Ah, I didn't know that. I was under the assumption that it was a
full resolution preview. I still have to check out a demo of DV Rack,
time is just so limited on my end. If they downsample you are
ofcourse loosing resolution indeed, that's obvious. Thanks for
clarifying that for me Barry! Much appreciated.

Your extraction makes sense as well, of course!

Hi Tim,

Please go to START - Run and type in "Dxdiag." Then Click OK. This will bring up the DirectX Diagnostic Utility. Click the "SAVE ALL INFORMATION" button, and save a text file of your system information. Then, copy and paste it here, or e-mail it directly to me.

The behavior you are seeing definitely isn't the norm - you should be seeing full frame rate video. It's possible that the drivers for your Intel card are out of date, and are causing the weird behavior. We'll be able to see for sure when you post or e-mail me the diagnostic.

Question About DV Rack Activation
 

If I activate DV Rack on my note-book computer and my desk top editing system 1 and later change my mind and decide I want to activate it on my desk top editing system 2 instead of system 1, can that be done?

If so, How?

Thanks,
Danny Fye

Hi Danny,

As a registered user of the software, you can move or transfer it around as you wish. There are some built-in allowances, and if those are exceeded, you just need to call or e-mail us (activate@seriousmagic.com is a direct e-mail for activation issues) with your information, and we'll get things taken care of.

They're offering the same $200 rebate on Ultra, their chroma keying and virtual set product.

Good luck.

Dennis

I love VEGAS
I Love DV Rack

I don't Love VEGAS 'and' DV Rack together.

Why??

DV Rack timecode does not work with Vegas yet.

Waiting on the fix.

- Shannon W. Rawls

More Details
 

Okay!

We've installed our DVRack software on our production laptop, and switched the capture mode to QuickTime. We did some capture off our Panasonic DVX-100A in 24PA mode... and unfortunately we did not get any better results.

Again, the error message in Final Cut Pro is "Found no clips to remove Advanced Pulldown from!"

Any other thoughts on this?? Might I send you a small test file and have someone check it, or do you not have access to Final Cut Pro over there?

Thanks for any help!

You may want to consider contacting Serious Magic's support
directly, it may take a bit of time before they see your post here.

DV Rack Hardware Suggestions
 

I've been searching for an affordable laptop to run DV Rack based on two considerations:

1) Do I want to just buy a laptop that comfortably runs DV Rack -or-

2) Do I want to buy a totally blown out laptop that can handle any future endeavors (which of course, will make my out of pocket cost increase significantly).

Can anybody here tell me what minimum (and more affordable) laptop configurations you are using that smoothly runs DV Rack without any glitches whatsoever? I am going to make my purchase this week and I would like to make an informed decision.

Thank for you help!

Playback from editor using DV Rack
 

I was capturing video using Adobe Premiere Pro earlier today using a Sony GV-D1000 connected via firewire and when I was previewing the video it also previewed on the Sony DV deck. I had the idea to connect the firewire to a laptop that had DV Rack installed so that I could use the Field Monitor, Vectorscope and Waveform Monitor so get more information but to my surprise DV Rack did not see the video signal coming from the firewire. After a call to Serious Magic Tech Support I was informed that this configuration would not work due to the way Windows handles two computers connected via firewire, it wants to make a network connection and not a A/V connection. I searched the Internet for a "Black Box" that has to two firewire ports where the "Black Box" would act as a A/V device and not a computer but came up empty. Has anyone solved this problem or know of a solution.

Hart,

You can put a version of DV Rack on the computer you are capturing to OR... Buy an external firewire hard drive (or put an internal hard drive in an ADS firewire box) for the laptop. Be sure to have two firewire ports. Connect the GVD-1000 (I have one of those myself) to one port and the hard drive to the other port.

I use an OrangeMicro two port firewire card in my PCMCIA slot. Used it for almost a year before I built my editing computer.

Hope this helps,

Dan

I bought the app today, look forward to testing it against hardware scopes...

Hart: I have no idea what you are talking about exactly, especially
these lines are confusing:

"I had the idea to connect the fiewire to a laptop"

what is the firewire? Firewire is a protocol, cable and ports.

"DV Rack did not see the video signal coming from the firewire"

again, same thing

Can you better describe what you are trying to do exactly?

