Dazzle Your Clients! DPS Perception RT3DX Does It All

Digital Processing Systems, the folks who supported the Toaster with the DPS Par and TBC peripherals for the Amiga and later the DPS Perception card for the PC, have now bundled the perfect online nonlinear editing package; DPS Perception RT. This is a comprehensive assemblage of software and hardware that is very affordable, offering several levels of options that will fit any budget. For the faint of technical heart, DPS will even build your system of choice and deliver it to you turn-key, ready to roll.

The Configuration Choices

Whether you opt to build it or buy it built, the choices are the same. You begin with a helathy WindowsNT computer running at least a Pentium XX, with XX megs of RAM. DPS used the ___ in the turnkey system we tested. To this, plan to add two matching fast wide SCSI dirves. Both DPS and I recommend the Seagate brand, employing their 9 gig Baracuda, 18 gig Cheetah or 23 gig Elite. Later, as you test your needs, you can expand the drives in pairs up to ?? for a maximum total of ___ gigabytes or ___ hours of storage at DPS's lowest compression ration of ___.

Next comes the DPS hardware, which begins with the Perception RT. The basic card set is two boards, taking three PCI slots, joined across the top by a Movie 2 bus. From the back of the computer, two heavy cables lead to a rack mountable breakout box which features all of the video and audio connectors. These include BNCs for composite and component (Y,Y-B,Y-R) video, S-VHS, optional DV Firewire, optional serial digital interface (SDI), and sync.

Early models of the breakout box featured only RCA-type unbalanced audio connectors, but DPS quickly responded to user feedback and improved the hardware to include XLR jacks, equitably upgrading those who had already purchased the original units. Our evaluation system was not so equipped with the optional DV or SDI interfaces, though we would have loved to test it with our Canon XL-1 and JVC Digital-S decks with DV and SDI throughputs.

As described so far, DPS RT can capture low compression video at virtually transparent quality. Using the bundled VideoAction nonlinear editing software, the user can execute a vast range of 2D effects, wipes, dissolves and graphic superipositions instantaneously without rendering. The cost for this package which includes the boards, the breakout box, all cables, VideoAction software, and bundled versions of Inscriber (CG software) and SoundForge (audio effect and sweetening software) is $______.

Hardware Options

For those that wish to add 3D effects in real time, DV Firewire capture in real time or 601 digital SDI throughput, Perception RT offers the R3DX, DV and SDI options respectively. All options may be retrofitted by the user as an aftermarket purchase.

The R3DX option, combined with the VideoAction software allows virtually any imaginable 3D-DVE effect to be created in real time. Instant pushbutton effects, similar in ease and speed to the VideoToaster, but perfect in every pixel, include page turns, fly-ins, puddle warps, peel and reveal, spheres and geometric shapes.

The DV option ($_______) places Firewire jacks on the breakout box, allowing the user to capture DV format video directly from a camera like the Canon XL-1 or Sony DVX-1000 and edit back to the camera` without entering the analog domain.
The 3DX option ($________) is represented by a third PCI card that connects to the original two Perception RT cards within the computer and otherwise does not affect the hardware configuration. This offers the user the Z-axis plane in all 3-D effects.

We believe that SDI will represent the last refinement of the 4x3 NTSC format before the industry moves to the 16x9 digital television (DTV) standards. While client demand will not, most likely, become DTV critical for several more years, the low cost of the DPS SDI option ($____), especially when combined with digital audio sources and a digital video VTR like the Sony D2 series or the JVC Digital-S deck equipped with optional SDI (as low as $______) will maximize your suite's quality until the inevitable sunset of NTSC.

And Now the NLE

WHIL RT WORK WITH OTHER NLE SOFTWARE ???
The bundled NLE software supplied with Perception RT and RT3DX is in our opinion, the easiest and most powerful NLE we've ever reviewed. Long a sleeper under the limited marketing budget of its parent, Star Media Systems, VideoAction has never received the press or industry acceptance it deserves.

How often have you contemplated attending a costly "editing school" to learn the more famous editing and compositing software programs? Save your money. If you've ever edited tape, you can learn VideoAction in about an hour. In another hour, you can learn to make your own 3D composite effects. In a week, you can teach yourself to run circles, both creatively and hourly around any other system operator.

The bonus with VideoAction is that it is the editing software for nearly all of DPS's product line. You can start with an Edit Bay system (under $500), move to Spark (the first DV format to computer interface on the market), enhance to Spark Plus or move up to the Perception RT-3DX and still use the same editing software!

