DVRack any good?

J

jangej03

Member
Hi All,

I am new kid on the block. This is a great resource. I just receieved my DVX100a with Barry's book. Great help. Thanks Barry.

I am shooting my feature length comedy soon. The question I had was should I use DVRack in slave mode along with my DVX100a to capture video?

Two distinct advantages are:
1. The ability to review the scenes withough rewinding the tape while shooting.
2. Pre-logged footage while dumping for editing.

I have an IBM T40 with 40 gig HD. I can buy PCMCIA firewire card to go with it.

Is there anyone out there using this kind of setup? Any input from experienced people is greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Jangej
 
Down Load the Demo and give it a try. Form your own opinion.
I use it to check framing and lighting and color. But I haven't been using it to record.
 
Just shot the first week of a feature doing this. It was incredibly handy, and the director/editor declared it was the "greatest thing in the world". He got the first act rough-cut in about four days. Never even looked at the tapes, except for shots where we needed extreme portability and the laptop couldn't be part of the process.

It's incredible working this way. Continuity questions? No problem -- the script supervisor tells us which take to bring up, and instead of hunting through tape, I pop the clip up on the DV rack monitor immediately. Did he carry the briefcase with his left hand or his right? Oh, right hand. Okay, no problem.

Scene matching? No problem. Bring up the old take, then split-screen with the new footage, and you can adjust brightness/contrast/light levels/whatever to make sure your scenes will cut well. Worried about crossing the line, and can't remember which side of the line you were on? Instant review.

Not sure if a scene will cut together well? While the crew is pre-lighting, you can pop open Vegas and slap the scene together and see.

It's absolutely brilliant. It's like a preview of what the P2 workflow will be like, except with P2 it'll be all-in-one instead of being tethered to a laptop.

I used a 30' firewire cable, and it wasn't long enough. Many times we had the camera up on a 12' jib arm, and it would have been nicer to have a longer cable, so I will probably be getting a Laird 75' when we pick up shooting again in May (the lead actress is currently dropping about 45 pounds between now and when we start shooting again!)

In short, I highly recommend it, and wouldn't want to do a shoot like this without it.

Get a powerful laptop, more RAM than you think you need, and a bigger processor than you think you need. I'm running on a relative lightweight, a 2.5ghz celeron with 768mb of RAM, and I wish it had more speed and more RAM.

Also, be aware that you'll want to capture the footage to an external hard disk, not the internal, so get a USB2 drive. DV Rack can't use the same PCMCIA firewire card for capture and for controlling an external drive; if you want to use a firewire drive you'll need two PCMCIA cards, or you can do what we did which is run DV Rack with the PCMCIA firewire card, and an external USB2 card. If your laptop has integrated firewire, then that's okay -- you can run DV Rack off it, and use a PCMCIA firewire card to run external firewire drives.
 
My thirty foot cable has been on backorder for a few weeks now from markertek.

I agree with Barry it is nice. But always try before you buy to make sure it will work on your laptop and work for what you want to use it for.

I am running it on a alienware area-51 7700 Laptop. 3.06Ghz with a Gig of ram and it runs fine. Even capturing to the local hard drives. But my drives are configured raid 0 so it speeds up the read write.
 
Barry, what is the reason you say always use external HD? Does it not work properly on internal HD? is USB faster than the internal data bus?

Regards,

J.
 
External because the internal hard drive will be busy with things like the operating system, swap files, page files, things like that... whereas the external drive can be dedicated solely to recording video. Should be more reliable with fewer dropped frames/hiccups.
 
Plus, if your laptop is not your editing machine you can just take the external USB hard drive off of the laptop and connect it to the edit system. And if you need to do a lot of recording you can use multiple external hard drives and swap them, allowing the earlier shoot to be sent to edit while you continue shooting.

USB2 and FW both exceed the speed requirements. There is no advantage to one over the otheYou are more likely to have a laptop that supports one of each then you are to have one that supports two controllers for a single architecture. Having both architectures gives you more I/O flexibility. And the card slots have plenty of other uses.
 
I use my DV Rack and love it (except for the damn Rebate process, that has to be corrected) I just hook up the DVX to my 3.2 ghz P4 Toshiba Laptop with a 25ft firewire and let it rip. No drop outs. I can transfer later to my external drive or pass through to it real time.