When I am editing in Adobe Premiere Pro and have the MiniDV deck connect to my system via firewire and scrub through a clip not only does the clip preview on the computer screen but it also previews on the MiniDV deck which then I have a Sony CRT connected to so I can see the colors correctly and actual picture as it will be viewed on a TV screen. There are settings in Premier Pro that control this. Instead of connecting the MiniDV deck I wanted to connect my laptop with DV Rack loaded on it so I can utilize the utilities (Field Monitor, Vectorscope and Waveform Monitor) for better picture analyst. The problem is that when two Windows systems are connected via firewire the automatically make a network connection and therefore DV Rack does not see the A/V signal. To possible solve the network connection I was hoping to add a box between the two computers that would fake windows into not making a network connection and just pass the A/V signal thought the firewire allowing DV Rack to see it.

You want to use a second computer to see the *OUTPUT* from
the *FIRST* computer on which you *EDIT* with DV Rack?

If so that will not work, no matter what you put inbetween.

However, I'm not sure why you would want to. If I'm not mistaken
Premiere Pro includes a vectorscope and waveform monitor (at
least my Sony Vegas does), so you should not need DV Rack while
editing.

If you really must (to check) I would work with vector/waveform
in Premiere, then do a print to tape to the DV deck. Then close
Premiere and load up DV Rack (on the same computer, no need
for two) and start playing the tape and DV Rack should show
you want you want to see.

p.s. I don't see how Dan's solution will work in your case, since
the computers will still see eachother.

I misunderstood your use of DV Rack. I thought you wanted to usit while capturing, but after re-reading your post, I see you want to use it in conjunction with Premier Pro. As Rob said, I'd use the vectorscope and waveform monitors in Premier Pro.

My original reply was for capturing the video from the GV-D1000, which you could do using the laptop with DV Rack on it. My suggestion was to capture to an external hard drive connected to the laptop, observing it in Dv Rack, then connect the external hard drive to your editing computer and importing to Premier Pro.

I haven't gotten my Dv Rack yet, (on back-order) but I understand it is for checking the video as you shoot it. This will help you make corrections in the camcorder settings to get good footage.

Dan

I downloaded the rebate and was reading it over, I'm starting to wonder if I'm to late to get in on this deal.


It says,

• Purchase one (1) copy of DV Rack between February 1, 2005 and March 31, 2005.

• Complete and mail this form with the original UPC bar code, a copy of the DV Rack receipt dated between February 1, 2005 and March 1, 2005.

• All requests must be postmarked by April 30, 2005.



How can a person purchase a copy of DV Rack between February 1, 2005 and March 31, 2005 and mail a copy of the DV Rack receipt dated between February 1, 2005 and March 1, 2005. Looks like if you purchased it after March 1st, your out. On the other hand, at the top it says you have till March 31 to purchase it. Have I missed something here or is this a type -o- ?

This is indeed a typo. Where it reads "March 1, 2005," it should be "March 31, 2005." Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We'll have a corrected form posted asap. Just to be safe, it's probably best wait and use the corrected form--the folks at the rebate redemption companies can be terribly literal even when they know better.

Thanks for the information Mark!

All fixed. Thanks again for pointing out this oversight.

DVC Pro HD and DV Rack?
 

You've got to figure at some time soon that DV Rack will come out with an HD version of their DV Rack software. Talk about a cheap way to get true and clean HD! Combining it with the P2 camera everyone here is all astir about would really rock. I doubt Panasonic would be able to give an answer to this, but theoretically would it be possible to pass DVC Pro HD down from a camera like this through firewire 800 to a laptop to use an HD version of DVRack?
Of course, DV Rack is PC only right now, so that might be a problem.
Anyway, just wondering how doable this might be. Any thoughts are appreciated!

Total speculation at this point. However, one thing I can point to is that desktop firewire editing of DVCPRO-HD is here already -- both Apple and Avid support importing the footage from a DVCPRO-HD firewire-equipped deck.

So is it unreasonable to assume that DV Rack could also import that same firewire signal? Complicating things is that the DVCPRO-HD data rate is 4x as high as the DV/HDV data rate, 100 megabits vs. 25 megabits.