As a reviewer of just about every NLE on the market, our in-house choice is VideoAction. It's simply easier to learn, fast to use and chock full of user-configurable effects. While other editors use an NLE and window out to a compositing program to do a series of floating titles, we make them all right in VideoAction. Need to create a custom warp or put the DVE shrink screen into an on camera TV monitor? Easily done. And now that all the effects are real time, are you kidding?

Acquisition

Pretty straight forward here. Using the optional 422 interface connector between a VCR and the host computer, VideoAction will allow SMPTE code batch capture or on-the-fly capture from nearly all current professional VCRs. We hooked it up to our JVC Digital-S BRD-90, our Sony BVW 2800, no problem. Not equipped with a DV deck, we had to go wild with DV captures from our Cannon XL-1 camcorder, but we'll get that worked out soon.

A running time guage is featured to estimate how much recording time is left on the drives at any given capture resolution.

As each shot is captured, an icon is created in whatever gallery you have open. Unlimited galleries, in which each icon can be played direct to video, can be opened and moving clips around is a simple drag-and-drop routine. Double clicking on the icon brings up a trimming controller, very much like an edit control device, but frankly, we never use it, because trimming on the timeline itself is so easy.

Clips can be acquired as video, audio or both in mixed resolutions ranging from __ to 6 MB/second, which is about 3:1 (CHECK). Finished EDLs can be exported from VideoAction for use on other systems or for batch recapture on large projects.

A unique feature of the DPS hardware is that it stores captured media in a wide range of standard formats. Therefore, if you require a BMP or TIF file of a still frame, you can simply explore to the appropriate shot's subdirectory under the BMP or TIF file folder in the DPS drive structure and the appropriate frame will be there. Similarly, if you have an animation system that outputs in TGA, for instance, you can copy the files to a DPS/TGA/NAME file and your frames will play back instantly (as a DPS "RVA" file sequence) in the NLE.

The Timeline

Only two active windows are necessary in VideoAction; the timeline and the gallery. Only one timeline may be open at a time, but unimited galleries may be displayed. Begin editing by dragging clips from the gallery to the timeline, where a ribbon, proportionate in length to the clip, appears.

VideoAction's follows the "timeline intensive" paradigm of NLE philosophy. While offline trimming commands are available (so as not to dissappoint converts from the Avid, or "trim window" paradigm NLEs), the intent of VideoAction is to control all editing with the mouse by manipulating clip ribbons directly on the timeline.

To extend the end of a shot for instance, the editor puts the cursor near the tail border of the shot. A text flag, reading, "end" appears, indicating that to click and drag at this position wiLl extend or shorten the outpoint of the clip (a different flag, "start," pops up to indicate the cursor is about to edit the inpoint). Clicking within the clip, highlights the clip and activates several tools, such as the razor tool, which allows the clip to be cut into pieces or the audio control nodes. Cutting a ribbon into pieces, however, does not add icons to the shot gallery. Being a timeline intensive program, the assumption is that the gallery serves only as a storage bin for shots before they are taken to the timeline and that once on the timeline, no further gallery work is necessary on the clip.

To move a shot in the timeline, simply click within the ribbon and drag the clip anywhere. Play the sequence by clicking in the SMPTE code track above the timeline to position the cursor and then press the space bar to play from that point forward. To play a section of the timeline, click and drag within the timecode track to highlight a portion of the timeline. This portion will then play and, if desired, loop.

Using these simple routines, the editor may quickly assemble the order of shots by dragging them in sequence to the timeline and then shuffling them around until the best order is found. After ordering, the shots may be trimmed at the head and tail and then slid to the left to butt up to the previous shot. In minutes a cuts-only assemblage is executed and viewed. With the cut sequence finished, the editor can begin adding effects as required or effects may be added as the shots are trimmed.

Effect Creation

Unlimited video and audio tracks are available in VideoAction. Equipped with the Perception RT or RD with 3DX, real time effects will be actuated on any two clips overlapping on any tracks. Clips placed on the first two video tracks, however, produce an automatic effect icon at the overlap point. Click on this icon and a tabbed array of iconic effects pops up, organized according to categories like "3-D warps," "Common Wipes," etc. Click on an effect icon and the effect starts to loop on the video output.

Although RT-3DX is sold as a "two stream" system, many routines, some combining as many as five simultaneous effects may be created in real time. For instance, we created a simple dissolve (2 levels), with a zooming (3rd level), keyed title (4th level) superimposed. Then we made each of the dissolving video tracks change from color to Black & White (5th and 6th level) during the effect. The system played it back without a second of rendering.

