OT: DV Rack - Your experiences good and bad

jmeredith wrote on 3/30/2005, 9:02 AM
Have already done a forum search but looking for up-to-date info before making the purchase plunge... I'm looking at DV Rack mainly for the recording function - will be using desktop with plenty of power, storage, RAM, etc

Has the recording issue (i.e., only capturing short chunks mentioned on their Forum) caused anyone here a problem?

Also, can't seem to find info on the Serious Magic website regarding upgrade pricing and not sure if buying something before NAB is a good idea - does anyone know if they do upgrades or is it buy a new version? Assuming of course, they have a new version coming out soon.

Thanks in advance

Comments

BrianStanding wrote on 3/30/2005, 9:07 AM
If you're mainly interested in the Recording function, and not the various video scopes, etc., you might want to look at DV Rack Express instead. It's only $150 or so, and Serious Magic will take that price off the full version if you decide to upgrade. Express includes the Video Monitor and the DV Recorder only. The monitor doesn't have all the letterbox, safe area, or overscan functions that its big brother has, but it does have the color bars and the blue gun features. Also, the DV recorder does not have the camera slave function, so you have to manually hit the Enter key on your computer.

I recently upgraded (when they had the $200 rebate) to the full version and recorded a one-hour press conference in one go -- everything worked perfectly. No dropouts, abbreviated files or any other problems. I'm very satisfied with my purchase.
MH_Stevens wrote on 3/30/2005, 11:19 AM
I'm getting DVRack when I get the laptop fixed, I hear it's great, but I don't see the point without the scopes. I sure wish my video camera had a histogram like my still does.
BarryGreen wrote on 3/30/2005, 11:20 AM
I've used it quite a bit, and other than one small complaint, I think it's absolutely magnificent. We used it to record the footage being shot on the first week of a feature, and the benefits were tremendous. You could instantly refer back to any clip, for continuity or exposure matching or anything like that. You could quickly cut together a scene (since the clips were already digitized) and see whether the scene "works" or not. I handed the external hard disk over to the editor, and he had the first act rough-cut together in four days. Normally he would have spent almost that much time scanning through edit logs, logging takes, batch-capturing, etc.

The only complaint I've had is that the field monitor isn't very high resolution, it only shows about 300 lines. But Serious Magic is working on a fix for that that should provide better resolution; I'm hoping to see pixel-for-pixel accuracy. It may require a faster computer to get full realtime performance, but I don't mind -- if we have the smaller/low-res monitor running at 60 fields per second, and then the pixel-accurate monitor would only run at, say, 12 fps, I don't care -- for focusing that'd be enough, and for framing you could use the small monitor. And of course if you had a faster computer, you could use the high-res one all the time...

It's fantastic software, and it just keeps getting better.
logiquem wrote on 3/30/2005, 1:01 PM
A major complain i have with DV Rack is the lack off the kind of bullet proof/highly responsive capture a tool like Scenalyser has.

I have to record many short clips for educationnal purpose these days and it is very lacking in these areas IMO. The resolution issue is also a big deception for me...

Another thing i found just stupid is the impossibility to import clips recorded in other sessions or with another tool (i guess this fondamental issue will be resolved?).

Otherwise, split screen and analysing tools, and gamma corrected monitor are very usefull.
Jessariah67 wrote on 3/30/2005, 2:06 PM
We're shooting a feature with it, and the primary reason is having immediate playback and clips on the hard drive and properly named from the start. It will easily take two weeks work off of the post end.
Videoguys wrote on 3/31/2005, 7:51 AM
We've had excellent success with it. Our customers love it - and many swear by it. It is especially useful if you're setting up a multicamera shoot to match up the video quality of all the cams.

I really like theDVR function. This is a technology whose time has come. The FireStore FS-4 is great for this when you can't bring around a laptop with you. If your shoots allow you to use the laptop & DV Rack, it's a major time saver.

Serious Magic has a $200 mail in rebate that expires 3/31. We're begging them to extend it, but I'm not sure if they will. Click here for more DV rack info

Gary
jmeredith wrote on 3/31/2005, 8:03 AM
Thanks for the great feedback guys

Hey Gary (Videoguys), you wouldn't happen to do price matching with other sites would you? Don't worry, its a reputable company and not some whole in the wall. If yes, I'll provide more info

Thanks so much
Julie
Videoguys wrote on 3/31/2005, 9:51 AM
We will price match if we feel the offer is legit from a legit dealer. If we can't match it, we'll try to work something out. You know I love you guys & gals ;-)

Just give us a call 800 323-2325

Gary
smhontz wrote on 3/31/2005, 2:24 PM
My experience has been less than perfect. I have a Dell Inspirion 8200, 2 Ghz, 1 GB ram, separate video hard drive. I do long captures - 75 minutes +. I ran into a number of issues with DV Rack (the full version).

1. Audio problems - audio on Field Monitor is out of sync, goes in and out of being garbled and clear, drifts even further out of sync as time goes on. Basically unusable.

2. Audio on long-term capture (75 mins) gets out of sync with video by 7 frames, audio leading video. (This is actually in the .AVI file itself.) Must break recordings into shorter segments (10 mins or so) to avoid the problem.

3. Scopes stop updating during long captures - it appears that the more "busy" the waveform display in the DVR gets, the slower the other scopes go, until they stop updating. Must break recordings into shorter segments to re-activate the scopes.

4. Quicktime format recordings don't work - I can capture, but I can't view the clips in the DVR. They can be ejected and viewed in Vegas, though.

I've spent over 6 weeks exchanging e-mails with Serious Magic. I've updated drivers, updated Quicktime, etc. They can't fix it. They even said this about the audio sync issue:

"AVI Type 2 saves audio and video in two separate streams (within the single file). This results in the possibility of Audio drift over long periods of time. This is a failing of the Codec and we cannot over come it. We recommend you save files as AVI type 1, which saves the audio and video in a single stream synced together to avoid the audio drifting problem."

I'm sure my issues are probably hardware/software related; I'm just warning you that not everybody has had good luck. That said, I have found work-arounds so I can still use DV Rack as a useful tool. I'm just glad I only paid $149 for it.

Steve