Then you have the frame size to contend with; 720p is about 3x as many pixels per frame as DV, 1080i can be as many as about 6x as many, and 720p is also about 6x as many total pixels per second than DV is, so you'd either need an *extremely* fast computer, or be willing to put up with slower performance (5fps for 720p vs. realtime for DV, for example). That's a tradeoff I'd take, I'd rather have the option than not have the option! Especially because as computers become faster, the playback rate automatically will be better...

In short, I bet it's do-able, but not necessarily practical right now unless people are willing to accept 5fps playback rates, and scaled-down monitor preview. I'd love to see them develop it though!

Thanks, Barry. Sounds like things are a ways off. Perhaps when multicore processors come out it will be easier to get decent playback. Of course, PC laptops would also need to incorporate firewire 800, which I don't believe any of them do right now. Perhaps things would be easier if the firewire from the camera was able to work like the P2 cards are said to and only send the bandwidth you are effectively using. So if you were working in 24p, you'd only need to send 40 megabits instead 100.
What about some kind of workaround? Could you take the component out of the camera, pass it through a transcoder like the Canopus ADVC-500 and go firewire out to a laptop? I'm guessing not as the ADVC-500 seems to be limited to SD resolutions. I'm also guessing that when the new P2 camera comes out that it won't be able to downconvert to SD, and if it did, you'd be missing the point of checking HD signals.

The DVCPRO-HD data stream is theoretically capable of being transported over a regular firewire system, 100 megabits isn't all that much, you shouldn't need FW800 for that.

We don't know if the camera will support firewire streaming at all, first of all. Second, if it does, we don't know if it supports streaming just the unique frames (i.e., 40 mbps out of 100mbps for 24p) or if it transfers the entire 100mbps. If it can support just sending the unique frames, that would be well within the capability of current firewire technology.

However, the processor speed issue is still going to affect it. I mean, the people at Serious Magic have done *amazing* work in getting the program to display color-corrected, zebra-clipped, aspect-ratio-converted DV at 60 fields per second -- that's quite an accomplishment, but doing so at six times as many pixels would be tough. Of course, 720/24p wouldn't be six times as many pixels, it'd be a littel over twice as many pixels... hmm, that might be in the realm of do-ability!

Someone get Serious Magic on the phone... :)

Remember that DVCPRO HD is undersampled to 960x720 and 1280x1080, so you would not be dealing with full frame HD.

All HD recording formats currently available undersample the frame (HDCAM = 1440x1080, HDV=1440x1080).

So there would be less raw pixels, yes, which would help improve performance some, but then it'd have to be upsampled for display because most (all?) computer screens use square pixels, so it might net out the same. Actually might net out more in favor of speed, as the smaller frame means the manipulations (for color for the monitor, for adding zebra etc) could be done on the smaller frame size, and then up-rezzed once for display!

Very cool, thank you both for your responses. Seems like it is or will soon be theoretically possible. We just have to get the Panasonic and DV Rack to talk!

Oh, I'm sure they already are. Jan at Panasonic has started a special bundle deal where they're including DV Rack with a camera bag, I think they call it the "Serious Production" bundle. So there's an existing relationship, hopefully this will lead to a DVCPRO-HD and DVCPRO50 version of DV Rack!

Experience with Ultra (Serious Magic)
 

I'm intrigued by the teleprompter functionality of Ultra but wonder how convincing the results are, given the small print (forced proximity to the screen) and separation of camera lens and, say, laptop screen. Can anyone with experience of it comment on whether that aspect of its capabilities is up to the purchase price?

David Hurdon

I use it for lot's of my productions. Unlike NLEs, Ultra doesn't care if you're using a wrinkled or poorly lit screen...it just works.

For the BG prompter, I make a motion BG and add my title to it and span it for the length of my green screen shot. When I get to Ultra, it just drops into the BG without any problems and looks pretty convincing.

As if that wasn't good enough, I did a wedding and did interviews with my green screen. Without thinking, I had the bride hold up her boquet to conceal her handheld mic. When I got it into Ultra, I figured that the bride shot was going to be worthless since I had shot it with her green-leafed boquet in front of her....you know, Ultra was able to cut the screen, but leave the boquet untouched!