Extensive customization of each included effect may be achieved by double clicking the icon to reveal a control panel replete with keyframe-controllable parameters, all of which play back in real time loop. For instance, by clicking the default "page curl," the editor can bring up controls that interactively adjust the curl angle, direction and diameter. A mini timeline of the effect allows for the addition of any number of keyframe tabs. Each tab may be assigned a specific set of parameters from the control panel, forcing the effect to match these parameters at specific points in the effect's duration. In this way, the page curl, for instance, can be made to start with one diameter, then tighten, change direction and angle, hesitate and then complete itself. Using the real time loop, the editor can make all these things happen in sync with other elements, such as the music or voice track.

One of the most powerful features of VideoAction is the "FX" button which may be applied to any video clip on any track. Clicking it opens a list of dozens of available effects, such as blur, star filter, solarization or even frame animation. Select an effect from the list on the left of the window and it moves into the "active" column on the right. Click the name of the effect and a customizer window pops open, offering keyframeable controls of all parameters. Okay the controls to return to the columns where yet another effect may be added. Any amount of effect can be stacked. As the controls for each succceeding effect are opened, the preview playback shows how the accumulated effects are combining.

With the RT and 3DX cards installed, many effects and stacked effects are shown in real time without rendering. For instance, we selected solarization and made the effect fade in and fade out during the length of the selected clip. Then we added "sphere" and made the solarized shot roll up into a ball and fly off to the left. As we worked on the "sphere" move, we could see the effect, in real time, with the solarization effect fading in and out.

About a dozen RT effects are listed in the current release, but if you can tolerate some render time, hundreds of additional effects can be selected and applied to a shot. Instead of real time playback, however, a small 1/8th screen size preview window plays a skip-frame version of the effect.

Title Effects

VideoAction comes bundled with a customized version of Inscriber CG software. Position the playback cursor over the scene that requires character overlay, and right click in any gallery to open Inscriber with the type-cursor positioned over the selected timeline frame.

Here, Inscriber works as in any other application with a few exceptions that we found a bit short. The first, is that you can only create one title per launch of Inscriber. Make a title, save it, Inscriber is dumped and you find yourself back in the gallery with the title slide appearing as a clip. If you want to make a series of titles, you have to keep going in and out of Inscriber.

We also found a bug in Inscriber's roll feature, which makes the creation of a roll longer than a few lines of text virtually impossible.

Assuming these two bugs will be fixed, Inscriber makes an excellent companion to VideoAction. Once the title frame is in the gallery, simply drag it to the timeline and it appears, instantly, supered over whatever video track is positioned above. Click the FX feature on the title clip and you can easily create a real-time title fly-in (which, when you think of it, is a real time, three layer effect - title, video, effect). Inscriber and VideoAction work together to preserve alpha channel information making real time, elaborate shadow effects possible.

Rendered Effects

While the effort of Perception RT 3DX is to provide real time editing, the demands of some editors will occassionally exceed the real time capabilities of the system. Effects which require more than three streams of video overlay, for instance, will require rendering or some "sub-clipping" technique. VideoAction signifies the necessity of a render by displaying a white gap in the otherwise green ("ready to play") stripe that runs above the SMPTE timecode band.
The render can be started by double clicking the white gap, revealing a render control panel that allows the operator to render just the clicked segment or all white gap segments.

The operator can also create sub-clips, which, is our opinion is a faster and wiser choice. For example, assume you wanted to fly a clip in over a dissolve (3-level effect). We would first create the dissolve in real time. Then we would "make a movie" of the dissolve, from in-cut to out-cut (a process which takes about double the play time). The "movie" appearing in the gallery as a new clip, which is good, because it can then be addressed as a separate element if the client wants to make changes on the subsequent, 3-layer effect. The operator then deletes the original dissolve elements from the timeline and substitutes it with the "movie" clip. Now the third layer can be added and played back in real time.

Another method would be to lay off the real time playback of the dissolve to a VCR and then recapture the dissolve from the VCR. If the SDI option is installed and the user has an SDI VCR, this layoff will be virtually transparent, can be executed in a bit over twice playback time, creates a tape archive of elements, and is relatively easy to control using VideoAction's machine control menu. Perhpas DPS will create a simple buttom routine to automate this procedure.

Audio Issues

The quality of the audio hardware built into the RT set is quite high. We have previously used the Perception A4V, Antex Studio and the On Stage ______ audio cards to handle the audio functions of our pre-RT Perception systems. While these may still be employed with the RT card set to add extra channels of playbac, the quality of the RT sound compares favorably to that of the dedicated cards although it is limited to two tracks of 16 bit output.