What I love is the full screen display that I use for super 35 type framing using the adjustable aspect ratio bars. The engineer promise me he'd incorporate a black & white line cage generator so we can see above and below the line. This will help even more. I just wish it had an option of the full screen with a few basic record buttons and time code.

So I can now:
write scripts, store & print out all business forms, create PDF files for distribution, make storyboard & floorplans, Breakdowns, budgeting spread sheets, conduct business corespondence, email, web marketing, original DV rack motion photography, editing, motion graphics, 2d & 3D animation, sound editing, Music composition, sound mixing, DVD authoring, DVD buring, Posters, Trailers, Press/Promo Sheets, WEB Commerce, Inventory control, all on a portable Laptop....it's Hollywood in a box!...... beat that.

When I demo this to people they are amazed at what is constantly available at my fingertips...now I just need better self discipline! :undecided
 
10S,
re: full screen display with some basic record buttons and timecode

the keyboard is active during full screen mode, so you can use the default key assignments or set your own instead of relying on any on-screen real estate.

Timecode issues are apparently much harder for DVRack due to inconsistencies in how it is stored (or not) within the FW datastream.

Rebates are an economic necessity in consumer products. No one likes them except channel middle-men. The CEO of Serious Magic has done an excellent job of explaining the channle politics on the Serious Magic web site.
 
Thanks all.

10s do you use DVRack in slave mode, i.e. it records when you press record button on camera?

Regards,
J
 
Chris, your right, thanks!...... duh!....I'm so use to the touch pad, I'm like a trained monkey. I need to wake up and use what's before me a little better.:embarasse

The Rebate Program: Sorry Chris! rebates are based upon the concept of consumer failure to fulfill completion. I find that an appalling foundation for conducting business. Maybe the CEO & others need to take a refresher on ethics. This is simply modern day snake oil salesman tactics for me and many others I talk to.

I record directly in most often. Most of the time (90%) I skip running tape unless i just want to run around with the camera and be free. On serious projects I need to record on both for safety and archival reasons.
 
And sending the rebate check as a postcard probably bumps the percentage of people not getting it by a lot. My Mother almost threw it away as junk mail.

Dan
 
Yes, GEnJerDan, that's another tactic these rebate companies employ. Who in their right mind can support such blatant abuse?. My rebate took 31/2 months to get to me!!! Boy have we progressed in the modern world...down the toliet.

What's next, "you can have an instant rebate but you must show up in person to get it....at the north pole!"

In my book, this is really a form of theft, old fashion trickery for suckers by these rebate companies. DV Rack & Panasonic as well as all the others should simply stop this practice.

DV Rack is a great product and they give excellent on-line service, answering questions, etc... they are one company that doesn't need to go the rebate route.

Bottom line: DV Rack is a great product and they keep improving it. Will it move into HD? I hope so.
 
Anybody suggested a prefered prtable HD to use with DV Rack?
What's good and proven in the field,---eg rugged.
 
I just purchased a Maxtor 300gb external drive with both USB and Firewire ports. I have not used it in the field yet, but I have used it to to backup my hard drive on the desktop. It's very quiet and seems to work fine. It cost $238, including shipping, from Chief Value. USB and Firewire cables were included.

The only thing the drive does not have is a battery power source. If anyone knows of a good battery power source I could use please let me know.

I plan to use it with my laptop and DV Rack when shooting. For my laptop I bought a PCMCIA card that has 2 USB ports and 2 Firewire ports, one 4 pin and one 6 pin. That cost $30, including shipping, also from Chief Value.

The Maxtor also has a one touch button that will automaticaly back up your other hard drives when pressed, or you can use the software to schedule the backups of the other drives or just particluar folders, when desired.

Ultimately, I would like to be able to use DV Rack but record directly to flash memory (is that the proper term?) so I don't even have to lug a hard drive around.

Dan
 
Does anyone know if Serious Magic will make a Mac version? I'm running 100% Apple hardware and would love to demo this!!!
 
And DVRack is infinite better than a powerbook using the digitize function in final cut pro?

jmf
 
Its just a little easier to use than your capturing program is. A few people have tried capturing that way but I think it is a pain.
 
What is the space usage when you record to the hard drive (ie MB per minute)? I would think the footage would fill up even a huge drive pretty quickly.
 
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