Ultra lets you select multiple shades of green to key out of your BG...so it doesn't matter if it's unevenly lit, you can just set 25+ key shades to knock out.

How can DVRACK capture to a 4200rpm drive? (this is for my personal knowledge base)
 

How can DVRACK capture to a 4200rpm drive? (this is for my personal knowledge base)

I was reading on their site that it can capture video to disk no problem even with a 4200rpm drive...

How does this work? I always thought I needed a 7200rpm to be safe.
I am curious for my own personal-knowledge-base as to how this is possible.

Thanks

Actually the speed at which a hard drive spins is not a requirement to record correctly, it is just an indication of the actual preformance of the drive. The faster it spins, the faster it can read and write. But this is just a marketing spin, if I may.
The actual number you want to know, that is never published by hard drive manufacturers, is the speed at which the hard drive reads and writes data. DV requires 25 Mega BITS per sec, that is 3.1 Mega Bytes (Let's say 3.5 with all the extra needed to make it an AVI or a QuickTime clip). As long as your drive can sustain more than this rate then recording will be successful.

Actually a lot of factors play in computing the rate at which a drive can read and write. It's density, geometry, bus speed, rpms all play their role. It ends up beeing almost impossible to give a real number, especially that the rate will vary depending on where the data is located. The best way is to test, but nowadays, most 4200 rpm hard drive will sustain 5 MB/s without a sweat.
On the other end, drive are slow to seek to different locations on the disk, this can make a record fail if a drive is seeking too often (as when your drive is all fragmented). A drive that advertise a 10ms seek time will be able to seek (and just seek) 100 times a sec (3 times a frame). If recording requires seeking more than 2 times per frames, the drive will not be able to sustain the required rate.
Fortunately it is very rare that a drive needs to seek that much and as long as you record on empty space, very little seeking is done.
There's also a special buffer scheme implanted in DV Rack to allow long burst of seeks and slowdowns without loosing recorded data.

There's free tools out there that you can download (sisoftware sandra for example) that can evaluate your drives and tell you how fast they are.

Keep your drive defragmented and all will be fine.

Note also that recording is not all you do with your hard drive. After recording you will playback and scrub your clips, and there seeking is king, so if you want a pleasing scubbing experience, then invest in a fast one.

Benoit is quite right (and welcome to DV Info Net, Benoit).

4200rpm is perfectly suitable for straight capture or direct recording from the camera. I've done it myself many times; back when the FireStore FS-1 was new, I worked a trade show exhibit at DV Expo west for Canopus to demo the FireStore and we used a 4200rpm Lacie PocketDrive for that. It performed flawlessly.

On the other hand, DV *real-time editing* generally requires 5400rpm. Most folks these days use 7200rpm drives because they're more affordable now than they were before.

>>DV rack for HDV?
 

Does anyone know if/when they will make DVRack for HDV????

It is a fantastic program.... and would love to see it for HDV...


thanks,
BRENT

Now THAT WOULD BE SWEET!!! TO be able to capture HiDef .m2t files direct to your laptop computer while connected to a HDV camera...and be able to do the same monitoring that DV Rack provides????

I would be a sure buyer!

- ShannonRawls.com

What kind of processor speed u think is needed???

Does anyone know if they are working on it???


B

We've been hounding them for ages now.

DV RACK FOR HDV PLEASE!!!!!!
DV RACK FOR HDV PLEASE!!!!!!

Pretty please with sugar on top!

DV RACK FOR HDV PLEASE!!!!!!
DV RACK FOR HDV PLEASE!!!!!!

I'm sure they're working on it. As for processor speed... considering an HDV frame can be 6x as many pixels as an SD frame, I'd imagine that you'll need a massive processor or even dual processors. Or, the alternative is that it'll just run at less performance (i.e., updating the monitor at 10fps, something like that). As long as the recording is flawless (and with the data rate being the same as DV, I'm sure the recording will be the same) I'd live with a slower refresh rate on the monitor for the ability to record HDV to disk.

Yeah... have it have the option of full speed with a powerful proc.

or slower refresh for older comps

but recording has to be flawless

Hey Brent, can you drop me an e-mail with details extoling the virtues of DV Rack based on your personal experience?

Invfraudguy@yahoo.com