Action Jackson: A Review of Video Action NT

Star Media Systems is a small company whose management is highly dedicated to customer service. Principal, Sam Lee, is a passionate note taker and even casual comments from callers often wind up as improvements in the frequent interim software builds that precede a major revision. More than any other software company I've dealt with, either as a "blind user" or press representative, Star Media takes a very proactive role in improving their product through user input.

During the testing of this software, each of my technical support calls were handled quickly and most issues were resolved. Tech support was immediate, even during Comdex, when most of Star's technical staff was absent. During each technical session, the operators took extensive notes, which, I was informed, were submitted to the R&D engineers for consideration in the upgrading process. On two occasions, the software writer himself got on the line in order to obtain a better understanding of the problem.

I have the distinct feeling that each of the shortcomings noted in this review will be addressed in the next revision of VANT, so please compare these notes to the program if and when you consider a purchase. I received three interim build updates of the program during the review period, each offering significantly more effects, features and stability. VANT seems to be improving daily.

Although the company spends nearly nothing on marketing, its sales at trade shows are brisk. Aggressive shoppers are quick to realize VANT's superior qualities, especially its ability to run on fast RISC platforms while integrating with the leading edge capture cards.
After optimizing the program to the hardware's specifications using various SETTINGS menus, the process of editing in VANT can begin. This requires the user to CAPTURE video to the computer's hard drives in AVI format, COLLECT the AVI as picons in any one of several user-defined GALLERIES, moving the picons to the TIMELINE, adding TRANSITIONS and TITLES, PREVIEWING and finally MAKING MOVIES.

Settings and Set-Up

VANT is designed to run on a wide variety of hardware configurations and is particularly well designed to take advantage of the premier video capture-playback peripheral from Digital Processing Systems (DPS); The Perception Card. If the computer is so equipped, VANT interfaces invisibly with the Perception and only a minor amount of settings need be set to achieve D1 quality video signal throughput.

An ideal configuration requires the Perception capture and playback card, an SVGA and/or OpenGL video card, and a high quality, 32-bit audio card.

While one might assume that the fastest CPU will yield the fastest rendering times for special effects, it will not. The lowest common denominator, in this case, the video playback card (also called the "codec") is the slowest component. The Perception, even on my Alpha system, renders dissolves at about 2 seconds per frame. DPS will soon distribute an accelerator card as will other companies, which will significantly reduce rendering times.

Sound is another weakness in PC-based nonlinear systems. Alpha machines in particular allow only a few models of sound cards (mine uses the Soundblaster 32 AWE, which inhales with gusto). Again, DPS has come to the rescue with a professional audio card that promises to elevate the PC to professional audio standards.

One should also examine Saw Plus, a software-based audio editing package, written in machine language that accomplishes utterly astounding results on Intel platforms and is being rewritten for Alpha RISC processors.

If the computer is equipped with less than the Perception card, VANT allows the user to set capture, preview and output settings that conform to the standards of the system. Editing may be accomplished, for example, using an Indeo capture card feeding to the same computer monitor on which the software is run. The video plays back in an on-screen preview window.

Assuming the user has optimized his system with a Perception card, the quality of the VANT edited video is truly broadcast quality. With some minor reservations, noted below, I would judge the effects to be broadcast quality as well, with elegant controls, anti-aliasing and easy to use controls. This article assumes that the user is optimized with the Perception card. Audio capture and playback can be set as high as 44 MHz, 16 bits, but all my clips appeared to suffer from overmodulated recording regardless of the settings or levels I chose.

Capturing the Moments

Within VANT, one captures by pulling down the "Quick Capture" module wherein is found a control panel for simple record and save functions and a window that allows the user to identify each shot. The current version does not support automated batch captures or VCR control. The "clip name" window does not automatically update the clip name by number and must be manually incremented.

The capture window allows the user to set record parameters for video and audio. These parameters may be saved and recalled at any time. All popular codec formats are supported and pixel ratios may be manually set.

