Hi,
I recently downloaded SM's DV Rack (the trial version) and whenever I attempt to record via the recorder, the image just freezes on the screen. Is there a fix to this particular issue or am I doing something wrong? My system specs are listed in my signature.

DV Rack also records only for 5 seconds for some reason and after that it says 'Recording Stopped'

Looks like it was a corrupt install. I just reinstalled it and all is well :D

Where did you get that laptop from?

I have an older laptop that is in great shape all things considered, and I have wondered about running DV Rack on it. I was looking at the requirements on the Serious Magic web site, and I meet and exceed all except for processor speed. This thing has a PIII 796 MHz and I am thinking that this will be the end of my hopes. I really just want the ability to monitor video, and could care a little less about capturing strait to the HD.

Will this thing even run DV Rack? And if so, would I see video at the full frame rate?

You should get acceptable results for monitoring with that CPU. I'm pretty sure we tested with an 800 MHz processor back way back when and it ran okay for monitoring. Recording was another matter. I suggest that you download the free, full-function trial to see for yourself: http://www.seriousmagic.com/dvrackdemo.cfm. Monitor your CPU usage while running DV Rack--if it approaches 100%, then turn off some of the other components. The Waveform Monitor and Vectorscope will buy you the most headroom.

Incidentally, a new trial version should be available within the next week. It'll have HDV support and an option for showing both frames, which allows 1:1 pixel display in the Field Monitor. Your laptop will certainly not work with HDV, and it may choke on displaying both frames.

Does this mean hi-res monitor upgrade is close behing?

Yep. At least that's the plan. It took some pleading to get a DV Rack update wedged into our R&D schedule, and if I find any major new bugs then we will probably defer the update because the lead developer on DV Rack has higher priorities right now. So keep your fingers crossed and send some good vibes our way and we may have the update released in the next week or two.

Awsome, Thanks!

Per the DV rack documentation, I should be able to get camera (Z1) TC onto the M2T that racks DVR records - but no dice. DVR seems to indicate shot duration only.

Pulling clips into Vegas and dropping timecode media fx on the clip also indicates that the clip starts at 0 tc instead of my camera preset TC that concurrently recorded tape shows...

Can't think of what I'm missing - bug? Anyone gotten this to work?

***********************
Edit:
Working fine with DV, non-functional with HDV. Anyone got camera TC on their HDV recordings on DVRack?

I've been wanting to do that for a while--and I know this isn't your direction--but this is what I did:

I own a GL2, so I set the camera to record the display overlap onto the actual tape. Then, instead of using native 16:9 recording mode, I used the title mix function to overlay the 16:9 bars--however, I shifted it downward so the two bars were together at the top. That way, the timecode, plus whatever information I desire (project title, scene title, all can be changed within Photoshop and reuploaded into the camera via laptop) can be put in the unused area. Then once I've finished editing, I simply export the film to avi, open a widescreen project, and scale it to fit the widescreen frame with the info bars cropped. Deelicious.

Ben - very inventive workaround! I appreciate the way you think.

Unfortunately it doesn't help me much, as I'm not in a position to devote any real estate to a burned-in display. However... there is a software product that burns in date code from captured DV/DVCAM.avi (not HDV, unfortunately) available at http://dts8888.com/

Guy Cochran at http://www.DVestore.com told me about DV Rack a few months ago and I just got around to having some time to purchase it on Wednesday. It arrived this morning and I just finished installing it a little while ago.

Now, after I used it for the first time, I wish I would have bought it the same day my XL2 arrived!

I hooked up the XL2 to my Sony Vaio (that DV Rack is running on) and used DV Rack for the first time. I recorded a dark shot of a close up of some blinds with the light coming through the edges. I then unplugged my firewire from my Vaio and plugged a different firewire (the pins are different for the two) into my Mac and captured the footage in FCP and the two are almost identical. And the only reason I think I have to use the word "almost" is because of the difference between PC and Mac screens. (In my opinion and with using both for the last 10 years, Mac screens tend to be a little brighter).

DV Rack is going to really allow me to tweak the XL2 settings on people for the look that I want to establish and it will be nice to know that I'm recording it right, so there will not be any surprises on my computer when I capture the footage later after shooting.

I can see why Mac users would buy a PC just for the sole purpose of using this software. I'm looking forward to learning all the stuff it can do and think that this software will really allow me to progress along much quicker.

I should say that I am a little biased because everything I do is for the web, so I'm cool with my footage as long as it looks good on a PC and Mac. So I can't rate this product based on preparing footage for TV.

Why did I post this? Well, for the last few months, I've learned a great deal from the people in this forum. Now, I may be getting to a point where I can start contributing back as well.

