I've been playing with the DEMO version of Serious magic's "DV Rack" and thought I'd write a simple review of it. In short, it does what they claim it will do.
Step one is to calibrate the monitor using the built-in NTSC color bars. Calibration involves turning the chroma off and setting the black bars with brightness and contrast controls, then turning the chroma on with only the blue gun to set color. You adjust the color bars with the chroma and phase controls. Once the monitor is set to go, so are you. So far, pretty standard monitor setup procedure.
Step two is to capture some footage, which by the way, is almost too easy. You can capture footage by hitting the RECORD button in the software. As long as your camera is powered up, there's a signal coming over the firewire bus. No need to hit "record" on the camera. The capture footage resides in a special folder that DVRack creates on your hard drive; that makes the footage available to DV Rack. I experienced no dropped frames in the over 60 minutes of footage I captured. While in this folder, you can recall the footage with DVRack to scrub thru it. You can also have DVRack identify video or audio signals that exceed some preset level you have defined. While the footage is in the special folder, it's not accessible for viewing or access by any other software. IN order to view your captured footage in any other software, like your NLE or WMP, you have to eject it from DVRack. You can do this by selecting the "eject" command. Unfortunately, once you've ejected the footage, DVRack can no longer view it, it's permanently ejected. I was hoping I could load some footage I'd already captured into DVRack for analysis, and, fortunately DV Rack WILL read a video stream coming from my DSR-20. This means anything on DV Tape is available to run thru DV Rack.
I will say, however, that the realtime monitoring of my video has proven quite valuable. I can see the effect of adjustments made on my XL1s directly in DVRacks monitor and various scopes. By the way, the scopes, like any scope, needs to have the gain and biases calibrated before you can use them. There are no directions how to do this, so, you've gotta understand what your looking at to use it effectively. Also, the screen sizes of the various components of DVRack are not adjustable. I found the Vectorscope and Waveform monitor windows to be too small to see well enough. The scales aren't large enough to see clearly. The monitor allows you to select a couple of zebra pattern modes to monitor exposure. I'm used to the over exposure zebra, but, DVRack also gives you the option of setting up an under-exposure Zebra. This is sweet!
There seemed to be some small glitches when switching from the realtime monitor to scrubbing video that hasn't been ejected from the DVRack folder yet. The image in the monitor would hang showing only half a screen image. A few tries, going back and forth, finally got the software to fix the monitor image.
All in all, I found the DVRack software to be pretty useful. I'm not convinced, however, that the full purchase price is justifiable. It seems pretty steep.
Now, if only I can load this software into my palm pilot and leave my 10 lb GRT-390 laptop at home.
EDIT: I originally posted that the DV Rack would not read from my DSR-20. It turns out I was having problems with a bad 1394 cable. After reading my report on this forum, Serious Magic contacted me and made their customer support immediately available to help me. I'm quite surprised at their eagerness to correct any problems with their software. Glad to say the problem was my own clumsiness.
Bill Ravens__________________
Chalchihuitl Productions
Santa Fe, NM
www.geocities.com/ravens202
Step one is to calibrate the monitor using the built-in NTSC color bars. Calibration involves turning the chroma off and setting the black bars with brightness and contrast controls, then turning the chroma on with only the blue gun to set color. You adjust the color bars with the chroma and phase controls. Once the monitor is set to go, so are you. So far, pretty standard monitor setup procedure.
Step two is to capture some footage, which by the way, is almost too easy. You can capture footage by hitting the RECORD button in the software. As long as your camera is powered up, there's a signal coming over the firewire bus. No need to hit "record" on the camera. The capture footage resides in a special folder that DVRack creates on your hard drive; that makes the footage available to DV Rack. I experienced no dropped frames in the over 60 minutes of footage I captured. While in this folder, you can recall the footage with DVRack to scrub thru it. You can also have DVRack identify video or audio signals that exceed some preset level you have defined. While the footage is in the special folder, it's not accessible for viewing or access by any other software. IN order to view your captured footage in any other software, like your NLE or WMP, you have to eject it from DVRack. You can do this by selecting the "eject" command. Unfortunately, once you've ejected the footage, DVRack can no longer view it, it's permanently ejected. I was hoping I could load some footage I'd already captured into DVRack for analysis, and, fortunately DV Rack WILL read a video stream coming from my DSR-20. This means anything on DV Tape is available to run thru DV Rack.
I will say, however, that the realtime monitoring of my video has proven quite valuable. I can see the effect of adjustments made on my XL1s directly in DVRacks monitor and various scopes. By the way, the scopes, like any scope, needs to have the gain and biases calibrated before you can use them. There are no directions how to do this, so, you've gotta understand what your looking at to use it effectively. Also, the screen sizes of the various components of DVRack are not adjustable. I found the Vectorscope and Waveform monitor windows to be too small to see well enough. The scales aren't large enough to see clearly. The monitor allows you to select a couple of zebra pattern modes to monitor exposure. I'm used to the over exposure zebra, but, DVRack also gives you the option of setting up an under-exposure Zebra. This is sweet!
There seemed to be some small glitches when switching from the realtime monitor to scrubbing video that hasn't been ejected from the DVRack folder yet. The image in the monitor would hang showing only half a screen image. A few tries, going back and forth, finally got the software to fix the monitor image.
All in all, I found the DVRack software to be pretty useful. I'm not convinced, however, that the full purchase price is justifiable. It seems pretty steep.
Now, if only I can load this software into my palm pilot and leave my 10 lb GRT-390 laptop at home.
EDIT: I originally posted that the DV Rack would not read from my DSR-20. It turns out I was having problems with a bad 1394 cable. After reading my report on this forum, Serious Magic contacted me and made their customer support immediately available to help me. I'm quite surprised at their eagerness to correct any problems with their software. Glad to say the problem was my own clumsiness.
Bill Ravens__________________
Chalchihuitl Productions
Santa Fe, NM
www.geocities.com/ravens202