Holding Fast - Review of FAST DV Master

Here is a total 1394 solution that you can build yourself or order from a dealer, and when properly configured with all the bells and whistles, it results in a complete online editing studio in one PC computer case. This, folks, is everything. Betacam, YUV, composite, S-Video and DV-FireWire inputs and outputs. Nonlinear editing and special effects, even Final Effects, without recompression. An on-board DV tape deck, controlled like a VCR from within the computer's software. If you are into DV format, this is your baby.

The Components

To build the fully-configured box described above, you start with a base computer, which should be at least a Pentium 150 with 32 MB Ram, a 2 gig system drive and as many SCSI II media drives as you can afford to buy. Then you add two products from FAST, which are available separately. These are:

- The DV Master kit (list price, $3,995). This is a product that makes your Windows95, Pentium PC into a complete post production project studio in one easy step. The product consists of a two part hardware package, bundled with a wide assortment of editing and effects software. All one needs is the is a DV tape source such as the Sony DVX-1000 camera and DV Master does the rest. DV Master bundles several useful software packages into the mix as well. You even get Ulead's Media Studio Pro, Meta Creation's Final Effects by Kai Krause, Adobe Photoshop included in the package at no extra charge.

Final Effects, which works as a plug-in for Premiere or Media Studio, vastly extends the range of special effects to include page curls, rain, and warping effects. The bundled software alone could justify the cost of the system!

- The DV Drive (list price, $3,495). This is a mini tape deck that is designed to slide right into a double height, CD-ROM bay on your computer. It looks like a DAT tape drive and is straight out of James Bond. Press the software's "Eject" control or the external button on the deck and a drawer slides out, pauses and then up pops the tape tray. Slide in a DV or DVCAM tape, snap it shut and the drawer slides back into the computer. Internal wiring connects the DV Drive to the DV Master's inboard FireWire connections (there are two more FireWire ports on the back of the DV Master card), so everything looks real clean.

With these two units installed, you computer leapfrogs the current linear video technology and becomes a VCR, a nonlinear editing platform and a special effects generator all at once. Consider the implications of having Adobe After Effects bundled into the package, and you could also say the system is an animation-compositing station as well.

A Well Designed PCI Bundle

For those wishing to grow their system gradually, the purchase of the DV Master alone, might make great sense. The internal PCI portion of DV Master with its three IEEE 1394 FireWire connections, capable of both input and output can be set up and cabled to the included external patch box to provide a wide assortment of input and output options based around a core application of the DV camcorder as the source and master "deck." Two of the FireWire connections are accessible from the back of the computer while the third is internal, intended to be connected to FAST's DV Drive.

An additional multi-pin jack on the back of the DV Master's PCI board cables to the outboard DV Master I/O box. This unit, about the size of a paperback boo, features connectors for YUV (BetaSP), and Y/C (SVHS) output with added connectors and adapters for Y/C and VHS and Hi-8 input, making this arrangement very attractive to project studios which are equipped with a wide range of legacy VCRs. Audio connections on the I/O box include mono and stereo inputs via unbalanced 1/4" jacks and a 1" headphone jack with a monitor gain control.

Employing the I/O box, DV Master allows for acquisition of video from DV, BetaSP, SVHS, Hi-8, or VHS. Once acquired, the media is edited and then output through the same connectors to any type of recorder, including DV in a completely digital cycle.

We found the unit to work extremely well, and although the audio was not through balanced XLRs, which is finally becoming the professional standard in high end computer audio cards, its quality was not less than that of the original source material from a subjective point of view.

DV Master may also be used as an on-the-fly Beta/DV/Composite/SVHS transcoder. Feed it DV tapes and instantly record BetaSP or SVHS in real time, producing results that are as clean as anyone is likely to get. This one thoughtful feature could easily pay for itself in a week or two if you have a client that owns a Beta facility, but prefers to shoot with the low cost, portable DV cameras!

