HDV for DV Rack is here!
 

Finally!

http://www.seriousmagic.com/news/hdv_for_dvrack.cfm

Serious Magic Announces HDV Support in DV RACK!
 

Hey guys,

This being the first day of NAB, I made the rounds on a few websites to see if anyone had announced anything cool... and wouldn't you know it? Our friends at Serious Magic did... here's the link:

HDV Power Pack for DV Rack!

Sweet. Should be an awesome addition to any editor's toolkit.

Yeah...this year is killing my bank account already!

Saw it demo'ed. It's basically the same program, but now adding full HDV support, and full resolution on the monitor (you have to zoom in to see all the detail, of course). The HDV option is an extra-cost upgrade. On the system they were demoing it didn't look like it could handle the full frame rate, which is exactly what I would have expected, because hey -- the frame is over 4x as large! Of course, the faster the computer you run it on, the more real-time the display is.

Looks like they did a great job on it!

They also announced HDV support for Ultra, and they take advantage of the graphics card to seriously improve keying frame rates. They were showing real-time keying (or, well, it looked like real-time, maybe it was 15fps, hard to tell, but either way, it sure looked good.)

I know my wife's gonna leave me over this...
 

2005 will be a very bad year for me. <<HDV>> So many toys to buy! So much groveling, begging, empty promises, throwing myself to the floor, kicking my feet and having a temper tantrum because I want a new toy from B & H or EVS. I just ordered the Vegas 6 Editing Suite and now DV RACK announces an upgrade for HDV available in June!

2005: My wife threatened to leave me if I buy one more video toy.

I'm sure gonna miss her.

Wow, that's nice. But I think, to save money, I'm going to stick to renting HDV gear.

heath

Thanks Hugh, the "missing your wife" comment gave me a real good laugh. The wife wasnt too happy when when I told her what I was laughing at though.

Andrew
 

For gosh sakes, never never never let your watch catch you laughing at another man's wife jokes. You could ruin any future video toy purchases for yourself. Now you're gonna have to wine and dine her just to buy a longer firewire cable!

No Probs, I just let her buy a bag or some shoes :-)

I am pretty sure that the reason we are going to Greece this June is to balance the 60" Sony HDTV.

But since I will have fun as well, it isn't that tough a deal. And she is beginning to enjoy having the HDTV. So fair is fair.

Just buy her expensive jewelry just in case.

FYI: an HDV Rack benchmark
 

Results of camera tests with Z1 connected to PC's FW.
PC - Pentium 4 2.66GHz, 512MB RAM Laptop.
ATI Radeon IGP 345M video card.
External Firewire hard drive connected via PC-Card FW interface.

HDV to DVRack with HDV plugin via firewire:
Apx. 3/4 second latency to monitor, that is, monitor was about 3/4 second behind camera. Apx. 15fps display. Monitor in a window and monitor full screen both functional. All other DVRack functions perfect, including waveform, vectorscope, etc. Harddrive recorder recorded full framerate M2T files which were edited straight from external HD used for capture.

My conclusion - this laptop would be useful as a field monitor and DDR for interview and somewhat static b-roll. Low framerate and latency would be objectionable for action.

Thanks for the real-world benchmarks. I am considering getting one of the flavors of DVRack and opinions from a real person with a regular computer (albeit a speedy one) are worth much more than most reviews or sales brochures.

HDV Rack Flicker/Pulsation??
 

I'm using HDV Rack, trial version.

While monitoring, recording, or playing the recorded m2t clips in HDV Rack (Sony Z1u as HDV source), I can see the image visibly pulsating (changing its brightness) about twice per second, constantly.

HDV Rack's Waveform monitor also shows these pulsations, which seem to have larger aplitude in brighter parts of the image than in darker parts.

However, when the HDV Rack-recorded clip is played by any other software, there's no such pulsations showing.

Anyone knows what is this about??

I'm running HDV Rack display at half-rez of HDV, I+P frames.

I actually ran into this at NAB this year, and it was caused by using a shutter speed on the camera that was different from the flourescent lighting spilling into our booth from a neighboring booth.

What is the shutter speed on the camera?
What frame rate (60i or 50i)?
What type of lights are you using?