Serious Magic/HVX

jeffyjones said:
There is no speed penalty running Windows on an Intel Mac. In fact, if you check the benchmarks, the Macs are running Windows apps faster than most PC's. I can attest to that myself. I've never seen Visual Studio or Photoshop run faster.
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Not to start a platform war, but that is untrue. Goto anandtech and a Mac fan will prove that statement incorrect, citing the performance to be ok, and less than that of a simliarly spec'd asus (who by the way builds the Macbook pro). That said bootcamp will be an excellent way to get serious magic on a mac as its not overhead heavy as it is.
 
who cares...a dual 2.0 will be faster than a 1.67G4 for almost everything.
His point is you can now buy a laptop that will be capable of running pretty much all popular software....thats pretty cool.
 
This is good news
Let me get it right.though This program will allow one to record 1080/60 directly to the laptop hardrive over (what) firewire?

Why then may I ask, if it is possible to record 1080 over fire wire and the HVX can access a drive in host- is it even neccesary to have a laptop or a cineporter etc?

I understand that the HVX wont do this- But why if all the hardware capabilities are there?

Is this just a block put in to encourage the purchase of p2 cards?
 
It's not a joke, it's bloody phenomenal. I've used it briefly and it was amazing. On this same laptop that can barely choke out 2fps of DVCPRO-HD in the Avid quicktime codec, Serious Magic HD Rack can play 60fps full-screen full-frame rate 720p!

It's early, it's not done yet, and they said "6 to 8 weeks". But it looks like it will probably be everything I was hoping it would be.
 
cinebuddy said:
Not to start a platform war, but that is untrue. Goto anandtech and a Mac fan will prove that statement incorrect, citing the performance to be ok, and less than that of a simliarly spec'd asus (who by the way builds the Macbook pro).
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Give me a break, that's one instance. I've seen far more that indicate the opposite, depending on the specific application, especially versus the Core Duo Dell and HP. Where there are differences, they're practically rounding errors.

http://www.macworld.com/2006/04/firstlooks/xpbenchmarks/index.php
http://reviews.cnet.com/4531-10921_7-6484737.html
 
Milezee said:
Any ideas on the spec of hardware needed to run this?
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It's too early to say for sure. We're early in closed beta testing, and that's when we nail down the specs. That said, I expect that they'll be in the same neighborhood as for HDV:
* processor: 2GHz minimum, 3.2 recommended
* 256 MB RAM
* 5400 RPM hard drive

We plan to release this for open beta testing within the next couple of weeks--notice will be posted here when we reach that milestone. Feel free to drop me a note (mmapes@seriousmagic.com) if you're interested and don't want to risk missing the announcement.

Great to find such an enthusiastic reception.
 
Barry_Green said:
It's not a joke, it's bloody phenomenal. I've used it briefly and it was amazing. On this same laptop that can barely choke out 2fps of DVCPRO-HD in the Avid quicktime codec, Serious Magic HD Rack can play 60fps full-screen full-frame rate 720p!

It's early, it's not done yet, and they said "6 to 8 weeks". But it looks like it will probably be everything I was hoping it would be.
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Are they quoting a price on this Barry?
 
Serious DV Rack would be a godsend

Serious DV Rack would be a godsend

Just having returned from NAB, I'm also VERY excited about the possibilty of using DV Rack with the HVX200. There are a bunch of great reasons for this
(and no, I don't work for Serious- I just saw it in use and it blew me away)

1) you get a calibratable monitor on your laptop screen- it has the usual video monitor adjustments as well as a blue-only feature, so you can calibrate it to color bars. It will certainly help with focus, though when it was running, I didn't see it taking up the whole screen. So am not sure how many pixels we are talking about.

2) waveform/vectorscopes it's got real-time (with a slight latency) waveform and vectorscopes so you can make sure you are not too hot on your signals, and also if you are doing green-screen it will help you pull a better key as you can see the consistancy of your green on the scopes.

3) audio level and frequency monitors- I know the camera has audio levels, but it's nice to see them larger, and with the freq. anaylsis you can see instantly if you have some sort of low freq hum or other problems with your audio signal.

4) DVR this has been mentioned before, and should problably be #1. It can capture the video and audio stream from the camera, meaning as long as you have a laptop nearby, you can use it as your capture device. I think 2 8gb P2 cards are nearly the same price as a laptop with much more than 8gb free on the HD. Note, this captures the stream, doesn't re-compress, or do anything else with the data.

