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DV500 - Hands on review -The future is here!!If you've been following my articles and reviews over the past year, then you know that I think MPEG2 &DV is the future for non linear editing. The DV500 has shown me that the future is here! The DV500 is a native DV editing card that uses a special MPEG2 chipset to deliver an incredible combination of video qualty, features and flexibility at a price that is as amazing as its performance.If you've been looking for the best non linear editing solution for under $1,000, stop looking, and get yourself a DV500!! |
The DV500 includes Pinnacle's DV Tools utility for capturing DV footage via FireWire. Analog footage is captured from within Premiere. This is done manually, although 3rd party software is available to provide deck control for certain camcorders and VCRs. Note: Not all programs support this new OpenDML file format. If you plan on using files created with DV500 with other software, you may have to use the standard under 2GB avi file type.
While we are on the subject of video capture, I want to elaborate on a killer feature of the DV500 that I discovered.
When this version is combined with the DV500 hardware and drivers, it becomes Premier RT. The RT stands for real-time.
The DV500 also comes with Pinnacle FREE FX. These 3D transitions use your powerful 3D graphics cards to massively accelerate the rendering.
The DV500 software bundle includes TitleDeko, simply the best titler I've run across for Premiere.
The final portion of the DV500 bundle is the Minerva Impressions for creating CD ROMs and DVDs.
One of the things I want to clarify about the DV500 is the kind of storage you will require. If you want to use these hot new real-time effects, you'll need more then a single UltraDMA EIDE Drive.
As a test I tried using a single 17GB UltraDMA drive with the DV500. What I found was that as long as the drive was less then half full, it worked well. Once I used up more then 50% of the drives capacity I started running into problems. Transitions became unstable, Premiere got sluggish, and playback would jitter. These problems were magnified if I had a clip at the beginning of the drive making a real-time transition to a clip in the over 50% full portion. If you plan on making short videos that use up less then half your drive space and have very few real-time effects, then you can operate the DV500 just fine with a single UDMA drive. If you plan on using the DV500 to to its full capacities, get a VideoRAID SCSI, FastTrack or UW SCSI drive.
When you take into account all the amazing features of the DV500 and the outstanding software package, what you get is the most important new product to hit the industry in years! The DV500 is more then just a new video capture card. It is a major technology leap over the current state of the industry. You can edit all your video footage, regardless of format. So now that your little girl is sweet 16, you can create a video that includes the VHS footage of her first steps, her first dance recital on 8mm, your Hi8 footage of the big homerun she hit in her tomboy years and the new DV footage of her in her first formal gown. Regardless of when you shot it or what the format, it can be used in your new non-linear editing system. You don't have to dub it over and you don't have to worry about generation loss. It will all look as great as the original footage (well perhaps great is too strong a word for those early VHS days ;-)
Now that you've edited the footage you can record it directly onto analog or Digital. Or you can put it on a CDROM. Or you can stream it out on the web. The choice is yours. With the DV500 you have no limits!
Note: The DV500 has been replaced with a new bundle that includes Premiere 6.
The new bundle is called the DV500 PLUS.
Check out Videoguys' new hands on review of the Incredible DV500Plus!!Videoguys hands on review of the DV500
I've actually been playing with the DV500 for several months now. I was lucky enough to be included in the later beta tests. When I first got to use the DV500 it only had Win98 support. I am happy to report that the actual shipping version also includes beta versions for Win NT and Win2000!! I have used the DV500 under both Win98 and WinNT with the same outstanding results.
The new 1.2 DV500 drivers (released Sept '00) fully support Win98, ME, NT & Win2K!!!!
The DV500 represents a quantum leap in video editing price/ performance. For under $1000 you get a card that supports analog (VHS, 8mm, SVHS, Hi8) and digital (DV, Digital8) formats. The video quality of the DV500 is superb. With DV footage you get native DV editing, so the output video quality is identical to the original footage. With the analog inputs the video looks equally as impressive. All video is captured in real-time to native DV using the cards C-Cube native-DV chipset. Output can be either DV or analog. You select whether you want to use the analog jacks on the blue breakout box or the FireWire connection. 
This is the same award winning utility found in the DV200 and DV300 cards. DV Tools is very cool! It will automatically scan, log and select the in and out points for your entire videotape. You can then go to each scene and trim it to capture only the footage you want. This can save you a tremendous amount of time and disk space. DV Tools then lets you log and organize all your DV tapes so pulling a particular scene from older footage is a piece of cake. You can also capture manually from within DV Tools. DV500 also gives you complete deck control and batch captures from within Premiere if that is your preference.
The DV500 supports the same OpenDML avi file format used in the DC1000. This gives you a 12-terabyte file limit. So with the DV500 the annoying 2GB file limit is a thing of the past!
If you want to just hit record and capture up to the entire capacity of your hard drive, you can. But I must tell you, I think that using DV Tools or batch capture is a much more efficient method. I find it a bit difficult to deal with one massive avi file. For me it is much easier to edit if I've first broken down the video into smaller, more manageable chunks. 
As you already know, with FireWire capture cards, DV in = DV out. This gives you video that is exactly the same quality as the original footage. A really great feature, as long as your original video footage looks great. But what about when you have a scene that is too dark or has a reddish or blue color tint to it? What can you do? With a DV only card, you have to apply a filter to the entire scene. This works great, but filters have to be rendered. So a 5-minute section of video could take over an hour to process and correct. Even more annoying, it usually takes two or three tries until you find the exact settings you want. So fixing that 5-minute segment of video could take you several hours! With the DV500 you can simply switch to analog capture. In the analog capture mode you can adjust the brightness, contrast, sharpness, saturation and hue while you capture the video. It may take you a few passes until you get the settings right, but the video correction is done in real-time while you capture the video. What a major time saver!
