Finally!

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

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! (http://www.seriousmagic.com/news/hdv_for_dvrack.cfm)

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

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

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! (http://www.seriousmagic.com/news/hdv_for_dvrack.cfm)
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.)

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.

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.

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.

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?

Nope - shutter is 60, I'm shooting 60i, and I was simply shooting out of the window and recording a NYC skyline.

First test was at night, another one at day time.

The same "pulsating" effect on both HDV Rack monitor and its Waveform monitor.

Weird.

Just wondering if anyone is using HDV rack for live shooting as a monitor - I'm wondering with a minimum half second delay how you could possibly accomplish this?

I know HDV rack is for checking things like critical focus and levels (and recording to disk!), but I'm guessing that you can't shoot off it in the same way as you could with a production monitor like a Marshall or Sony?

If anyone has any experience on this I'd be interested in feedback - thanks.

I'm OK with the delay aka. latency of the HDV display to the DVRack monitor. Of course it's a little disconcerting and I wish it would be less.

But I wouldn't want to put a client in front of the DVRack monitor on an HDV shoot. I'd sooner take a downconverted DV (which still has some latency) to DVRack, or downconverted composite to an SD monitor, or HD component to a rented HD monitor.

Thanks Seth - I was wondering how you could follow live action and I guess the bottom line is you can't - by the time you move the camera head your subject is likely to have moved even further...

Right, guess I misunderstood your original question.

You're correct, DVRack in HDV mode would be unsuitable as a primary monitor/viewfinder to move, zoom or focus camera to follow action or even very small movement of the subject.

It's mainly usefull to checkout the camera settings on the scopes, to verify the focus, and to capture in the background while shooting.
For real live preview, there is indeed a considering lag through the HDV protocol.

Im using the FS-100 hard drive with Premiere pro and It doesnt support either of the two formats the FS-100 records in.

I was told that HDV rack would work, however, the similar Aspect HD software(free trial) does not. Im wondering if anyone can confirm that HDV rack combines well with the FS-100? Can it convert files NOT on a camcorder?(IE ones on a hard drive already)

And which formats does it support?


Any help would be appreciated.

Hi Steven,

HDVrack has not to be seen as a conversion tool. It is to checkout your video signal through the scopes and the possibility to record through firewire.
If you connect the FS-100 harddrive to your computer it will be recognized as a harddrive and not as a camera.
Since the new version they added a great feature, were you can drag and drop files into the HDVrack software to checkout footage without streaming it from your camera only. But this still doesn't convert your footage.
If Adobe Premiere doesn't even recognize the files from your FS-100, that's odd.
Are you using the DV mode or the DVCPro mode of the FS-100?

Hi,

I'm looking into purchasing a laptop for the primary purpose of running DV Rack HDV.

I'm shooting with a Z1U and want to use all the cool tools DV Rack HDV has to offer.

However, I am a bit concerned as a friend downloaded DV Rack HDV (demo version) and it crashes his new high-end Dell Laptop quite regularly.

What I don't want to do is buy a laptop (which I don't really need for anything but DV Rack) and DV Rack HDV only to find out I just spent almost $3,000 on something that isn't going to work.

Anyone from Serious Magic have any comments or suggestions?

I wish I already had a laptop that I could try it on, but I'm going to buy a laptop especially for DV Rack HDV.

Thanks,

Jim

I'm not from serious magic but I wouldn't buy a software product if it crashed on a computer and you can try it out before you buy it. The real problem is that it may not be the software but the laptop that is more the culprit and its hard to take a laptop back usually once you've bought one--so you're just stuck most of the time. If you can find a way to borrow the laptop and then try the software--that's best.

I've read that while there is a slight firewire delay using DV Rack to monitor SD, it is more or less real time and full frame rate useable for live focus on moving shots.

However, with HDV content, I've read that DV Rack simply isn't useful for anything except static monitoring for say sit-down interviews, just too much lag...until, of course, computer horsepower catches up to the times.

Would say a Core 2 Duo, 2ghz, with 2gigs ram, and 5400rpm hard drive, with say ATI X1400 video card, be sufficient to get the lag down to a non-detrimental level, sufficient enough for live focus?

How much difference would a 7400 rpm drive make? I'd prefer 5400 for reasons of greater hard drive capacity.

Not true - having shot numerous sit down and action visuals, the sytem performed flawlessly on an Inspiron 5160 laptop. Which is/was a system spec'd originally when purchased, and continues to run flawlessly with the latest HD2 update.

Great news, thanks for the heads up. My current laptop is right on the bubble, and I added 2gigs of ram, and a 7200rpm hard drive, I think it'd suffice until summer. At which point, I believe the core 2 duo successor should be out, hence, I think obviously a better time to buy a new laptop.

I'd like to know what are the alternatives for HDV Rack and what are their prices/specs, if anyone know,

Thank you very much, Luiz

look at scopebox.com

its for APPLE though