Although an "audio only" check box is featured, there appears to be a bug in this version which rendered it useless. There is no "video only" capture option, so if you wish to capture MOS (mit out sound) clips, the best you can do is set the audio for the lowest quality level.

Appreciating Collectibles

After you've captured enough clips to begin editing, you close the capture window and begin to fill up the blank window known as the "gallery." VANT supports as many galleries as you care to have open on your screen at one time. The clips appear in the form of small, color picons, with a title block below. The picons cannot be resized and require at least a 16" monitor to be useful.

The gallery window can be proportioned in any dimension, most usefully as a half-screen horizontal under the time-line window, which is best configured half-screen across the top half of the monitor. The picons may be moved about within the window in any fashion, either by global priorities or by click-and-dragging. I find this a major improvement over Adobe Premier's format which forces the user to employ a vertical layout of clips which conflicts with the horizontal layout of the timeline.

Multiple gallery capability and click-drag routines make it easy to shuffle clips into various galleries, organized by whatever logic the editor chooses. Saving the project results in a saving of all galleries and the timeline. The wise editor will set up a default layout for use in all future sessions that automatically loads all clips into appropriate galleries.

Clicking within the picon in a gallery causes the picon itself to play, albeit without sound. This feature would be more useful if each picon could be sized by the editor to taste.

Clicking the name box below the picon pops up a statistical window which reads out all of the data on the clip, including subject, duration, source, etc. This is a great feature, because an editor really doesn't need this information on the screen all the time.

Timeline-liness

The timeline supports any amount of video and/or audio clips. One, on screen video effect track is provided, which allows the user to identify and modify transitions as if they were individual clips.

VANT's timeline follows the convention that video tracks at the bottom of the screen appear overlaid upon video from tracks at the top of the screen. The timeline will accept any video input from still frames in a variety of formats (bmp, tif, iff, etc.) and resolutions.

The timeline may be scaled by clicking an icon and then right or left clicking the mouse within the timeline. Clicking on a clip will center that clip in the adjusted screen. The system could use a few extra zoom increments between the most magnified and the next step out. The user can scan the timeline by clicking on arrow buttons or keyboard input. VANT's timeline does not support a moving cursor which indicates the position of the frame being played. An interactive cursor appears on the main timeline only when a clip is being cut (see Editing, below).

If the user attempts to move a clip illegally, such as placing two overlapping clips on the same time line, a warning window pops up and the active clip jumps back to the gallery. This is annoying since it requires pressing an "OK" button on the warning screen and starting the process over. A better response would be for the clip to jump to a free video track, the assumption being that the user wants to make an overlapping video transition.

Above the timeline are three narrow cursor bands that assist in previewing and movie making. The bottom band, featuring frame graduations, assists in placement of the editing cursors. There is also a vertical red line which may be placed on any frame to instantly render a small-screen preview of the video at that point on the timeline. The middle band, features a yellow, "make movie" stripe. By adjusting the ends of this stripe, the user indicates the range within which a finished movie will be rendered.

A great feature of VANT is the top cursor band. This band is divided by black, vertical lines that correspond to boundaries of each clip on the timeline below. The segments of this strip are colored coded light green (ready to preview) white (requires a rendering before previewing) or dark green (already rendered and ready for preview).

If a clip is shown white, usually indicating that an effect needs to be rendered, the editor can render it with a double-click within the white area. Unfortunately, the editor cannot select more than one clip to render at a time. Once rendered, the clip will turn dark green and remain so, ready to preview without delay, if the editorial parameters are not changed. The rendered clip can even be moved to another point on the timeline and it will still remain green. VANT discretely stores all interim renderings in a TEMP file, accessing them automatically during interim previews. If the timeline is not saved and the software is closed out, VANT automatically erases the TEMP file, restoring disk space.

Wherever the top band is green, VANT can provide an instant, synchronized full resolution playback of the movie on a video monitor! The user simply sweeps the cursor in the bottom cursor band, from left to right. A quick "Preview Rendering" box pops up, taking about 2/3rds video run-time and then the video plays. This is a superb feature of VANT and makes the software one of the best for working with clients. The feature could be improved if the cursor-sweeping could extend to the right, past the edge of the monitor and if the preview could be rerun without re-rendering, but even with these limitations, I find myself constantly previewing to the video monitor throughout the edit.

