Serious Magic/HVX

For those who aren't already owners of DV Rack and therefore don't have access to the Registered Users forum on the Serious Magic site:

Hi Everyone,

We are gearing up for some changes to the DV Rack lineup in the next few weeks.

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First off, we are going to be releasing support for the new Panasonic DVCProHD and DVCPro50 formats, specifically to support the new Panasonic HVX200 camera.

Rather than releasing another PowerPak, we have decided to roll this support into the existing PowerPak, which will be renamed the "Hi-Def PowerPak for DV Rack."

Existing owners of the HDV PowerPak will get this support for FREE. (!) When we ship, we will be releasing a free patch file that will add DVCPro support to all owners of the HDV PowerPak.

We will also be raising the price of the Hi-Def PowerPak to $295 when we ship, so if you want DVCPro support, now is a great chance to get it at a discount. You can currently buy the HDV PowerPak at $195, and, again, youll get the DVCProHD and DVCPro50 support for free.

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Also, the price of DV Rack will be returning to its original price of $495 on August 15th, so if you know someone thinking of purchasing DV Rack, get it now before the price increase kicks in.

Serious Magic
Product Marketing Manager, Professional Products Group
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So you pay $495 for a product, then have to pay an extra $295 (=$790!) to get it to do what it should do out of the box? Not that impressed to be honest, and would have thought that eventually, with the world heading towards HD that DVRack would have HD built in as standard by now.
 
Hi Mark Mapes,

just a quick one, i have a friend down in melboure, Australia that uses dv rack express. he wants to know if the panasonic plugin will also work with that package?

cheers :dankk2:
 
booth said:
So you pay $495 for a product, then have to pay an extra $295 (=$790!) to get it to do what it should do out of the box? Not that impressed to be honest, and would have thought that eventually, with the world heading towards HD that DVRack would have HD built in as standard by now.
Click to expand...

If DV Rack isn't worth $495 and if the HD add on isn't worth the extra $295, don't worry, SM will reduce the price -- the market does take care of these kinds of issues. What matters is not so much what SM thinks is the right price, but what the buying public believes is the right price. So, we will see if those prices come down...

As for me, I am a student and got both packages for a little over $300. Even still, I think the non-academic price for both comes to about $500? Not so bad.
 
booth said:
So you pay $495 for a product, then have to pay an extra $295 (=$790!) to get it to do what it should do out of the box? Not that impressed to be honest, and would have thought that eventually, with the world heading towards HD that DVRack would have HD built in as standard by now.
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You can currently buy the DV Rack + HDV Powerpack bundle for under $330 at B&H, and you'll get the update with DVCPro support for free.

At that price, you'd be CRAZY not to get it. There's alot more to it than just capturing to disk.
 
It's a Windows-based program, but apparently runs quite well under Bootcamp:
Hello All,
I bring happy-happy joy-joy news to all yall Mac users who have DV rack.
IT WORKS!! DV Rack is on my Mac!! Yeeeaahhhh!!
It is VERY FAST! (compared to my Dell C840 w/ P4 2.4Ghz CPU and 1Gb Ram)
Of course you need a MacBook Pro, Core Duo Mini or iMac.
I'm testing all three Machines, so far they are all working VERY nicely!
I will post more in a bit...with some pics and specific instructions for those who want it.
For now.. all you need to do is..
#1 - Download and install Boot Camp
#2 - Install XP Pro
#3 - Install the drivers that come with Boot Camp
#4 - Update Windows via Windows Update Site
#5 - Install DV Rack
#6 - Update DV Rack
#7 - Dance around and hoot and holla cuss' DV Rack is in yer Mac!!
More to come!
GGW
Click to expand...
Another company (don't recall who at the moment) is coming out with a native Mac application that has essentially the same functionality.
 
Booth,
You're making a fundamentally illogical assumption that if we rolled the Hi-Def PowerPak into the main product, we'd sell it at the lower price. And if the auto manufacturers, for instance, put AC, sun roofs, and alloy wheels in all of their cars rather than offering those features as add-ons, would you expect them to still sell the car at the base price?

The point of making HD support optional is to give customers who shoot only DV a break.

Please note that I'm not talking at all about what the "right" price is, much less trying to convince you to shell out $800 ($500 if you buy soon). As Telebay implies, the beauty of a market economy is that the consumer gets to decide what's worth buying.

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Mike: There is no upgrade path directly from Express to the HiDef PowerPak. I'm not sure if we offer any discount or credit for upgrading from Express to the full version of DV Rack.
 
The Other Mark, originally I thought that the HD version would be a different animal by itself. So what I'm reading is that its basically DV Rack with plug-ins to do HDV and DVCPro. I think Booth was probably thinking that you would have a version out that just do HD. But I guess it makes sense to have all the variables under one roof. After all, many folks will still shoot SD, HDV and DVCPRo.
 
I understand that the HVX does not sent the 40Mb/sec 720pN24/25/30 streams over the firewire output. Does DV Rack store them all as DVCProHD 720p60 or can it strip out the extra frames and store it as 24p?

Thanks,

David
 
I don't think that's been settled yet, but I am fairly confident that the wizards at Serious Magic will implement it such that it strips out duplicate frames.
 
I have been following this thread, DV Rack is an awesome product evolving.

Is it possible to record an HVX's DVCProHD video/audio, 720 or 1080 at various frames rates (25, VFR etc), to a qualified laptops hard drive, and if so, is the file thereafter recognised by one of the relevant CineForm products (Aspect/Connect/Prospect HD), for conversion to the visually lossless wavelet codec for post NLE/Compositing?
 
David, thank you for your response. My understanding is that there is beta testing of these products now, and I am wondering if general compatability between DV Rack DVCProHD captures to a PC/laptop and CineForm codec encoding thereafter is acknowledged/happening?

Thanks for the feedback and any further clarification.
 
I recently sent a message to Serious Magic about their beta-test program for the DVCPro enhancement, and was told by Mark that there won't be a NDA required or any formal enrollment.

Obviously, if you don't have DV Rack or the current HDV Powepak, the patch to add support for DVCPro won't help you, and I suspect you also won't qualify for the beta without them.
 
Actually, this beta is a stand-alone program that does not require DV Rack to be installed. In fact, if you do have DV Rack, it installs alongside it rather than in its place. So any bugs in the beta will not affect the operation of your regular app.
 
From what I have read so far, in due course, DV Rack is a must have for me for use with an HVX for field monitoring and video/audio capture of various DVCProHD formats to my lappy.

For those of us that plan to convert these DV Rack captured files and use the software only based products of CineForm to ultimately edit, there is the issue of evolving forms of NLE monitoring, namely via a DVI output to a 2nd monitor of some kind or other methods of monitoring.

Are there any plans or prospect that DV Rack can be used or developed to be used in conjunction with a NLE application for monitoring via DVI to a 2nd monitor or perhaps firewire back from the PC to the HVX and looping through to a component HD monitor of some kind. Reason I raise this, DV Rack appears to have a lot of control for calibration, etc. I am not sure if this is even possible, or relevant for the DV Rack product, so please excuse my thought process if I am way off track... :undecided
 
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