Latest from CineForm.

[Till Krueger]

hmmm...i wonder...the M class Pentiums are amazingly powerful for their quoted clock speed...MPEG hardware acceleration seems to be present, but being a shared memory integrated chip, you may be right about being up against the wall...guess i'll have to check it out at a store when i'm back in the USA.

my 2.4GHz DELL hardly breaks a sweat even at full-screen WUXGA, but it has a fairly modern nVidia Go4400 chip in it.

well, until i try, it'll be pure speculation...sure would be a nice field monitor, though.

[Ken Hodson]

M class are good chips indead. Many say Intel would have gone this route due to superior architecture but MHz sells PC's to the masses (sheep)so they went long pipe lines with the P4, and now Prescott.
Regardless if it works for you all the better. Our laptop at 533bus 2.4GHz stuggles at times with 720p.

[Steve Crisdale]

<<<-- Originally posted by Till Krueger : just tried it, and WOW...how cool is that?-->>>

WOW!!!! indeed....

The 'lag' between cam and display appears to be about 2sec. so it's not really a problem. The detail on the Toshiba's 1440x900 17" WS is excellent!!!

From my viewpoint this is another one of the HD10's 'Achilles Heels' extinguished.

If you have a laptop with enough 'Oomph', then get VLC....you won't be disappointed!!!! :)

[David Wislon]

I am trying to use VLC (0.7.2) for laptop preview of a HD10U but am not meeting with much success. With the camera linked by firewire to the computer and after selecting Open Capture Device from the file menu and selecting OK on the dialog box nothing seems to happen - no screen appears.

The VLC media player does read "dshow://" but there is no preview screen. I have tried all of the available Video device names as well as all available options I can find. (Are others of you calling out a Video device name in the dialog box?) I have set the 10U's menu ilink out menu to both sw and auto. Nothing so far has worked.

I have tried to make this connection on a Sony Vaio laptop and Sony Vaio desktop - both are relativey recent and both are running Windows XP. Both computers have DirectX 9.0b.

I am very hopeful about this development. Has anyone else had trouble making this preview work? I am leaving to shoot in St. Petersburg in a couple of weeks and having laptop preview capabilites would certainly make me more comfortable.

Many thanks in advance.

[Steve Crisdale]

OK...

I'll assume you've got you're HD10 connected by firewire (i-Link) and it's on (the ba-dong sound indicating device connection has occured).

Open VLC. The Media Player panel should be visible with menu and player controls.

Select >File> Open Capture Device...

click > Device properties

click > Stream output... then select the Settings button next to the Stream output option....

Select 'Play locally' under 'Output methods' panel

Then select mp2v from the Vieo codec dropdown list and mpga under the Audio codec dropdown list of the 'Transcoding options' panel.

Select OK - the Stream output window will close.....Then OK again to close the Open window, and hit the PLAY button of the player....dbl click to go full screen and enjoy!!!

[David Wislon]

Steve,

Many thanks for your clear and detailed guidance. Sadly, I think I've followed all of the steps to the "t" but still am unable to get a display screen.

Just to clarify, I am leaving Video device and Audio device name both as "default".

I follow your steps and all is well except that when I finally get to the point of closing the "OPEN" window, I get a Property screen which reads "AudiolnputMixer Properities" at which point I click OK.

The VLC media then automatically appears to be playing but no video screen is displayed. The player works fine to play other files on the computer including .avi's and .m2t's but for some reason it doesn't seem to want to show this preview.

Many thanks again for your help.

[Steve Crisdale]

OK.... So, you've got the camera powered on in M (manual) mode? You haven't pressed the record button? Do you have any external audio input devices connected.....

Have you clicked cancel instead of OK....

I have an ESI Quatafire i-Link external Audio interface, but haven't experienced this problem.....but then it can't be connected at the same time as the cam. If it was me, I'd disconnect eveything but the cam....

If it still didn't work I'd be checking that all the appropriate codecs for MPEG2 video and audio have been installed as well as the latest DirectX 9.0b and whack in the latest intervideo *.ax (directshow) filters....

[Bob England]

This has nothing to do with David Wislon's problem, but it should be pointed out that only the Windows version of VLC has the Open Capture Device command.

[Ken Hodson]

I'm in Steve's boat. It has to be Manual? Why not Auto?
I'll check on DirectX. I might be at 9a.

[Steve Crisdale]

<<<-- Originally posted by Ken Hodson : I'm in Steve's boat. It has to be Manual? Why not Auto?
I'll check on DirectX. I might be at 9a. -->>>

I suggested the cam mode dial be set to Manual because once you see the image on screen (dbl click in the window if it's not full screen) you'll want to adjust the image coming from the cam.....and in the excitement one just might forget that it's set to Auto, and blame the software or cam.

I'm pretty certain that DirectX 9b adds HD Directshow enhancements. The latest Intervideo *.ax's have improved mux/demux for HD of all MPEG2 types, both ts and ps.

If you haven't got WinDVD 6 (in my experience PowerDVD sucks with any HD material)....I'd suggest you get a hold of it, as playback quality of your HD10 footage is improved. Don't forget to adjust the colour/gamma/brightness controls in any playback app as well.

BTW. When using VLC, make sure you've correctly adjusted your laptop's monitor for brightness, gamma, colour etc... or else you may be making adjustments on cam that are negative rather than positive to the captured footage.

[Ken Hodson]

Thanks Steve :)