Here's a link to the EXCITING "blinds" footage that I took (ha ha). It's just about 20 seconds or so from my XL2 taping the blinds while going through three different presets that I had stored. That's why you will see the shifting in video of various levels. Like I said, the footage is boring - the cool thing is what I talked about above.

http://www.thisis24p.com/v-blinds.html

If any of you are using DV Rack, I'd like to hear about your experiences. If any of you have any questions about it, feel free to ask me.

http://www.seriousmagic.com

like that flash player!

pc vs mac vs lcd vs crt vs nearly everyone has their computer monitor setup incorrectly(typically way too bright)... there is no standard for setting up video for the web, so dvrack can't help you with that.

right now my biggest website has ~19k unique url's so far this month, and less than 2% of those people are using macs... so i don't care how my internet video footage looks on a mac, because there aren't enuf of 'em on the 'net to matter.

of course, you should always go by what your particular web logs say for platform useage... one of my small sites is nearly 10% mac users(!) this month, but even that isn't enuf to worry about.

i'd say to use dv rack for setting up your video to ntsc specs on a crt monitor, because lcd's do not go black enuf to be legal for critical video and photo work... and you need to pre-set the black level and contrast of the monitor ahead of time, in a pitch-black room, with a gray scale gradient on the screen... i ended up having to dig up the technician password to access the manufacturers setup dialog on my nokia monitor, because the consumer setup screens wouldn't allow it to go black enuf.

Oh please PLEASE say this rebate will last a while...

I'm a college student and I'm picking up a laptop for Christmas, so DVrack for 206$ would be a godsend.

So many expenses, such little money.

Sorry, Travis, but that rebate ended about 11 months ago, if memory serves--you must've misread the year in this thread's date. However, when we released the HDV PowerPak last Spring, we dropped the normal retail price of DV Rack to $295.

...Completely mis-read the year. I found the topic from a google search I did on some DVrack info, instead of coming straight through the website like usual. I looked, but I must've been too anxious and saw 2005.

What's even more confusing, is that everything in the posts kinda matched the situation now (today is November 27th, the same day as the post before mine just a different year AND last year a 200$ rebate would make the price tag 295$ same as the current price, correct me if I am wrong) besides the dates. So, just very confusing.

So, in this case I would get it for 206$ if you count the student academic discount!

Can't beat that.

Thanks for correcting my silly mistake.

Sorry for the mixup.

The long (for me) 4 day weekend finally ended and I got through to Serious Magic tech support.

Apparently this is not regular performance, not a known issue, but a bug particular to my setup - they are reviewing. Per S.M. HDV TC should be coming through and captured on the DVR just as DV TC is.

Au contraire!

A different Serious Magic rep has advised "Timecode is not currently supported in HDV PowerPak. I have added you to the growing list of customers requesting this feature."

Oh well, I guess tape has become the primary and DVRack/HDV has become the backup for my next shoot...

FYI.
SB

P.S. add your voice to this feature request by sending email to dvracksupport@seriousmagic.com

Can't find your answers here? Try the official Serious Magic user comunity:

http://www.seriousmagic.ipbhost.com/forums/

I use the 20m firewire cables from Unibrain. they work perfect.
www.unibrain.com

If I want a multi monitor system and I want to support ultra properly ... which of the nvidia or ATI cards should I buy?

I use Matrox Parhelia... here's a recent review. find out more at www.matrox.com..

http://www.matrox.com/mga/workstation/video/news/reviews/2005/parhelia_apve_vm.cfm

Hi John,

To use the DV Rack and ULTRA programs from Serious Magic, you need good Direct3D performance. While the Parhelia is a great card for multiple monitor support, it lags far behind the ATI and nVidia cards in Direct3D performance, and will not provide good support for Serious Magic products.

To support ULTRA 2 the best, and take advantage of the super-fast GPU boost function, you need a video card that supports a standard called Pixel Shader 2.0. This has been in the ATI cards since the Radeon 9600, and all newer Radeons (like the Xxxx cards) will support it. For nVidia, the GeForce 5900 ULTRA was the first, and all GeForce 6xxx and 7xxx models support it.

In my personal opinion, the 6600 GeForce card is the best "bang for the buck," so to speak. It typically sells for around $100, comes in both PCI Express and AGP forms (so you should be able to find one for your existing motherboard,) and it typically supports 2 monitors out-of-the-box very well. Plus, it'll give you great performance in ULTRA. I have one in my home system (Pentium 4 820 2.8GHz) and a 1 minute DV file takes about 30 seconds to render.

Sorry for the misinformation.

I use it with DVrack. The Matrox card is among the best with color accuracy on mulitmonitor displays.

I use the Matrox APve and love it. It will work in a 8x PCIe slot also. :o)

Dave

I use the Matrox APve and love it. It will work in a 8x PCIe slot also.

Glad you mentioned this - I've been wondering if I'd need a motherboard with dual 16x PCI Express ports (like the ASUS A8N 32 SLI Deluxe) because I plan to run it at the same time as a 7800GTX.