Editing with the DV500 is even better. DV500 ships with the latest version of Adobe Premiere, version 5.1C
One of the big features of the DV500 is its ability to do real-time transitions and titles within Premiere. If you add a dissolve between two scenes you do not have to render, the effect plays directly off the timeline out of the breakout box. You get a total of 18 different real-time transitions. You also get about 100 Pixelan SpiceRack transitions. If you access these transitions from the Pinnacle Gradient Wipe transition they will be real-time. I've always been a big fan of these 'spices'. I think they look very cool and unlike a fancy 3D transition, they do not distract the viewer from the actual video content. I added the entire Spicerack Pro and Organic FX software to my DV500 and now I have over 500 spices to choose from!! If you want to go out via FireWire these transitions will have to be rendered. But the DV500 uses Pinnacles award winning INSTANT video timeline playback utility. So only the transitions are rendered. Better still, if you render a transition you do not have to re-render it if you make changes to the timeline after the effect. You can switch back and forth between DV or analog output any time you like. 
I edit in analog mode with a TV monitor hooked up to the blue breakout box.
This way I can see all my previews, edits, trims and scrubs in their full screen glory. I've always felt that for best results I need a TV hooked up to the output of my capture card. This way I can see what the video will really look like. On the computer montor, even if it's full screen, it's just not the same. To watch your DV footage on the TV with a DV only card you have to have your DV cam hooked up whenever you edit. Not a big deal but something I'm glad I no longer have to do with the DV500! When I'm ready to go back out to DV, I simply switch my DV output to my DV cam. This is done by right clicking on the Pinnacle INSTANT video logo box and then selecting your output setting. It's that simple and easy.
A 2-second 3D page peel rendered in 20 seconds on my PII500 w/ 128 megs of RAM and 32meg Diamond Viper card. (Tech note: For best results make sure you are running the latest and greatest drivers for your graphics card). The same type of transition in Premiere with a plug-in takes over a minute. Another undocumented feature I discovered was that when I rendered a FREE FX, it didn't have to be re-rendered if I switched to DV mode!! So after I previewed it, the FREE FX become real-time for DV or analog output! Unfortunatley the underlying DirectX technology of FREE FX is not in Windows NT, so you don't get the FREE FX when using NT. The release version of FREE FX will work under Win2000.
Your TitleDeko titles do not have to render as long as they are static. If you want to have the title scroll or move, then that portion of the video will need to be rendered. The Sonic ACID audio software is also included. This lets you create repetitive audio loops to use as a background soundtrack. ACID is pretty cool, but I still prefer Sonic Desktop's SmartSound for creating my background soundtracks.
The 2.0 version of Impressions is not yet finished, so the DV500 ships with a coupon. All registered owners will be sent Impressions once it ships in early February. The 2.0 version will let you make a CD ROM that has fantastic MPEG2 quality video. The CD ROM you create includes an automatic playback utlity, so anyone with a fast enough machine (PII 300, 32x CD drive, 3D direct draw graphics card) can watch it. I've been using the beta version of Impressions 2.0 with my DC1000 for a month or so, so I am pretty familiar with it. You can create multiple menus with interactive buttons. The background images for the menu and all the buttons can be imported as Photoshop objects to give you a really professional look. The 2.0 version scheduled for release will also include the ability to make a single menu DVD that can play on a set-top home theater DVD player. You'll still need a DVD writer and the cheapest around is about $6,000. I don't have one, so I was unable to test this feature.
In my test system I used a VideoRAID 2/50 SCSI hooked up to an UltraWide SCSI controller. This resulted in perfect video quality and full real-time capability. Even when working with over 40GB of video clips! Many of you may know that for single stream DV footage all you need is a single UltraDMA EIDE drive. So why do you need a VideoRAID for the DV500? The answer is actually quite simple. For real-time effects you need enough throughput for both video streams and the effects. That works out to 3 times your data rate. For the DV500 that is over 10 megs per second!
DV500 now includes Hollywood FX Copper 3D effects software at no extra cost!!!
One of the finest 3D effects software tools on the market, Hollywood FX
Copper dramatically expands the content creation capabilities of DV500.
Including 100 software-based accelerated 3D effects and transitions for
Adobe Premiere, Hollywood FX Copper provides a unique bundle premium for
DV500 that no other company offers.
The powerful, advanced plug-in technology of Hollywood FX includes the
ability to automatically detect scene changes by marking the in-and out-
points and scaling the transitions in the process. It's easy to use and
makes normally what would be a complex task in other systems much more
accessible to your customers.
DV500 SUPER BUNDLE!!
Now you can add over 100 incredible 3D transitions to your DV500 for under $100!!
DV500 & Hollywood FX Bronze $899.95
In addition to the extra FX, Bronze includes a keyframer and the ability to create multi-layered video transitions!!
New bundle!!
DV500Plus $799.95
DV500 tech notes
As an added bonus I've included a few DV500 tech tips that will help you get the most out of your DV500.
DV500 SUPER BUNDLE!!
Now you can add over 100 incredible 3D transitions to your DV500 for under $100!!
DV500 & Hollywood FX Bronze $899.95
In addition to the extra FX, Bronze includes a keyframer and the ability to create multi-layered video transitions!!
SUPER DEAL!! Adita premiere Tutorial $29.95 w/ DV500 purchase. Click here for our special DV500 on line order form!
Win NT beta issues
The DV500 is shipping with a beta NT driver. The release driver is due end of January. If you are running NT, the following problems have been identified and will be corrected in the official release:
For more great tech tips and to hear what real people have to say about the DV500, join the DV500 email list!!
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