In VideoAction, the audio is controlled, as in previous versions, by moving node points on horizontal red lines that indicated either pan or gain, and may be easily switched by clicking to the left of the appropriate audio track.

Various clip-wide settings may be made with pull-down menus, such as setting and resetting the audio gain up or down by as much as 200%. Often, however, an editor wishes to apply an aggressive "sweetening" routine on the audio tracks. To accomplish this, DPS eschews reinventing the wheel and bunldes the powerful Sound Forge software. We often take our audio elements out of VideoAction by executing a "make movie" in WAV mode only, then retrieving the file in Sound Forge for sweetening. Once sweetened, the clip is saved as a WAV, recovered to the gallery in VideoAction and layed back into the timeline. The most common sweetening routine is gain increase and noise reduction, two very powerful routines in ____ and the most significant improvement factors in our videos in the past two years.

Stability

The greatest fear of any NLE editor is having the system crash in the middle of an edit. Generally, there are two types of crashes: Dr. Watson crashes and blue screen crashes. In our experience working on nearly every NLE system under $60,000, none was free of occassional crashes of both kinds, and VideoAction is no exception.

Cleaning up crash bugs is much more difficult than one would imagine, given the intermittency of most bugs and the nearly infinite varieties of actions one can initiate to cause a crash. Short of perfection, responsible vendors build safety mechanizm in their programs that facilitate recovery of work after a crash.

During a period of a month of hard editing on real client-supervised projects, VideoAction crashed to Dr. Watson about 6 times, and blue screen crahsed about 4 times. On each occassion, the software rebooted with a message offering recovery of the lost timeline. The recovered timeline, in most cases was exactly as that which was lost. The probability of total recoveries is increased in VideoAction by setting the Preferences to auto-save the timeline in a "recover" file at frequent intervals, like every five minutes.

Generally speaking, we found VideoAction to be comparitively the most stable NLE platform we've used to date.

Documentation

Documentation for both installation and operation of VideoAction is extensive and well illustrated both in book and in computer-resident form. We found some minor shortcomings in finding some of the features whose locations were not as clearly described in the book as might be expected. In addition, the robust complexity of some of VideoAction's features are best explored in the program than explained in text. The Video Frame Animation feature, for instance, could easily take 100 pages of text; text that is totally obviated by the intuitive nature of the interface.

We found VideoAction so easy to use that the text sat unopened for most of the test period. Over 100 hours were booked with clients during which the documentation was consulted twice (once to figure out how to import fonts into Inscriber and once to figure out how to create a DVE zoom in of a title over picture).

In any NLE product development cycle, there is frequent lag between the documentation and the program evolution. Obviously, advancing features in the program take priority over advancing reprints of the documentaion. At DPS, advancement of the software is constant and frequent reference to the DPS website (www.dps.com), is recommended.

Technical Support

The growing popularity of DPS's product line is aparently making strains on technical support. Although DPS technical staff are courteous, well informed and very patient, they are difficult to get on the line. Callers who connect a few times with Ms. Connie Webster, the Technical Coordinator, will be amazed to find their voices recognized in a most cheerful and helpful manner that makes each user feel like a member of some intimate club or family. We found that a message left with Ms. Webster was usually returned within a day.

If we were pressed to suggest one significant improvement in DPS's product line, it would be to hire a few more tech people or to set up a 900-number immediate response service. This is essential when you want to sell to professional editors who cannot afford to keep a client waiting during a session when tech support is required.

A significant advantage held by DPS is their control of the entire software development process, from machine source code and drivers, through the hardware and finally the user interface. Unlike ala carte manufacturers who must rely on third parties to write drivers, thereby delayint the development process, DPS offers upgrades and improvements with weekly regularity.

Users are invited to download all the new developments, free, from the DPS (dps.com) website. Even beta versions of each software may be downloaded and tested. During the time of our test, we downloaded a new SCSII driver that significantly improved our playback efficiency. A week later, several new 3-D effects were available online.

Executive Summary

DPS Perception RT-3DX with VideoAction is the best NLE bundle we have seen so far. It's features to cost ratio is extremely high, and it's real time capability, stretching beyond its advertised two stream capacity, makes it a very efficient tool for client-supervised online sessions. Easy to learn, yet vastly featured, there is little the system cannot do. Although technical support could be beefed up, we found no significant reasons not to make this package your first choice in a professional NLE system.

Scorecard

Ease of Operation: 10
Features: 10
Real Time Capability: 10
Quality of Image: 10
Effects: 10
Audio Support 9
CG Support 8
Technical Support: 6
Bang for Buck 10