5) sure-shot - this is a tool to make sure you get your shot right. It has a bunch of steps that takes you through checking backfocus, exposure, and other things you should be checking periodically or constantly on a shoot.

6) QA - finally, another GREAT idea is that it can be set to flag peaking audio or video signals, so after a take, you can go back and check to see if there was a problem.

7) pre/post roll - I forgot this one! It has pre-roll so if you don't hit record at the right time, it will still capture the previous 10 seconds or so.

The point is, it's a fantastic tool, and I'm more than stoked to get a version that works with the HVX.
 
rightfrog said:
make this for the mac....pretty please...
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Oh its coming, but not from the makers of DV rack! Keep your eyes peeled for soon the Mac faithful will have a solution. I will post more when the time is right.
 
DV Rack does indeed have a full-screen mode. But for critical focus you may be better off using the 1:1 Zoom that's coming in the soon-to-be-released patch. At the push of two keys (CTRL+Z), the Field Monitor zooms to show exactly 384 lines of video, providing line-for-line accuracy. Then you just click and drag to whatever you want to focus on.

And for the record, the pre-roll buffer feature is 3-4 times better than you thought. It takes 1024 frames (RAM permitting), which is about 30 seconds of NTSC, 41 seconds of PAL.

Lastly, I noticed that my post earlier today got buried in the middle of the thread, so I'd like to repeat a beta-testing invitation that some of you might have missed. We plan to release DVC Rack for open beta testing within the next couple of weeks--notice will be posted here when we reach that milestone, but you can drop me a note at mmapes@seriousmagic.com right now if don't want to risk missing the announcement.
 
Thanks Good Lord!!!

In the past, Serious Magic listened t my prays and develop a superb tool: Dv Rack!

As soon as I get in to the path to have a HVX200 I felt that it will not be so easy to have a DVCPro HD 100 Dv Rack, but today I know tha the genious exists and are working hard to make our life easy.

Thanks other mark!!!

You at DV Rack must know that I´m your defender and promoter in my country, Colombia where I have sold about 20 of your DV Rack and Ultra software wich I buy in miami trought my son who leves there.

Middle last year I have sended an e-mail prosing this but no answer.

If you want I´ll become you dealer here, and sure I want to be a beta tester!!!

Please visit my site and contact me, sorry about my english, I´m spanish spoken person.
 
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Hi The Other Mark, I haven't stepped up to the HVX (but plan to someday) will the Rack still be backwards compatible with the DVX? Thanks!
 
Wow, this is the news I've been waiting for! I still don't know (or want to know) how that voodoo pre-roll recording works - isn't that like time-travel?!

Anyway, I really look forward to the HDD recording capability for our long-form interview projects. In particular, recording lossless to external USB 2 drives - we're into terabytes on One Nation.

e
 
Barry_Green said:
It's not a joke, it's bloody phenomenal. I've used it briefly and it was amazing. On this same laptop that can barely choke out 2fps of DVCPRO-HD in the Avid quicktime codec, Serious Magic HD Rack can play 60fps full-screen full-frame rate 720p!
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This is AWESOME! :) I really want to use a waveform in the field and this will be perfect. Since I already have the Marshall monitor, this will be good for a director to monitor the shots.


the_other_Mark said:
It's too early to say for sure. We're early in closed beta testing, and that's when we nail down the specs. That said, I expect that they'll be in the same neighborhood as for HDV:
* processor: 2GHz minimum, 3.2 recommended
* 256 MB RAM
* 5400 RPM hard drive

We plan to release this for open beta testing within the next couple of weeks--notice will be posted here when we reach that milestone. Feel free to drop me a note (mmapes@seriousmagic.com) if you're interested and don't want to risk missing the announcement.

Great to find such an enthusiastic reception.
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So very cool, but my current laptop is only a 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 on a Toshiba Satellite. I wonder how the performance will be . . .
 
Since HD support will come as an add-on, backward compatibility isn't really an issue. That is, you have to have DV Rack installed in order to install the DVC PowerPak. One thing that our sales & marketing departments haven't settled on yet (or at least haven't shared with me yet) is whether the HD and HDV PowerPaks will be sold separately or folded together.
 
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