DV rack HDV or Broadcast monitor ?
 

What would be a better buy ? those Sony 14" 'D' tv broadcast monitors cost so much more than a comparatively larger screend laptop + DV rack , which seems like it can do more, barring the look of TFT screens.

Thanks for your inputs.

They're designed for two very different purposes, and, indeed, will give two very different looks, but not for the reasons you might suspect.

DV Rack does have an HD monitor module if you get the new "HDV PowerPack" upgrade. However, at today's computer processing speeds, you're not going to get full realtime display. At NAB it looked a little posterized, like maybe 15fps or so (but maybe the DV Rack guys will weigh in with exact numbers). As computers get faster that performance will increase, and eventually provide full realtime refresh rates.

A dedicated monitor will always show full realtime refresh rates. However, here's the kicker: with HDV, a monitor won't show you what your footage actually looks like! The new breed of affordable HD and HDV cameras all have uncompressed video output, so a live monitor hooked up to the component outputs will show you an HD image, but it won't show you what the post-compression footage actually looks like. This is especially important for HDV, with the potential for significant motion artifacts -- if you use a conventional monitor, you won't know whether your footage is artifacting or not. You can't see it in the LCD, and you can't see it on the monitor.

Where you *can* see it, is in the DV Rack monitor. DV Rack takes the footage after compression, so any compression artifacts, motion artifacts, etc. will be displayed on the DV Rack monitor.

DV Rack of course has many other pluses to it, such as the waveform, vectorscope, audio monitors and the direct-to-disk recorder. All of that combined make it a must-buy. But for monitoring, I think it's even more important for HDV users than it was for DV users... however, keep in mind that it doesn't give you full refresh rates on today's processors, so... it's not really a direct substitute for a genuine HD monitor.

For a fully professional shooting environment, you'd want both.

As we see laptops with hardware mpeg decoders built into the video card, you'll see these rates run up. HDV Rack *should* give you real time feedback, depending on the system. I'm getting about 20 frames right now on a VAIO Pentium 4, gig of RAM. But if the video card has a decoder built into it, and they're now starting to hit the laptop world, this should climb to full framerate/preview size.

Damn, I was about to invest in a PC laptop and get the HDV DV Rack. But, I forgot to think about actually real time viewing of HDV. It's not possible to use the laptop as a monitor? Ok, I need to re-think my purchase of a laptop.

It's real-time, it just currently doesn't provide full framerate on most laptops.

Well, without full frame rate it doesn't really sound usefull to me. I know it has the other componets though.

If the window is re-sized down to a smaller window...would that give faster frame rates??

Thanks for all the valuable input.

So Barry and Doug, a fast laptop and the HDV rack would genuinely be a little better than those 'd' TV widescreen broadcast motniors, but not by a mile, since you get slower refresh rates than actual 50i/60i fps . And those broadcast monitors that accept , say Sony Z1's video outputs thought component cables, will only give a compressed HDV look at full refresh rates, but doesn't show exactly what's ultimately recorded on the tapes then ?

Am I right ?

HDV Rack, as a total solution, would give you far more than just a monitor. I cannot overemphasize the usefulness of the disk recording feature alone -- it's incredible. And, it totally and completely removes any worry of HDV dropouts (1/2-second freeze-ups). If I could only have one or the other, I'd vote for HDV Rack.

However, the monitoring is not quite equivalent to a true HD monitor yet.

The output from a Sony Z1's component cables will only give an *uncompressed* look at full refresh rates, but will not show you what the HDV compression is doing to your footage. And that's an important distinction. If you're recording to tape (or to HDV Rack's hard disk, or to a FireStore) your footage is getting compressed, and the way MPEG compression works, that compression can be nearly transparent or it can be quite intrusive. You need to know what your footage really, really looks like, not just what an uncompressed version looks like on a component monitor, because if you're recording that footage, what it looks like on the analog outputs is, frankly, irrelevant. Only what gets recorded matters.

And the only way you're going to see what you're actually recording is through the firewire port -- whether through HDV Rack, or through some sort of firewire-to-analog converter... if someone made an HDV-to-analog-component converter (like a Miranda HDV-to-HD-SDI converter, but to analog component) then I think that would be a very valuable tool, that would let you view the post-compression footage on your analog monitor.

