be going with canopus edius 3.0. -->>>

The transcoding for Aspect HD is reportedly near-realtime on a sufficiently fast computer, and Edius may have a similar issue if you opt to use the Canopus "HQ" codec. That said, I've been using Edius for my DV editing and like it, although it lacks a few of the more advanced features of programs like Pinnacle LE and Adobe Premiere Pro.

If you do go with Edius, decide beforehand whether you want the "NX" hardware, as it's apparently not a straight upgrade to add the hardware later. If you can afford a good dual-processor computer with PCI-X slots and the Edius NX package, that's a pretty much unbeatable combination in terms of real-time HDV editing capability.

My friend at a Toronto t.v. station received Canopus over Christmas - I offered to help chip in for a rental of an FX1 - we're on our way to grab it now.

Will report in a few hours - may also be posting in "HDV editing" forum.

cheers.

well i just spoke to a colleague that uses liquid edition pro on a P4 3.2 Ghz with 1 gig of ram and 500 gigs hdd space. he cannot get the program to capture from the HDR-FX1. it will start and then it will stop with some kind of error message. at this point i am glad i wont be using liquid edition.
i don't have time for messing around to make thing work right.


joel

>>i don't have time for messing around to make thing work right.

Hey I really don't mean to be rude but ... I had a chuckle at this. We are talking about a camera system that has only been out a few weeks and doesn't even come with its own capture software.

It may not be entirely realistic to expect to be editing RT HDV on a personal computer without at least a LITTLE 'messing around'!

<<<-- Originally posted by Joel Corral : well i just spoke to a colleague that uses liquid edition pro on a P4 3.2 Ghz with 1 gig of ram and 500 gigs hdd space. he cannot get the program to capture from the HDR-FX1. it will start and then it will stop with some kind of error message. at this point i am glad i wont be using liquid edition.
i don't have time for messing around to make thing work right.


joel -->>>
You need to use Live.

Go ahead and chuckle i can guarantee canopus will work just fine.

i don't mind playing around with software configs but i do mind hardware configs. if a company is ready to release a product they'd sure better get it right. canopus installs drivers upon software install for the HDR-FX1 and windows recognizes the HDR-FX1 as a Sony D-VHS player. Liquid edition does not! That’s the difference.

Joel

live???? i don't understand is that a setting in liquid edition?

Hi folks.

Here's the early assessment of Edius v. 3.1 latest without NX realtime or any other Canopus card (ie. software only)

Capturing HDV through firewire DOES NOT work in Canopus. It craps out after a few seconds, drops frames, brings in artifacts, stops capturing.

Couldn't capture 3 minutes, 15 sec. in Edius - had to use CapDVHS which worked flawlessly.

Edited m2t in Edius - nice to do transtions like dissolve, render out m2t off course as HDV 1080/60i means my pentium IV 2.4 GHz is thinking about it...

But now we have "edited" m2t that should match in quality to original with dissolves/fades etc. - how to get back to HDV tape so we can watch via component out through FX1 on HDTV and compare? That is the question!

Seems HDV print-to-tape option will only work if you have realtime hardware (ie. edius sp or NX or whatever)...

Any body here get any edited HDV back to HDV tape?

Okay, Canopus is da bomb!

Capture utility has Mpeg ts writer component into which you load rendered HDV 1080/60i - print to tape is flawless!

This is AMAZING!

my crappy pentium IV single processor 2.4 GHz, 500 MB RAM etc. did the job, with a bit of "crunching."

No errors.

Will now try to see if I can get capture utility to work more flawlessly...

Canopus is now 98% - more later

well i got edius installed and had absolutely no problem capturing from my HDR-FX1, works in real time the thing that lags is the timeline marker kinda lags when playing video. Haven’t play anything back out yet, but i'll bet it will be flawless as the capture was.

way better than AspectHD because i can edit natively!

so i am very happy with my decision to go canopus thus far!

<<<-- Originally posted by Mark Kubat : Okay, Canopus is da bomb!-->>>

yes they are. !!!!