But knowing this, I can use a regular A8N Premium and fit the APVe in the 8x port.

Of course, I had to cut the connector.
Now, not all MB's bios may work so its not the right way to do it, but, for me, it was that or nothing. I was lucky it worked.

Dave

Is this possible? In other words, I want to record the video via firewire, but the audio through a separate AD converter direct to disc. If so, what sort of equipment will I need?

...record the video via firewire, but the audio through a separate AD converter direct to disc.

Marco, you're wanting double-system sound. There are lots of good approaches to this, and good reasons to do it, especially with music.

First though, Rack will record whatever audio your camera is encoding into the firewire DV stream - that's the only way it works. And yes, it's compressed.

And you'll want that audio in the rack file, for sync reference if nothing else, because you're going to have to sync double-system audio in your NLE. It could be your camera mic, or a send from a sound operator with a boom, whatever makes it to the camera. Best is the sound op sends signal to your camera.

Second issue - getting the other, better audio recorded. This could be on any system from a mini disk to DAT to Marantz compact flash to Edirol R1 or R4 to Sound Devices 742 or 744 (or your PC, see below). Some have reported minor sync issues, but I've had VERY good experience with double system audio syncing correctly. Seems to me there was a long thread over in the "now hear this" forum a month or two ago on synching.

Third issue - what about recording separate audio on the same system as Rack is running on? Maybe, you'd have to test it. Depending on the system that may be too much processor load or disk access or maybe not. Rack keeps my laptop pretty busy by itself, but that's just a caution, I've not tested what you'd like to do, and your PC is different than mine. Lots of good AD converters / sound cards out there...

Actually, we're already recording double system sound. I was hoping to get back to single system. :)

Too bad. I guess the technology isn't there yet, at least not at a price I can afford.

Yah, it's all about (H)DV right now - what will it do and what won't it do.

Now, you could bypass the camera preamps with an external DV25 encoder, but that's going to mean analog video to the encoder as well.

You're probably already getting the benefits of external mic preamps in your mixer and sending line level to the camera.

I've only shot one HDV project and it's nowhere near done, but I'm told that the mpeg compressed audio in HDV is better than what we get with DV25. Certainly the tapes I've sampled and logged sound great (my sound guy had something to do with that). The general plan is to use tape audio for voice and to sync the 2nd audio for music. All the audio was sourced from his mixer and outstanding M-S mic, going to a Z1 and his hd recorder.

I'm getting the idea that you're looking for a better workflow, which is always good, IMHO. Are you concerned with any particular obstacles with double system?

We have sort of a rotating group of people of varying degrees of ability doing audio for us now. I was hoping to simplify the process to make it easier. For the last couple of dates we've actually had to record direct to camera just because we didn't have enough crew.

I think that a mixer does help when recording direct to camera, but still, you're never going to get that 20 dB of headroom no matter what prosumer cam you use.

Hi, I was wondering if the new "Intel" Macbook Pro coming out will have what's needed to run HDV Rack?

Apparently, it's almost definate that the Macbook Pro will run Windows natively. That's the buzz I've heard..

Thanks..

Well it has an Intel CPU (and evidently motherboard too), but it's a Mac. Apple has said they aren't going to support Windows on their hardware, but they won't do anything to stop third parties from doing so. Microsoft has not made any promise to make Virtual PC available on the Intel Macs. It seems natural that someone will do this, but I haven't read about any commercial product that allows Windows to run.

So unless DV Rack wants to port their software to the Intel Macs (and in the past they said it was not practical to port to OSX) then you'd probably have to depend on some hack to get it working.

Howdy...

I've used DV Rack for a while, and today downloaded the HDV trial to use with my Dell 700m 2.0GHz laptop. I was expecting a difficult time, as the requirments suggest 2.0 as the minimum, an 3D graphics card. the Dell has merely the built-in intel graphics, which suck....

So, I was quite surprised to find that the default settings were quite usable with HDV rack, with not-too-much lag on the screen, and when I checked with the taskmanager during recorded, I was hovering around 50-60% CPU usage, which seems reasonable to me.

Am I doing something wrong? Or are the minimum specs just a little too conservative? Or, am I not capturing the right way, and really my computer is too slow? Basically, I just want to know that with the default settings, I'm capturing good m2ts without dropouts, etc...

Thanks for the info...

Ben..

They say pentium 4 2.0 Ghz, your 700m is not a pentium 4 at all - it is a pentium-m based on centrino mobile architecture.

I have a inspiron 9200 with only a 1.6 Ghz pentium-m and it plays back HDV fine and even 720p h.264 smoothly in quicktime format which the minimum windows based requirements are as follows for 720p copy and pasted.

QuickTime 7 for Windows:

* 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 or faster processor
* At least 512MB of RAM
* 64MB or greater video card
* Windows 2000 or XP

Suffice to say Pentium-M architecture is way more powerful per clock and insanely more powerful per watt than P4.