Barry, that's also true with any camera right? The camera out and video out outputs were always before compression. The problem which HDV seems to be the extra compression, making it more risky. But if using the HDV Rack, at no full refreshing rates, won't it be hard to catch a 1/2 second freeze up and other glitches?

Sorry for bumping up an old thread, but I'm doing research on HDV and came across this one. I didn't want to start a new thread to ask a question I could ask here.

Not necessarily. The original VX1000's analog output was traced and found to be post-compression, so what you saw on the monitor was what you'd get on the tape. Don't know about more-recent models.

HDV is by far the most-compressed digital video format yet, so compression artifacts are more likely with HDV. DigiBeta and MPEG-IMX and DVCPRO50 are much, much, much milder compression. DV has its share of artifacts, but in practical use I don't think it's ever really been an issue, regarding what-you-see-is-what-you-get. And, again, it may be that more DV cameras' analog outputs are also post-compression as well.

If using HDV Rack, there won't *be* any half-second freeze-ups. That's something that happens on the tape, and HDV Rack bypasses the tape, thus solving that problem. If you record to tape and also to the Rack simultaneously, then yes it's possible that the tape could still encounter such an error. But the freeze-up isn't a failing of the MPEG codec, it's the result of something going wrong in the actual recording on tape -- a dropout.

Where HDV Rack shines is that it shows you exactly what's going on that tape/disk. So if you have macroblocking, excessive mosquito noise, motion artifacting, resolution-softening, anything like that -- you'll see it on the HDV Rack monitor, vs. on the camera's analog outputs to a regular monitor where you won't see *any* of that stuff happening. It'll still be happening but the analog outputs don't let you see it, so if you monitor only with an analog/broadcast monitor, you won't really be seeing what you're really getting.

If your system's not fast enough, you won't see the full MPEG frame though. HDV Rack has a few "throttle controls" to keep the monitor display from using up too much CPU time, a circumstance that could lead to dropped frames on the hard disk recording. So if you really want to see the monitor in full resolution and see what-you-see-is-what-you-get, you'd need a reasonably powerful computer; SM recommends 3.2GHz or above for HDV monitoring.

Well I admit that I don't know anything about DV Rack specifically, but with any form of hard drive recording, isn't there always the chance that the disk/software/cpu will occasionally fail to keep up with the data stream and drop frames? For example, this happens with regular DV footage from time to time while capturing and printing to video, even with fast 7200 RPM drives and dual 2.5ghz G5 cpu's on the Mac.

HDV RACK with NVIDIA GeForce 6 GPU
 

Anyone have a mobile unit with the GeForce 6600 to Go or 6800 to GO cards in them. Just wondering how the PureVideo hardware decoder improves performance on HDV Rack?

I have never personally had any dropped frames from dv to my pc's & laptop. Even after over 70 tapes this year alone. I saw a demonstration of dv rack and it's tools. Seems like a great option for those of us who carry our laptops and capture/edit on the fly. I would love to try the hdv version and down the road get it.

But I guess it also comes down to individual needs/preferences too. Some people already have those tools so don't need them? Thus a good monitor is their choice.

Interesting, I have an HP Pavillion zd8K series laptop
3ghz P4 HT, 2meg L2 cache, 1 gig ram and the ATI X600 pcexpress video card with 128 meg of ram. It's supposed to have hardware mpeg decoding on it.
I know the mpeg and hdv mpeg(mt2) files I"ve played have looked outstanding, including the HD stuff I've downloaded from various camera test sites. Guess I should try to download a trial version and check it out. If thats possible.

I think it should be noted that HDVrack has an easier time with monitoring if you use the 720p HDV. Our P4 2.6 with 768mb handles it quite well. I use HDVrack on the laptop and svideo out to SD TV at the same time. Works great.
We use a firewire 800 card so I'm not sure if that plays into it or not?

How so? I use DVRack/HDV daily, and notice no performance difference between 720p and 1080i at all. I'm using a 3.06 GHz machine with a gig of RAM. (VAIO K37) Had both the JVC and the Sony cams on in Australia, noticed zero diff. Latency is the same on both when using firewire out (which is the only way you can use Rack).