<<<-- Originally posted by Joel Corral : live???? i don't understand is that a setting in liquid edition? -->>>
Live is one of the logging options along with IEEE1394.

I read a few months back tha JVC was doing a European tour demo'ing the new Canopus Eduis software to promote the 30p HD-10 cam for the PAL market. Apparently they were highlighting the 30p to 25p conversion using that setup with excellent results. Does anyone know anymore of this? Maybe there is a preset or something that is especially configured.
I assumed the results must be quite nice if they were using it to promote a non PAL cam.

Ken, I tried while I had rented FX1 in possession to write out 720/30p m2t in procoder express back out through firewire to FX1 - no dice, a message came up saying "invalid input" - this despite the fact that JVC stuff shot in HDV1 mode SHOULD play out through FX1 according to FX1 manual (yeah, but I guess that doesn't include sending the stream to cam by firewire trying to record to it)...

I tried just for heck to render out 720/25p PAL streams to send back to NTSC FX1 *in case there is such thing as magic* - that didn't work.

So I think we'll have to wait for the Z1... All you can do with NTSC FX1 is write back 1080/60i 29.97...

Procoder express 2 with Edius 3 has a number of templates that theoretically allow you to go from one "flavour" of HDV to another - for instance, you CAN convert FX1 NTSC 1080/60i 29.97 to 720/25p HDV1... I am thinking this may be potentially cool way to use Z1 to get filmic look.

In fact, I am betting that this in fact is the entire strategy to appeal to filmmakers who want 24p type cadence - give us ability to convert to 25p (PAL) within same cam and voila, you have best of both worlds...
cheers.

I can report the Edius NX is a great product, the only caveat is the computer has to be pretty impressive to make it work. Dual Xeon 3.2, server board, etc.

I would recommend buying the complete package that Canopus sells.

On the Pinnacle product, I tested it at DVExpo. When I started in the Non linear Editing world, it was with Fast's DPR. When they got around to offering a multi layer solution, and plug in transitions, the would need to be rendered, and there was always a chroma and luma shift.

Well, Pinnacle LE does the same thing. Not totally surprising, Pinnacle software is based on Fast Electronics code, so .....

For this reason I would not recommend using Pinnacle.

Hope this helps

DBK

<<<-- Apparently they were highlighting the 30p to 25p conversion using that setup with excellent results. -->>>

real simple, you can change the frame rate of any clip in edius using the clip properties dialog box in the bin

<<<-- Originally posted by Joel Corral : well i got edius installed and had absolutely no problem capturing from my HDR-FX1, works in real time the thing that lags is the timeline marker kinda lags when playing video. Haven’t play anything back out yet, but i'll bet it will be flawless as the capture was.

way better than AspectHD because i can edit natively!

so i am very happy with my decision to go canopus thus far! -->>>


Now try this... Convert the transport streams to the Canopus HQ HD codec and then compare them side by side. You shouldn't see a quality difference but you WILL see a huge performance increase when using the HQ codec.

There is no visable difference when you use the Canopus HQ codec. There is a difference in performance.

The trick here still is that you need to buy the right computer. I'm still tweaking mine, but the more high power you can throw at it the better.

Stick to Canopus's recommendations for Mother Board, Videocard, etc.

Put a little more money into a 64bit SATA controller, and add more drives to improve the kick.

I'm still looking at the memory. I'm using 1 GB, might expand to 2

The Canopus system does rock for the production studio.

DBK

I am using Premeire Pro and Vegas now but looking to get something more powerful like the Edius NX or FCP.

What advantage would Edius NX have over FCP HD?

<<<What advantage would Edius NX have over FCP HD? >>>

For purposes of HDV editing, Edius NX gives you a more efficient workflow, more choices of how to edit the footage (using different codecs), better real-time performance and real-time HD output monitoring. FCP HD can't even input HDV footage without using a third-party tool to convert the footage to the DVCProHD format, wich reduces the horizontal resolution and is reportedly very time-consuming. On the other hand, FCP HD is ultimately a more advanced editing program than Edius, so if you don't mind the workflow issues it's got some benefits there. I personally wouldn't use FCP HD to edit HDV footage at this time, but maybe when Apple releases the next update they'll finally have a decent HDV solution.