Editing

Editing is commenced in VANT by dragging a picon to the timeline, where it becomes a bar of appropriate length. The timeline does not support picons in the Montage paradigm. "Including this feature," notes Sam Lee, "Entails a very costly royalty payment which we are not ready to pass on to our customers. Do you really need it?" I was afraid to say yes. Sam's tone suggested he might just go out and mortgage his house to please a customer.

Once the clip is on the timeline it can be played and trimmed in a number of ways. Each clip features a film-reel icon, which, when pressed, causes the clip to play in its entirety. There is a "cue marker" feature which, when activated, allows the user to scrub the clip while adding small, numbered cue markers. These markers affect the snap-to functions during clip movement so that clips can be lined up to cue points easily. There is, as yet, no cursor which scrubs beyond a clip's boundaries or over the entire production.

Double clicking within the clip, but outside the "reel" button causes a "trim window" to pop up. The trim window, which directly controls the Perception card, offers VCR controls and a rudimentary scrub slider. The slider shuttles the video and audio in synch for accurate review of the footage. Also featured in the trim window are in and out point markers which to be set, either by timecode, graphic tag, or by keyboard input. Once in and outs are set, the clip may be looped between the in and out, however, positioning the pointer just before the out point and pressing the play button causes the pointer to jump to the in-point and the entire clip plays. You cannot, therefore, use the trim window to play just the out point by itself.

It is easier to trim the clip on the timeline, which is accomplished by simply dragging the in or out border of the clip left or right. VANT conveniently pops up a small "start" or "end" flag as you sweep the cursor over a cut point, thereby making it easy to identify if you are going to adjust the tail of the outgoing cut or the head of the incoming shot.

Unfortunately, VANT does now support scrubbing of the cut point itself, or any means of selecting and of the six possible ways of trimming a cut (extend tail while erasing head, extend tail while pushing head, extend tail while pushing tail, extend head while erasing head, extend head while erasing tail, extend head while pushing head). Instead, each of these trims must be accomplished by laboriously closing up gaps or adding gaps and extending shots. If the trimming is taking place in the middle of a long sequence, you've got a lot of shuttling, trial & errors to work through.

Moving a clip from one point in the timeline to another is simple but not elegant. Grab a clip with the cursor and slide it to another point. If there is now room in the point where you want to insert it, you have to put it on another video track then open the original track to insert the new clip, then go back to where the clip was removed and close the gap. As VANT matures, more elegant features may be developed by Lee's software team, but presently the process of cutting and inserting is rather primitive.

Because the galleries in VANT are so economical of screen real estate, editors will find it one of the fastest edit programs to use. Entire galleries can be instantly "converted to timeline" in any one of several sort orders. Picons can be moved between galleries and from the galleries to the timeline in both directions. Your favorite setups can be saved with the title of the production, allowing you to recall all the galleries intact as they were when you quit.

Cutting within a clip, to form two clips, is fast and easy. A tool button turns on a razor tool which may be scrubbed over any track. As one scrubs a relative timecode window activates next to the razor to give the exact frame number of the cut point. Pressing ENTER, actuates the cut.

Scrubbing any clip with the razor results in a broadcast quality playback with sound (if the clip is a synch clip). Although scrubbing with the mouse is a bit coarse, there are no means of adjusting the leverage of the mouse, except by zooming the entire timeline, which is not convenient. VANT would be improved with a few play buttons, say 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 speed in forward and reverse. Fine scrubbing is supported by switching from the mouse to the keyboard arrow keys which can move the cursor one frame at a time or at about 1/10th speed by holding the arrow down. Unfortunately, once the keyboard is used, the editor cannot go back to the mouse.

In general, I found the razor a great tool for trimming down a timeline quickly. The process of actuating the razor, coarse locating with the mouse, fine locating with the keyboard, ENTER, and DELETE, allows an editor to quickly scan through a rough-assembled timeline and reduce the content to a fine cut in minutes. An infinite UNDO list, accessible only in reverse sequential order, is adequate for backtracking errors.