Well Douglas, considering many are saying they are having problems getting full frame rate monitoring, I thought I would pass on my experience using the lower resolution HDV1. I glad your system has the ability to handle both resolutions well, but considering the HDV2 requires twice the bandwidth it is not surprising some laptops struggle at times. Heck our laptop can't even display 1080.

I'm not disputing some folks have less than perfect playback on some systems. But, your point was that Rack handles 720 "easier," which it does not. Straight from Serious Magic's tech support "Not possible, it's the same with either format" which is exactly what I experience both in production and demonstration.

From a HDD standpoint sure. But from a display monitoring angle it has an effect. That is why HDVrack has options to restrict the display for lesser systems. Being that 720p is smaller it should handle this easier than 1080 by default. Correct?

No, they display identically, in terms of size. They'll vary based on camera, sure. Color will be different, luma will be different, but that's based on what the camera says.

Get both cams, plug em' in side by side. The HD 100 doesn't display any "better" or "easier" than the HC1, A1u, FX1, or Z1. I've had all 5 camcorders in DV Rack, and can't say there is any "easier" or "better" about any one of them.

If you are referring to the fact that there are likely more laptops that are 1280 x 720 than laptop displays that are 1900 x 1200, that would be absolutely true. But Rack correctly scales the vid anyway, and playback size is no different, unless you set it up to be as such.

Well it would be my guess that one would always try to get the exact same rez for monitoring as what is being captured.
"Get both cams, plug em' in side by side. The HD 100 doesn't display any "better" or "easier" than the HC1, A1u, FX1, or Z1. I've had all 5 camcorders in DV Rack, and can't say there is any "easier" or "better" about any one of them."
Douglas your laptop is powerfull enough that it is not stressed by either. I never stated that you were going to get something magically better from 720. Its going to play it full rez or it is going to drop frames. Thats it.
I am talking about a system that stuggles with full 1080. There are many that have this problem with laptops that are higher spec than mine. Yet mine has no problem with 720. That is why HDVrack has options to restrict the monitor size. So if your system can't play full rez you can back it down. Right? So if you are trying to display 720p would this not be easier on a lesser machine that yours, then full 1080?

I guess I couldn't say. A VAIO k37 is a dog by current standards, and given that it's barely above the required minimum for DVRack with the HDV plugin and I'm not having probs with it, I suppose someone with a slower machine might be dropping frames. I can't see 720 being any better, but looking at the PROC, which tells the whole load story, the proc is displaying the same weight for 720 vs 1080 on my system. That's the only thing I can really go by.
Either way, it's really a moot point. Either your laptop can manage it or it can't. If the weight on the proc is the same, it doesn't really matter which proc you have, does it?

One thought just struck me...and I need to get the JVC back in my hands to verify this...
DVRack/HD only reads the I & P frames. Whether at full or half rez.
Therefore in theory, and Serious Magic tech support just backed this theory up...JVC's short GOP is actually LESS efficient than the long GOP of 1080 from Canon/Sony.
Whether at half or full rez, the more I frames in the decode, the more challenging the decode is.
Remember due to the lack of pixels, Rack is NEVER displaying the full signal no matter what on capture.

Are you saying your laptop doesn't display full 1080?

720p at a short GOP and 1080i in long GOP might be very much the same to the cpu, although this has not been proven out in the NLE world. It is the video system that is getting taxed. If you are not monitoring at full 1080 and 720 then comparing how the system handles it, then the comparison is sort of worthless I would think.

Note there is a new release of HDVRack that has changes to the way video is displayed on the monitor.

I'm using a Dell 9300 with a GO6800 card, 2gigs of matched ram, only a 1.6Mprocessor on board and get full frame rate and no drops to external drives.

To back up a notch or two, I think we decided on another forum that one of the best reasons to use DVRack was that you are depending on the D/A sections of the cameras to give you a true representation of what's happening in the DV/HDV digital streams. With the newer more expensive cameras this is probably more accurate than the older smaller cameras like mine, the PDX-10.

For similar reasons one wouldn't trust thier flip-out displays, one might not want to fully trust the D/A circuits in their cameras to be 100% spot on. If you watch the 1394 output with DVRack, you should be seeing a digital representation of the digital signal on the 1394 line, the real stream.

That's why I use it when I can for DV work.

Sean