The Z1 also lets you crop the edges for a 4:3 display, rather than letterbox.

hey karl, i know this is a little off topic... but have ya'll added or can you add feature where you can capture the image flipped 180 for us homemade mini35 adapter users? or is it as easy as making a plugin for the program itself?

again, sorry for the off topic post.

I'll check with the programming team, Cody. I don't have any information on this request right now.

Excellent! Thanks for all your replies.

Andy

Pat, you're right on with your assessment of the PCMCIA card being a separate resource. This would be similar to having two 1394-PCI cards in one's pc.

Besides the increased performance of your PC, there are several other factors which all contribute to the good experience you are having with your Lacie drive and X31:
1. The 320GB drive is 7200 rpm - much faster than the drive in your X31.
2. The Lacie probably has an 8MB buffer which will smooth any "moments" when the drive is busy seeking while video data is being captured.
3. Having a capture drive separate from your system (OS & app.) drive means one can better control how busy the drive is.

I've recently seen "maximum data rates" on drives upwards of 70GB/sec. This far exceeds the data rate of 3.5MB/sec for video capture. The point being there's plenty of margin for "marketing fluff" and the reality that data rates across a drive are not constant.

DV Rack trial and record issues
 

Hi,
I recently downloaded SM's DV Rack (the trial version) and whenever I attempt to record via the recorder, the image just freezes on the screen. Is there a fix to this particular issue or am I doing something wrong? My system specs are listed in my signature.

DV Rack also records only for 5 seconds for some reason and after that it says 'Recording Stopped'

Looks like it was a corrupt install. I just reinstalled it and all is well :D

Hey Pat
 

Where did you get that laptop from?

Enough Juice For DV Rack?
 

I have an older laptop that is in great shape all things considered, and I have wondered about running DV Rack on it. I was looking at the requirements on the Serious Magic web site, and I meet and exceed all except for processor speed. This thing has a PIII 796 MHz and I am thinking that this will be the end of my hopes. I really just want the ability to monitor video, and could care a little less about capturing strait to the HD.

Will this thing even run DV Rack? And if so, would I see video at the full frame rate?

You should get acceptable results for monitoring with that CPU. I'm pretty sure we tested with an 800 MHz processor back way back when and it ran okay for monitoring. Recording was another matter. I suggest that you download the free, full-function trial to see for yourself: http://www.seriousmagic.com/dvrackdemo.cfm. Monitor your CPU usage while running DV Rack--if it approaches 100%, then turn off some of the other components. The Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope will buy you the most headroom.

Incidentally, a new trial version should be available within the next week. It'll have HDV support and an option for showing both frames, which allows 1:1 pixel display in the Field Monitor. Your laptop will certainly not work with HDV, and it may choke on displaying both frames.

Hi Rez Monitor in DV Rack
 

Does this mean hi-res monitor upgrade is close behing?

Yep. At least that's the plan. It took some pleading to get a DV Rack update wedged into our R&D schedule, and if I find any major new bugs then we will probably defer the update because the lead developer on DV Rack has higher priorities right now. So keep your fingers crossed and send some good vibes our way and we may have the update released in the next week or two.

Awsome, Thanks!

Getting camera TC onto HDVRack clips
 

Per the DV rack documentation, I should be able to get camera (Z1) TC onto the M2T that racks DVR records - but no dice. DVR seems to indicate shot duration only.

Pulling clips into Vegas and dropping timecode media fx on the clip also indicates that the clip starts at 0 tc instead of my camera preset TC that concurrently recorded tape shows...

Can't think of what I'm missing - bug? Anyone gotten this to work?

***********************
Edit:
Working fine with DV, non-functional with HDV. Anyone got camera TC on their HDV recordings on DVRack?

I've been wanting to do that for a while--and I know this isn't your direction--but this is what I did:

I own a GL2, so I set the camera to record the display overlap onto the actual tape. Then, instead of using native 16:9 recording mode, I used the title mix function to overlay the 16:9 bars--however, I shifted it downward so the two bars were together at the top. That way, the timecode, plus whatever information I desire (project title, scene title, all can be changed within Photoshop and reuploaded into the camera via laptop) can be put in the unused area. Then once I've finished editing, I simply export the film to avi, open a widescreen project, and scale it to fit the widescreen frame with the info bars cropped. Deelicious.