P.S. For about the price of a good G5 PowerMac with some basic upgrades and the FCP HD software, you could put together a complete Edius NX workstation with impressive real-time HDV editing capabilities. It's like back when Canopus released their "DVStorm" for DV editing, which put all Mac-based DV editing solutions to shame in terms of real-time performance. (And still does a full four years later.)

I understand that Edius NX is the best real time solution but I am concerned about plug ins. I like to use Magic Bullet and some other plugins so I guess I would not be able to use most of them (or any of them) with Edius.

To be honest that is my main concern even if it sounds trivial.

Greg: with Edius you may have to export to other programs for advanced editing touches, but there are Canopus users who do this regularly without any problems. Still, if you already have a functional workflow using FCP HD and related plugins, you may be better off sticking with that for editing HDV.

Right now you can get a great deal on Edius Pro 3.0 by buying the 2.5 and upgrading to the 3.0. I just ordered and this will only be available until they run out of their 2.5 inventory. Only difference you don't get the trial application cd, keyboard, and contest entry promotion/offer that you get when you buy the full version.

I am about to build a NLE workstation based on the Canopus NX for HDV
(been editing in a laptop...bored enough of renders).

I´m shooting SD till the end of 2006 (estimate) but am wanting to build a "long-lasting" system.

Simple question: Do you think this is enough to keep me from upgrading for a while?

Motherboard ASUS P5AD2-E Premium
CPU Pentium4 550 3,4GHz LGA775
RAM 4*Kingston 512 Megas DDR-II 533
System Drive 2*Western Digital Raptor 36.7 GB 10,000rpm (RAID0)
Storage Drive 3*Western Digital Sata 200 GB (RAID5)
DVD-R 3*NEC 3520A
Graphics Asus GFN6600GT
Display 2*BENQ T903
Canopus Edius NX HDV

Thanks

<<<-- Originally posted by Paulo Figueiredo : I am about to build a NLE workstation based on the Canopus NX for HDV

Simple question: Do you think this is enough to keep me from upgrading for a while?

Motherboard ASUS P5AD2-E Premium


I don't know the motherboard, but I would suggest:

1. Use the MB that Canopus suggests
2. Make it a dual MB, even if you only use 1 processor right now

The dual gives you much more RT power.

Good luck

DBK

Paulo: if you use Edius NX with that motherboard you'll only be able to edit in SD, not HDV. To get the HDV features of Edius NX you need a motherboard with a 64-bit PCI-X slot, which is not the same as PCI Express. So as someone else said, you really should get one of the motherboards listed on the Canopus web site, and while you're at it you might as well get dual processors. But if you have no plans to edit HDV for another year or two, you might be better off just buying a DVStorm and putting that in the system you described.

By the way, I do much of my DV editing in real time on my laptop using the Canopus Edius software, which is pretty efficient even without hardware acceleration. When I really need better real time results, I move the project over to my DVStorm setup. This is a very handy combination.

Thanks for the advice Kevin and Darren.

Despite my 3 month long searching/analisys of the different NLE solutions I missed that 64bit PCI issue.

I am putting the dual CPU's aside (budget goes very high with those).

So you made me think of going with a "step upgrade" solution: right now i'm building the system stated above with no extra card (as it seems it will handle most of the SD realtime editing needs) and ia a year or two I'll go with a HD camera and capture card.

Do you think it's wise?

Thanks again everybody for the great forum...it sure helps a lot!!
also learning a lot of ways to spend time I dont have...35mm adapters and home-built stabilizer project on the way :)

I hope Edius is worth it. I'm beginning to wish I had gone with a different program. Maybe the program will be good but the customer service sucks. I'm on hold now at about 35 minutes as I type.