If you check some cpu charts your 2.0 Pent-m will likely rate around a 2.6 - 2.8 Ghz P-4 in most benchmarks if memory serves correctly.

That's good to hear, as I've loved my 700m for SD recording with DVRack. Happy to make the transition to HDV...

I think my real query was regarding the lack of a video card. The 700m just has the on board intel video, which is far from wonderful in the 3d area. The serious magic site seems to suggest that a powerful GPU is a necessity...

No?

- Ben

I noticed that the main advantage of using DVrack is having all these great production tools in a very compact package, which would be a laptop. You can easily tote around you laptop to shoots and everything.

What has me confused is the site says that "DV Rack software is designed for maximum compatibility with standard PC's, laptops and cameras.

I took it that standard PC's meant desktops, so I guess that people have actually managed to use the software with a desktop pc? It seems that would be very hard, so I was interested in how people would setup their equipment to move with them while they are shooting? Or if it would just be used for still setups like in a room green screening without a whole bunch of movement?

Also, I would love to hear other people's setups with their laptops. I plan on using it with a dolly, but I'd say there are other setups. I just purchased one of the new Sony Vaio Intel Core Duo laptops and I'm going to order DVrack with my next paycheck.

I wanna get my mouth watering early. ;)

Probably just the marketing department running on at the mouth! :)

Sure, DV Rack will work fine on a regular PC (that's where I tried the first demo), and I supposed you could set it up like that in a studio environment.

I think the reason that is in there is because we frequently get calls from customers asking if it'll run on a desktop PC. Our older literature used to say it's "designed to run on a laptop" and I guess that confused some people.

However, if you're more interested in DV rack for picture calibration, I believe the HVX200 has a buit in Histogram feature

I'm getting a laptop soon, and I will be getting DV-Rack with it also. I want to know what things I should look at in the laptop specs that will impact the DV-Rack performance the most.

Specific questions:

Does the type of video card matter?

Does the video memory matter?

Does 2 GB RAM matter over 1GM RAM?

Can I capture directly to a USB external hard drive hooked to the laptop?

And lastly....

Are they do for a software upgrade any time soon that may change these answers?

Thanks all...

they all matter.. im not the best to give info on computers components.. but i know you cant capture straight to an external usb harddrive. you would need a program.. you could look at direct to disk solutions but thats something different.

"Can I capture directly to a USB external hard drive hooked to the laptop?"

i capture laptop to 1394/USB2 external 2 1/2" 5400rpm drive over USB2 ...

my old laptop worked with 512 ram .. current laptop has 1 gig = i see no difference = they both worked excellent with DV rack ...

old laptop video card shared memory and new laptop video card has 64mgs ram = they both worked ..

i have not seen any past upgrades to software make any current computer obsolete ( maybe DV rack with HDV might make a older slower CPU BUT that is a different product not a upgrade )

Any suggestions on how to best use DVRack with the HDV upgrade for matching up the latest HD cameras for a comparison test? Serious Magic has been kind enough to give me the software needed to do this and walked me through the basic process, so I'm just looking for any further tips from DVRack users on how to get the cameras as closely matched as possible. In particular, any thoughts on how to match up a Panasonic HVX200 would be appreciated, since the only thing I can think of is to test it in DV mode before switching to HD mode for recording.

Also, any ideas on how to set exposures to deal with dark-skinned subjects against a wall-of-windows background? I could just eyeball that but would prefer a more rigorous process, plus any hints from people who have used the various HD cameras under such conditions. The test is coming up in less than two weeks, so any advice on all of this would be much appreciated.

I was at the DVRack office yesterday and was told they're considering a P2 upgrade, but it doesn't sound like that's imminent yet. I'd suggest HVX200 owners contact both Panasonic and Serious Magic to express their interest in that.

In the meantime, would it be possible using FCP, Avid or Edius Broadcast to capture P2 data "live" via a firewire cable from the camera to a laptop?

My XL H1 is due to arrive tomorrow. I plan to order DV Rack HD Powerpack, but currently only have DV Rack. Will the H1 work with DV Rack in SD mode without the DV Rack Powerpack?

Best,
Christopher

If the XL-H1 can downsample to SD resolution via the firewire output then I would think it should work, but to make sure try contacting DVrack tech support:

dvracksupport@seriousmagic.com

Please let me know what you find out - mine shows up Thursday. I expect that it will work in the 1080 60i mode, but may get flakey in 24F. I'm trying to figure out my flow or project settings for 24F anyway, so please let us know what you hear.

Thanks again
Shawn

We used the DVrack HD Powerpack demo and it worked excellent with 25F. The "Console" tool from Canon crashed after a few seconds everytime we tried it.

I can recommend DVrack to everybody.