OnLocation vs. Canon Console
 

Hi folks:

I want to make an investment in monitoring software for the A1, and not sure which route to take. Here's my situation:

1. I want to both monitor and capture to HD. I work in a studio environment, with little if any field work.

2. I'm actually the one on-camera, but it's a technoloy program, so having a laptop in front of me during filming wouldn't look at all out of place. It would be very nice to have some camera control from the app.

3. I'm quite familiar with Adobe products. I realize that OnLocation was actually part of the Serious Magic acquisition, but I have no idea the extent to which they "Adobe-ized" it.

I attempted to get a hold of the OnLocation demo, but upon installing, it promptly informed me that my trial had already expired... strange.

So, if you have worked with with one or (preferably) both of these applications, I'd be interested in your insights.

cheers, d.

I capture HDV with OnLocation and like it, although it has its limitations. You can't use it effectively as a video monitor because of the latency. I use 20" LCD from the A1 for that.

The waveform monitors are helpful (and kinda cool).

I also use OnLocation for recording both HDV and SD to disk. With SD it works great as a video monitor but, like Brad, there is too much latency with HDV although the other monitors are useful. I run it on a laptop with a 2.2 Mhz Athlon 64 3400+ which exceeds the minimum requirements for HDV but there's just too much lag in the display. I use an inexpensive 7" LCD display from framing.

As far as being 'Adobe-ized', OnLocation is pretty much DV Rack 2.0 HD with only the name changed. The best thing that Adobe did was replace the license activation that Serious Magic started using with 2.0. It was a nightmare for a lot of people.

I haven't used the Canon Console software to make a comparision.

-Dan

Canon Console Problem
 

I just can't get this thing to work at all. I plug in my A1 and the program shows no picture at all. Doesen't even show any error messages. I have no problem capturing video to my computer so it's not the firewire connection. Any suggestions...maby windows needs updating..or MS Framework...Thanks

I can't make comprehensive comparisons, either, but latency will be an issue with HDV in either OnLocation or Console. To do proper real-time monitoring, you need to hook up a separate monitor to the camera's component out to avoid the delay inherent in the mpeg compression/decompression.

Console provides the capability to control, adjust, view, and compare most of your camera's settings, which among other things make developing your own custom presets tremendously easier. OnLocation doesn't have those kind of camera-specific functions.

Marko, there are additional steps involving camera settings that must be done precisely per instructions or the Console software won't work with the camera. Just running Setup like any other WinXP program won't do it. Try uninstalling Console and reinstalling exactly per the user manual. If that doesn't get it working, do contact Canon.

Dan, two additional questions about OnLocation:
- Is it a separate install from PPro CS3 or does it install in an integral way with PPro?
- OnLocation isn't listed on the Adobe site as having Product Activation...is that tied to PPro, does it have its own, or is OL itself free of Activation (which would be very nice, as one might want to install it on different computers than the rest of the Adobe suite, or prefer to drag different laptops to different events without having to bother with de-activation/re-activation every time).

It's a separate install downloaded directly from Adobe's website. I have other Adobe programs on my machine, but have never downloaded/installed OnLocation before.

cheers, Daniel

EDIT: Oops, sorry. I can see now that you appeared to be addressing the other Dan. I can't seem to remove the post, though...

Separate install disc
 

I have the CS3 doc and disc set and OnLocation is provided on a seperate disc with a seperate registration code. At least Adobe understands that it's very likely that you won't install OnLocation on the same system as the rest of the suite. It uses the Adobe online activation which is too bad but I've never had a problem with it. A lot of people seemed to have real problems with the third-party online activation that Serious Magic started using with DV Rack V2. Except for font changes with on-screen messages, it appears that this is the only change that Adobe did from the DV Rack V2 release.

There is not a seperate registration code for Ultra so I assume it uses the same as OnLocation since they are designed to work together. At least that seems to be the case on my laptop. I don't know if you can activate it on a second system as a backup.

-Dan

re: Canon Console
 

Thanks Pete,

I think I will contact Canon just to get to the bottom of it. Now just recently I also tried On location software and had no luck with that either which is quite sad but hey I am sure there is a very good reason why..so I'll just start from step 1 again.

Thanks

Marko