CompuServe Thread

Gus, >> Hey, what else can you say about this D/Vision thing. How does the software >> stands? How many decks does it support? First off, let me clarify that D/Vision is not an on-line system. The best video quality you'll get out of it is betwen VHS to 3/4 – more like 3/4, but looking closly, you can see the artifacts. So for demonstartion and industrial uses, it suffices. For broadcaset – it's nowhere near. But then it was built as an off-line non-linear editing system, so the video stuff is icying on the cake, As far as controling decks, the current software can use Sony's V box to control L and S control decks, and an Arti-box, which controls most RS – 232 decks. Unfortunetly, neither control is frame accurate, but one-frame accuracy is unnessesery in how D/Vision works. The software upgrade in January will link up to V-LAN, I was told. Where D/Vision excels is in simple, inexpensive, but professional non-linear editing. Avid, Lightworks, MediaVision, EMC, and others have more bells and whistles, but then you certainly pay through the nose for them. In D/Vision, one digitizes video and time code, then edits it. When you have a completed EDL ( edit dicsion (SP) list), D/Vision creates apprpiae EDL's for CMX, GrassValley and other on-line controlers, with which you make your real cut. For demonstartion or industrial use, D/Vision can use it's own EDL to automatically redigitize all nessessery footage at the highest resolution and assemble it into a finished product. Editing on it is a breeze. The DOS screens are kind of clunky, but the proccess is very intuative and quick to learn. For example, you have a Source Cataloge, a screen that displays 12 shots. With mouse you can point at any shot and make it play instantatly. The middle button on your mouse/trackball turns record on and off – so the basics of editing is point, click, point, click, point, click…. etc – that simple. The on-line EDL's are a curious thing. I've heard people rave about their accuracy, to people foam at the mouth in anger at mistakes. The Post House and Edital both say that D/Vision's EDL's are more among the most solid in the industry (better than Avid's). (The Post House, by the way, calls D/Vision "the Movieola of the 90's"). My experience in cutting two commericals wen like this. During the D2 on-line for the first commercial, I looked at the D/Vision EDL and all the edits where off by a couple of frames, extra frames where thrown, and alll Audio and Video edits where split. I freaked, dump the EDL, and cut the commerical on-line from memory. Afterwards, I went home, screamed at D/Vision support and wracked my brain to figure out what happened. The truth was, all most all of the mistakes were mine. D/Vision has problems in spliting Audio and Video tracks, but then that only causes extra passes in recording and doesn't effect the finsihed product. Their D2 PREREAD command was AX instead of AUX, but any on-line editor can quickly fix that. My mistakes were in unknowingly mixing drop and non-drop source tapes, which D/Vision compensated for by inserting extra frames when nessessery; expecting effect cuts to center in the middle of the effect instead of handle the whole effect as a seperate edit; etc. In other words, grabage in, garbage out – know what your putting into the system, know how to read what it pops out and D/Vision will give you an accurate EDL. With this in mind, my second on-;ine session went flawlessly. D/Vision's software is pretty stable. It occasionally crashes or locks up in Record mode, but as long you save your work periodically, you'll be fine. My experinces with their product support have gone for exceptional to abysmal, but they do have a support Section in the Ultimedia Forum. From what other users tell me, they're pretty responsive in fixing major bugs and adding features most users want. The costs involved are: Software: $4,000 DVI baord $2,000 for video/sound capture and play back SMPTE reader $ 700 for the bext one – Telcom 102 Video monitor $1,000 or you can use a home TV with S-Vidio Base computer $4,000 with Adaptec 1542c, 16 RAM, 2.9G SCSI (4 RAM and iG minimum) Misc $300 cables and stuff. _______ $12,000 Or you can buy a turn-key system from a dealer for about $15,000. It's much cheaper to build it yourself and not that hard. Over all, I'm extremly please with D/Vision. There are problems – like they need to get a windows interface!!!! – but nobody's perfect. The bottom line is _it_works_! Works well and works cheaply. Also, when I don't use it, I rent it to other people, and since the system was so cheap to build, it has almost paid for itself in two months. (Try to beat that with an Avid or Lightworks!) Hope this helps. If you have any other questions – fire away. Martin P.S. please excuse my typo's and terrible spelling. I'm lost without a word proccessor.