I use it every week, although not to its fullest potential. I use it to record our church service, so although I initially payed close attention to the scopes, I'm pretty much on auto-pilot with it now since little changes in the venue. I've got the version that came with CS3 and haven't yet tried the new (CS4) version to compare.

Rick

Wow...the whole Adobe CS4 suite looks incredibly powerful. When you look at what you get with the Master Collection package, $2500 seems very economical. Premiere Pro alone is like $800 MSRP, although you can get it for $300-400 on the street though.But still, for 17 apps...$2500 isn't too bad, if you need all of that stuff. At $1700, the Production Premium probably has everything you'd ever need, unless you had to cover delivery for *any* media possibility.

But man, think of the time it'd take to learn those applications, if you didn't have some experience with them! Out of curiosity...how long would a production package like that, Apple's Final Cut Studio, or even SCS's (Vegas Pro, DVDA, Cinescore, Sound Forge and Acid) be a viable tool? I would think a person could use the suite for 2-3 years, at a minimum? After that, there would be enough new features in other products that you maybe have to upgrade, just to keep pace...

TB

I would use it regularly on location shoots if it were available as stand-alone software, but I'm not about to buy the Adobe suite just to get OnLocation.

Too bad they don't sell it separately.

Jack

I was just lamenting on how nice the Adobe suite looked--I wouldn't buy the entire thing unless I had a need for most of the apps. I tried the trial version of Premiere Pro last spring, at the same time I tried the Vegas trial version, and liked Vegas better. That being said, I think Adobe does a better job of making their products look "professional" but packaging them together. I hate to put it that way because I really really like Sony Vegas, but that's the way it is and I'm not the first one to mention it in this forum.

Having said all of that, I plan to buy Sound Forge after the first of the year. I have been using SONAR but there's a new version out now but I haven't upgraded because I just haven't used it lately. So since I have been using Vegas 2-3 hours per day for the last 6-7 weeks and have gotten used to it's interface, I think I'll take a look at Sound Forge...especially since the upgrade for SONAR is about $200-225, and I think Sound Forge is only about $300. So I may just as well upgrade by sticking with the SCS product--I could still use SONAR 7 for whatever features I need that Sound Forge doesn't offer.

TB

OnLocation used to be called DVRack (before Adobe bought it) and you might be able to find copies for sale (eBay?). The minimum facility is as a monitor so you can really see whether your shots are in focus, camera on dolly, crane, etc. The rest of the facilities are for calibrating your laptop screen (so it gives you an accurate presentation of the image) plus the various tools (including audio) that one needs for setting up and accurately monitoring during a shoot. Of course it also handles recording the data onto HDD. It connects via firewire but, unfortunately, not via HD-SDI (needed for HDCAM).

I use OnLocation every day, practically. Love it.
CS4 brings some great new features to the table, and they took away my favorite feature (ALT+ENTER for fullscreen), but I've been using the tool since Serious Magic introduced it several years back.

I remember that DVRack had some audio sync issues when recording long, continuous clips. Has this been fixed since Adobe took over and turned it into OnLocation? I have the new CS4 version, but I've never used it, should I start?

Been using it for a year and a half now on a semiweekly basis, a total of about 50 interviews per year. Couldn't do without it. It's so much easier on my tired old eyes that the tiny camera display, and it's calibratable to studio monitor standards so what you see is really what you get. Yes, not all the changes in CS4 are "improvements" over CS3, although they do add a couple of improvements I asked for a year ago [others probably asked for them too, since they made it into the new release]. Wasn't aware that the full screen switch is no longer there, but now the preview screen is fully resizable, so that may not be a deal breaker.

The CS3 version was stand-alone and had its own serial number. You may dig up someone with PP who doesn't need it to part with his copy and all those who bought PP for Mac got the windows version as well. CS4 also has one laminated setup card, for focus and WB only.

Full screen is still there, it's no longer accessible by a keyboard command as it used to be. And the shortcut map doesn't allow you to custom map it as far as I can find.
John, the sync issue is old and gone. We've done four-hour sessions of HDV without a hiccup.

How do you get fullscreen preview Spot? Just resize the window?

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