I requested 2nd day air when I ordered. It even stated ship second day air on the packing list, but they shipped it ground. It came on a Friday and I installed it Friday night. It took a few hours to get it installed, registered etc. I briefly checked it out and imported a few clips from my JVC HD10. It was very late and I didn't do anything else.

I tried to use the program Saturday and I get the registration expired notice. I tried reinstalling but the same thing happened again. I'm still on hold at 40 minutes. My program serial number and activation code match but don't work.

At this point I would never recommend anyone buy this product because of the custormer service. I'm going to hang up and call the sales line. I bet they answer immediately.

Well, I called the customer service line and as I thought they answered immediately. Told me I would just have to wait for tech support as Monday is a heavy day. Also told me that the software is unreturnable. They can hire enough people to sell the product but not support the product.

I wish I had gone with a more reputable company.

Randall: I've heard other people complain about lack of service from Canopus, but they have some good people there if you can manage to get ahold of them. I've been using Edius for a while now and have come to like it a lot, especially its ability to do significant real-time DV editing even on my laptop. If for some reason things don't work out with Edius, I'd suggest you look into either Sony Vegas or Adobe Premiere Pro. Those would be my two top choices if I was looking for another editing solution, based on what I've read about each of them.

Edius was the first product we got at our indie t.v. station in Toronto when migrating to HDV. We thought, oh, okay, this is what HDV editing is like - my own station is a bit sub-par for HDV: 2 GHz Pentium IV, 1 Gig RAM, 128 Mb Graphics, etc...

We then upgraded our Vegas to 5b and Premiere Pro with Mainconcept Mpeg-pro HD (supporting HDV) and test-drove Connect HD from Cineform...

Cineform avi's play more "choppy" in Vegas on said system than original m2t does in Canopus! Premiere Pro - also more "lacklustre" than Edius in terms of navigating though the timeline, trying to edit with some sort of "pace."

Ultimately, we know we'll have to be upgrading the hardware a bit. But really, if Canopus can play so "smoothly" on said crappy system, what are the coders at Adobe and Sony doing wrong? Or, to look at it the other way, I'm glad the coders at Canopus are doing something very right!

Deinterlacing in Premiere Pro correcting 1080/60i to 29.97p is AMAZING and we do it as a final "run through" to give HDV a more filmic look...

Really, not to seem to trash Cineform - it's a great idea - but with all the "inconvenience" of converting and storage to allow for intermediary codec route, we were expecting an avi that "plays" as effortlessly on said system as a mini-dv avi does now... To kinda get a "taste" of what Cineform does, render out in vegas a mini-dv avi as "uncompressed" and try to play it back in realtime on the timeline - that is sort of like what you get. We were hoping Cineform would be the way to go to "cheat" to get HDV to be editable on a system that doesn't meet the common specs for m2t editing being bandied about (3 GHz, dual Pentium IV, etc.) but alas...

We understand that Edius is a bit buggy - but we're impressed that ver. 3.22 came out so quickly... Most of the issues we discovered were re: capture but to be honest, a lot of the apps are having trouble - seems like freeware capDVHS is the way to go for now and definitely, definitely, Edius renders out 1080/60i HDV faster on said system compared to other two apps...

Edius isn't THAT bad!

Cheers!

To clarify, just want to say we're not using Edius NX or SP or anything like that - just Edius ver. 3 standalone... so all comparisons with other apps for us have been on "level" playing field...

Cheers again!

If you are not getting smooth, realtime editing from Cineform AVI in Premiere Pro 1.5 then you are doing something wrong if you have the minimum requirements. I have a 3GHz PC and it runs as smooth as butter.

With an old 2GHz PC, if Edius works better for you, go for it.

But if people can afford a new camcorder for over $3K, then I would assume a new PC can not be too far behind. For most people anyway.

Well after some more phone waiting I talked to Tech Support about the expired message for Edius 3. He emailed me a program called ACcheck which I ran and it fixed the problem. Everything seems to be working now but I won't have time to start learning the program before this weekend. At least its working now.