VCR In A Computer

We thought, a long time ago, that someone would design a video tape deck that would fit into a PC and provide direct cabling and software to the hard drive. That was back when BetaSP was the standard and digital tape hadn't been launched yet. After digital tape, we thought it was surely just months to a PC-VCR. It was longer. Now it's here and with the recent price reduction, we can't see why you wouldn't want to spare your DV camcorder the overtime charges of acting as both a source and master deck. Give it a rest. For $PRICE?, the money you save on your camera head replacement will cover this neat addition to your hardware.

The DV Drive is very slick looking and will make a big hit with your techie customers (you know, the ones who still like to visit your shop, even though everyone is buying video production turnkey these days). The only control on the drive itself is an eject button, the rest of the functions are controlled by the DV Master software. But when you press that button, or press "eject" on the software, the mechanism slides out and pops up with buttery smoothness and is worth the macho machine satisfaction in spades.

Installation

Installation of any I peripheral system is like trucking gasoline through hell, but as plug-and-play goes, DV Master represents an average level of complexity and can only be installed on WIN95 or WindowsNT. The NT version was developed in close cooperation with in-sync, makers of Speed Razor editing software and although we did not review it, we anticipate it will make DV Master better accepted by the professional marketplace.

At least a Pentium 90 with 16 megs of RAM and a VGA card with at least 256 colors (you may want to opt for higher color capacity if you intend on using the computer's screen as a video monitor). Once the card and I/O box are installed in the computer, and your choices of video sources and monitors are connected, you boot up and run the three DV Master setup disks.

Our efforts were, well, effortless, however, since the evaluation unit came completely set up on a Pentium 200 clone computer and it ran very well. We would suggest buying this system configured by a VAR if possible, but if you have some experience building or upgrading, you should be able to get through this one in a few hours.

Using DV Master

The heart of DV Master's software is DV Manager, which elegantly supports remote machine control, eliminating the need to use the DVX-1000's tiny VCR buttons to shuttle and play the tape. Our system came with FAST's new DV Drive and acquiring footage on this system is the easiest we've ever seen. Just point and click the cursor to shuttle the tape to your chosen in-point, press Play and you're capturing.

As soon as you press Stop, the clip appears in a picon with a window ready to accept descriptive information. Want to see the clip play back, click the icon, press the Play button on the hard drive VCR emulation panel (right below the panel for the VCR) and you're watching the playback. If you don't like the clip, highlight it with the mouse and press the DELETE key. Poof, it's gone. Incidentally, you can see either on the computer screen or a video monitor, simultaneously, and I couldn't tell the difference from the tape to the hard drive.

This was a very clean acquisition, and because it was IEEE 1394, there was only one compression (about 5:1 at the camera) and only one for the whole process. You acquire the shots, edit, do special effects and then record back to the camera or the DV Drive and all the while, you are never recompressing.

DV Master requires a steady hard drive capture speed of at least 4MB per second. Most Fast-Wide SCSIs, such as Seagate's 4 gigabyte Barracuda, 9 gigabyte Cheetah or 23 gigabyte Elite drives will do this.

DV Master will acquire footage equally well from DV or DVCAM units, such as Sony's DSR 30 and DSR 200 units with perfectly locked audio synchronization and the newest version of DV Master (1.2) has been optimized to work with Sony's professional level DV camcorders.

In Media Studio, users may take advantage of a new DV Master software feature called Power Play, which allows full quality playback from the timeline without pre-rendering. This has always been a sore spot in our shop with the medium level NLEs like Media Studio and Premiere, so the enhancement is very welcome.

Summary

DV Master and DV Drive, when added to a Pentium computer upgrade it to a fully capable DV online editing suite with internal VCR capabilities. The included software bundle vastly extends the functionality of the package, leaving nothing to be desired.

Bang for the Buck 8
East of Installation 9
Stability 10
Ease of Use 10
Interconnectivity 10
Professionality 9
Documentation 10
Technical Support 10