DV Storm / Rex

[Adam Lawrence]

good advice...

i am primarily working on a in deck DV storm which is fairly new.

i had a DV Rex board a while back in which did the same thing.
I no longer have this board.

I doubt if this is an issue of bad hardware communication. i think it may have something to do with the frame rate from the DVD..I viewed it frame by frame
and noticed a chronilogical pattern within the interlacing. It maybe minimal
for the first 3 frames and progress accordingly for another 3...not sure if that is exact.

When i used my Rex i always thought this was the actuall interlacing from the
camera, so i never thought nothing of it. This "interlacing" occurs when the camera pans or an there is an abundant amount of motion. When i watch it
straight from the DVD the picture is crisp and no interlacing to be seen.
This only occurs after capturing.

I havent been to the site yet but am going to give it a look. The dual AVI option sounds interesting...

[Steve Leone]

you might try using an infinite window TBC if you can get a hold of one, and process your video thru it before cabling to your cards....you ARE capturing twice compressed analog video here....your hardware may not like it...I have seen less than stellar analog video totally freak out some machines....a good tbc will strip and re-generate digital synch and control track and output a very stable analog signal that your Rex or Storm will like. Analog is a whole different animal.....I have had capture problems with bad SVHS......

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

The Rex is capable of defeating Macrovision but the Storm is not.

(Cf. http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...&threadid=1487)

If this isn't your problem, you may have inverted your field dominance, that is, maybe you have your video settings set to lower fields first when it should be the opposite (or vice versa).

Since you're working on a Storm, try applying an antiflicker filter to the clip. See if that solves your problem.

[Adam Lawrence]

no i dont think the security lock is my problem considering the DVD was
authored from an induvidual I know. I think it may be something to do with the Canopus compression. But i could be wrong. maybe ill upload some images.

[Rick Spilman]

Have you tried capturing using StormEdit or RexEdit? I never captured in Premiere (though these days I usually use Vegas Video). If found it easier to capture outside Premiere and then import the clips.

What are you watching the captured footage on? A monitor or the Premiere "monitor" windows? I can get funky video if watching on the computer screen while getting good stuff on my monitor.

Rick

[Lawrence Teo]

hi,

I have several dumb questions...and here it goes...

1) What's the difference between raptor rt and storm rt (besides being able to do real-time preview of more tracks and analog input..)?

2) How does an editing card work (i.e. what does the hardware and software do)?

3) I am thinking of getting vegas... it's supposed to be real time...can it replace premiere and raptor rt?

Thanks a lot....

Cheers

[Robert Knecht Schmidt]

Hi Lawrence,

"What's the difference between raptor rt and storm rt (besides being able to do real-time preview of more tracks and analog input..)?"

The proprietary software that comes with Raptor is a little less fancy than Storm Edit, which comes with the DV Storm. And as you might suspect, the analog jacks make a big difference in your setup. With the Raptor you always have to have your DV camera or a DV deck hooked into the setup to be able to preview your work on an NTSC monitor.

"How does an editing card work (i.e. what does the hardware and software do)?"

The hardware on an editing board supplements the horsepower of the computer's central processor when it comes to specialized image processing tasks, such as color correction, chroma keying, blurring, picture-in-picture, and so forth.

"I am thinking of getting vegas... it's supposed to be real time...can it replace premiere and raptor rt?"

While the gulf between what software-based "real time" products and hardware-based real time products can do will continue to diminish as CPUs get faster and faster, currently the Storm is still able to do a lot more without rendering. Canopus made a plugin for Premiere 6 but it's doubtful that one will ever come for Vegas since Canopus is introducing their own NLE Software product, Edius, which, judging from screenshots and such, should be able to do just about anything Premiere and Vegas are capable of.

One thing that's nice with the Canopus real time cards is you can color correct the whole length of an hour-long clip and not wait a single second for rendering. I don't know if this is possible for software-only NLEs yet. Also I doubt Vegas would be able to do a real time picture-in-picture.