I have an AMD XP2500, with Canopus DVRaptor RT2 normally edit with Premiere 6.5 or Premiere Pro 1.5. I now have Edius Pro3 to learn for editing HDV , choosen partly because it also works with my DVaptore RT2 for DV editing. With my XP2500 Edius capture will not work probably because it has a preview screen and my XP2500 cannot process all this data in realtime. CapDVHS will capture just fine and I tend to agree that it seems the best at this time for capture. Edius will not also playback m2T but once converted to Canopus HQ with Procoder will play/edit just fine. I really will get a more powerful system but will try and wait till this summer. Transcoding to HQ took Edius just about as long as Cineform took to encode the m2t . Playback of the intermediate codecs of both are fine on my XP2500 ( I know it is way below the spec for HDV editing). My dealings were very good with tech support as I also had a problem with activation code. I have been a Canopus user for many years now, DVRaptor, DVRaptorRT2 and have always had good service.

Ron Evans

What are the advantages, if any of the Edius system over AspectHD (NLE preference aside)?
The harware requirements seem awfully high on the Canopus end, where Cineform just needs a 800+fsb and your rocking. Even lower memory bandwidth sytems perform well.

Hi Ken.

My specs are posted higher up in the thread - I think Canopus is playing it safe with recommended/minimum specs to make sure people who are used to getting by editing mini-dv don't expect comparable performance for HDV...

That being said, I'm very happy with the performance of Edius on my low-end editing station... I'm using it now for my "basic" HDV editing - the JKL jog-shuttle works quite well playing back the HDV preview onscreen in semi-real-time, rather than "stuttering" along. Of course, I'm editing native m2t's - so that alone to us is an advantage in terms of time, disk space...

Aesthetically, I like Sony Vegas the best - I'm used to editing in it. Nothing is easier than just overlapping clips in timeline to create easy, nice automatic crossfades/dissolves...

There's alot to be said too for the mainconcept mpeg-pro HD (1.05 ver. supports Sony HDV) in Premiere Pro...

As mentioned, Canopus seems to render out fastest and nice touch with procoder 2 export built-in to Edius is you can export out to VOB's immediately if you want to burn to DVD ASAP...

I'm surprised by Ron's comment - I AM editing native m2t in Edius 3 timeline without transcoding to HQ codec... Maybe Ron is alluding to real-time playback through the Raptor out to a monitor-preview via firewire? Certainly on the "computer" you can play out your basic clip in realtime - of course, the better your specs, the better your performance in terms of layers and titles etc...

I'm still having trouble with activation. I have to run the ACcheck program each new calendar day to reactivate the program. Probably easier to run the program than to deal with tech support wait times again.

Randall.
My activation problem was with my Serial Number not being in the data base. They sent me an email a few days later and when I then tried it responded correctly giving me an activation code and registering correctly.
For Mark. I cannot play m2t on my AMD XP2500 ( which is really a 1.8Ghz processor ) the preview screen just displays "stop playback" after a few seconds. Same problem as when capturing and I am sure now it is a problem with my processor/motherboard ( MSI KT600 board) not being able to decode fast enough. This is true whether or not I monitor through the DVRaptor RT2, just PC screen or motherboard 1394 to DHR1000 then to TV/Monitor.

Ron Evans

Mark - did understand you to say that you used Edius 3.1 with an ohci compliant firewire and managed to get hdv into a P4 system, edit in RT and then export hdv via firewire to tape?

I've used a NX, and found it impressive - editing hdv is just like editing dv on my DVREX-RT system using the fully configured NX on a Xeon system. I'm trying to determine if Edius 3.1 can work as a software only hdv solution. Can it capture, convert to HQ codec, edit with some RT using HQ, and encode to M2V which can be exported to the FX1/Z1? Any feedback is much appreciated.

Derek, alas, no...

BTW, there are clearly capture issues with Edius with re: to HDV - I thought it was my sub-par specs but visiting Edius forum at Canopus, everyone is in the same boat....

