DV Rack for long events

William_Robinette

William_Robinette

Shallow Member
So I have three long event sessions I need to tape over the weekend. Is DV Rack capable and able (allowing HD space) to record uninterrupted for up to 2 or more strait hours? After recording for that long, can you press 'stop' and then 'play' again without the program playing catch up?

I d/led the demo and it works great so I really want to use it to save 8 hours digitizing tapes later this week. I will be going to a USB2 HD for storage. Anyone see any problems?

Thanks!
 
For long events, yes, DV Rack can record continuous as long as you have disk space. You'll need something around 15 gig of disk space per hour of recording. You also need to be recording to a NTFS disk to hold the large files. However, I would not try to record all to one file which I assume it what your question about starting and stopping is about.

Rather than stop/start to begin a new file, I just hit the shortcut key for record (F2?). If DV Rack is already recordnig, hitting the record key again will close the current file and start a new one. I also do NOT slave DV Rack to the DVX. By not slaving to the camera, I can run a tape as backup and swap tapes while continuing to record to disk.

I use my laptop's internal drive (5400 rpm) with no problem. I just defrag it before recording a long event. I believe others in the DV Rack forum have successfully used an external USB drive.

As with all things like this, it's best to actually try it out on your hardware before you really need to depend on it. Stick it in front of TV and record for 3 hours and see if it operates smoothly. I still record to tape at the same time when it's important as there are seldom retakes for events stuff. Then I just use the on-disk AVI files from DV Rack in post.

Regards,
Dan
 
Also a user. I might point out that the current version has a bug (that Serious Magic terms "russian roulette" as it doesn't always happen) in which the program can crash at some point after the one hour record mark. What happens is, you hit the stop button and a "serious error" message pops up. The clip is on your drive but is corrupt and can't be opened or played. They also have a non-widely publicized utility to recover the corrupt clip and repair it. The problem has happened to me on at least one occasion. Their solution, until a patch is released, is to limit clip length to an hour or less. If you hit the record button while recording, a new clip is started seamlessly without dropping a frame.

I don't mention this to scare you away from the software. It's great and works very well. I'd recommend it to anyone. But you'd most likely freak if the intermittent bug reared it's head on a one-chance shoot.
 
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