A few years ago people were predicting that by this time you'd be able to do everything you could do with a real time card with just an OHCI firewire card and a computer with a fast processor. That era hasn't arrived yet, but it is an eventuality.

[Ho Chee Woe]

beside the storm bay, realtime MPEG2, unique editing software...
Both DVRaptorRT2 and DVStorm2 are same.

[Will Fastie]

Just a note about Edius. At first glance, it seems to compete directly with Premiere, Vegas, and Edition with its list price of $599. But there is a catch -- it REQUIRES a DVStorm or DVRex board.

[Tony Singh]

I need some comparisons from actual users of these products.
We are looking into purchasing either one of these systems.
We were told that the Canopus product uses a proprietary codec which affects the quality of the video. If that is the case, we would rather go for the Matrox, even though it allows a lower number of real-time streams.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Chris Hurd]

Tony

It is true that Canopus uses a proprietary DV codec, and it's true that this codec affects the quality of the video. However it affects the quality of the video in a very *postive* way. The Canopus DV codec is (in the opinion of many) the cleanest and best DV codec currently in existence. Avid liked it so much, they used the Canopus DV Raptor card in their own systems a few years ago. You can't go wrong with Canopus, and I have no doubt that many Canopus users will chime in on this one and agree with me. Hope this helps,

[Arnaldo Paixao]

Never used the Canopus product.

I edit several hours per day on a Matrox RT-X100 and I'm very happy with it.

The Matrox Real Time effects and transitions work without a glitch and they look very nice.

The MPEG-2 Real Time export is a blessing. No more long encoding hours.

It only works with Premiere. Currently I use version 6.5.
Have installed also Premiere Pro and works ok with the RT-X100.

The breakout box, althoug not as slick as the Canopus one, does the job and, to me, it is easier to use because you won't have a tangle of cables running out of the front of your computer. Its easier to place the breakout box next to your equipment rack than to bring all the cables to your computer. If you only use Firewire that's not such an issue.

Best regards,
Arnaldo

[Lars Siden]

Hi all,

Just wanted to share my experiences with the Canopus DVStorm2.

My first impressions:

1. Canopus site is very difficult to navigate. You can't clearly tell which drivers and updates that are new.

2. No complete setup-process, you have to manually run 3 or 4 different setups - in the correct order

3. If you install some component afterwards, chances are that you break something else becaue the setup programs doesn't check to see if they overwrite newer files.

Premiere Pro:

1. Almost no RT performance at all
2. Very specific hardware demands, you have to have THAT motherboard and THAT soundcard etc etc
3. The so called "Certified plugin" is just wishful thinking. Matrox RX.100 is certified by Adobe, Storm2 isn't.
4. After browsing the forum at canopus I noticed that they have struggled with the same problems since september 2003, and they are still not solved.
5. Capture only works 50% of the times in PPro and when it works, you don't have any devicecontrol.
6. Many of the filters and transitions aren't 100% working in PPro

Canopus:

Mailed them asking for help more than a week ago, still haven't received any reply at all.

They don't give ANY information regarding current status of the drivers

They don't give any hints of WHAT you should be able to do in RT in PPro.

When you read the material on their site, the bottom line always is "Buy EDIUS 2".

The good:
Stormencoder - The hardware MPEG module, worked like a charm. Got about 80% RT performance ( main cpu at 20% ). Produced great looking MPEGS
TVOut:
Good TV-out from AE6 and PPro and Photoshop

Conclusion:
Inmature product
Bad drivers that haven't been fixed for a long time
Very high demands on the existing hardware

Hopefully someone here has a good experience with their Storm :-)

Best regards,

Lars Siden

Sweden

[Rob Lohman]

I'm sorry to hear you had such a bad experience. I usually hear
that Canopus was better than Pinnacle, especially on driver
support. Guess they have fallen down the pit as well.

[Kent Fraser]

For what it's worth, I've really been impressed with how the Matrox RTX/100 is supported via their web site. Also very pleased with the performance of PPro and the RTX.

Hope you find something that works.