I capture via CapDVHS freeware.

I edit in Edius.

I render out a downconvert to mpeg-2 SD DVD via procoder express, etc.

I have not yet tested firewire out to cam - I'm always editing way after the fact, so to speak, and we are a digital t.v. station broadcasting mpeg-2 program streams - so now need to go back to cam...

Well, other than that, I'm happy...

I think Edius "standing alone" would need a lot of muscle behind it to perform as you're hoping - I understand now why everyone is talking these crazy specs for HDV... that being said, I think you're one of the "smarter ones" - if I recall the posts at Canopus forum correctly, Raptor dudes are having good luck with Edius while some of the other cards are more iffy....???? The forum there is the best - are you on it? If not, join it - you will benefit tremendously (not to take anything away from here - there just isn't as big a group of Edius users here, that's all! :))

Hope this helps...

Cheers!

<<< I'm trying to determine if Edius 3.1 can work as a software only hdv solution. Can it capture, convert to HQ codec, edit with some RT using HQ, and encode to M2V which can be exported to the FX1/Z1? Any feedback is much appreciated. >>>

As I understand things based on comments on the Canopus forums, the NX/SP hardware doesn't directly accelerate the editing process but rather helps with things like real-time HD monitoring and upscaling and downscaling between various formats on the timeline. If that's true, you should be able to do effective software-only editing with Edius Pro 3 on a sufficiently powerful computer, provided you don't need the features described above.

But since most people interested in HDV seem to want HD monitoring, that's an important consideration. With the possible exception of Pinnacle Liquid Edition 6 Pro, no one else currently offers an out-of-the-box solution for HDV editing with HD monitoring. And there's no way Liquid Edition can rival Edius for performance on any given computer setup, since they're editing directly in the HDV format--which is very processor intensive.

Ummm - I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. As a long-time Canopus DVREX-RT user, this doesn't surprise me. Hardware solutions tend to be more stable, faster and offer a lot more than software-only solutions.

<<< I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. >>>

Thanks Derek. I've heard mixed reports on whether the LE6 breakout box is capable of true HD output, but your experience seems to be the norm for that product for now. So I'd agree that Canopus is ahead of everyone else on this point, and deserves a lot of credit for offering this feature. And like I said before, even if LE6 did have real-time HD monitoring, it couldn't possibly rival Canopus for HDV editing performance because of the codec differences.

You suggested that Edius NX is capable of doing batch capture of HDV footage--is that correct? I was under the impression that no one currently offers proper batch capture of footage from the Sony FX1, and I know a lot of people who would love to hear otherwise. Can you give more details about this?

Sorry - bad syntax there - sadly Edius does not support batch capture either, but does support monitor output and export to tape. Strangely, Ulead MSP does support batch capture from reports I've read, which proves that it CAN be done, even by a minor NLE player.

<<<-- Originally posted by Derek Serra : Ummm - I tested LE6 for a week on a Dual Xeon 3.4ghx extreme system and we couldn't even get the fancy Ferrari-designed breakout box to work! Apparently it DOES NOT offer HD monitoring when it does work. It also cannot export to tape yet, or batch capture hdv footage. At present the NX is the only solution that does. As a long-time Canopus DVREX-RT user, this doesn't surprise me. Hardware solutions tend to be more stable, faster and offer a lot more than software-only solutions. -->>>
Actually, I think it is Porsche Design Studios... ;)

There have been issues with Firewire (I remember comments on out not working yet). I would not run a Firewire connection through it anyway. Firewire -> USB -> Computer? It never made sense to me.

Plus, Pinnacle does seem to admit to the press that native firewire from the Sonys is not working yet. The 6.1 patch is supposed to fix it.

Yes, rumour has it that LE6.1 will support HDV batch capture and export to tape - I'm not sure about external monitoring though. I do know that for some reason it's difficult to get a third party video card with TV out to work with it - only the expensive pro box sort of works, if you don't have a hardware clash as others have reported.