Audio Editing

VANT can capture video clips with mono or stereo sound up to 44 MHz, 16 bits. Any combination of video and audio resolution can be captured including audio-only.

On the timeline, a synch video clip can be separated from the audio and then rejoined if the two are still comparable length. If a video clip's original audio gets out of synch, re-synching is easy. When either the video or audio clips are moved on the timeline, a vertical line appears at the center of each clip. Joining the two lines snaps the two tracks back in synch.

Within each audio track, a horizontal line represents the gain of the clip. Clicking on the line adds a control node, double clicking removes the node. On either side of the node, the level can be adjusted by simply dragging the line up or down. The audio tracks of cross-faded videos are not automatically cross faded. Stereo audio is not shown as two audio tracks and no left-right pan controls are offered yet in VANT. (CHECK)

VANT is one of the few nonlinear editing systems which maintains perfect audio synch during preview playback, making it an excellent program to use when clients are in attendance.

Affecting Effects

By far the most advanced features of VANT, and one of the reasons to consider it as a first choice editing system, is its special effects and transitions. Special effects make Video Action NT!

Effects are created by simply overlapping a video clip on one track with a clip on another. Although effects are supported between all tracks, the effect itself is represented only on the effect track (just below the main video track). Since VANT supports multiple effect stacking, this seemed to be a logical simplification of an otherwise infinitely complex possibility of representations.

The effect clip itself can be actuated the same as a video or audio clip and its details (duration, sources, effect type, etc.) can be quickly reviewed by right-clicking the mouse. Regrettably, there is no way to specify the duration of an effect other than by adjusting the overlapped video through trial and error.

The type of effect is specified by clicking the effect band on the timeline and selecting any one of the pull-down icons that represent effect types with simple thumbnail animations.

VANT comes with four banks of 20 special effects which may be selected as default or modified. The user, however, will no doubt opt to create her own banks of special effects, a task which is easy, once learned. Once banked, a user's customized effects can by pulled down in banks with icons that animate just like the installed effects!

A spectacular feature of VANT is the Visual Effects Wizard. This is a two-step system of creating an infinite variety of effect. The first step allows the user to select from a menu of various types of effects. These include filters, titles, page turns and video animation. For instance, if you wanted to have Scene A warp into a ball to reveal Scene B, you would click Video Animation for Scene A. Then, if you wanted Scene B to take on a title and slide to the left as Scene A flew out of frame, you'd click "Title Effect" and "Video Animation" for Scene B.

As you add each subroutine to the list, the Wizard takes you into a control screen in which you enter keyframes for your selected effect. Video Animation, for instance, brings up a full-screen representation of the effect, represented by wireframe outlines of each scene and the background. The user clicks on the icon for Scene A, for example, designates the shape and dimensionality, positions it in relation to the monitor screen and sets a keyframe. Then she adds another keyframe and addresses the movement and time between frames. Bezier curve handles are offered for adjusting elegant movements. Trails, particles, 3-D shapes, warping, twisting - a vast range of influences may be applied to the keyframes. When the choices are made, the editor can instantly see a playback of the keyframes. If satisfactory a thumbnail preview can be rendered quickly. Once approved, the editor returns to the timeline where the effect itself (or the entire movie) may be rendered in the selected resolution. Subpixel rendering is also supported, though it will add to rendering time.

I found the Effects Wizzard to be the most advanced and expandable method of designing effects of any system I have evaluated to date. This especially includes the ancient black-box products dating back to Mirage, ADO and DVE. The system is almost intuitive, but not quite, requiring some tutorial assistance to get started. This assistance, however, is at present, only available from tech support over the phone, since VANT has not published any documentation in support of the Wizard. A crying shame.

Outputting the Green

As I worked through my first sessions in VANT, I found a routine developing which was different from those I'd employed in other nonlinear systems. Because the system allows you to selectively render specific scenes, I found myself "filling in the green bar" as I worked along. Since this takes a few minutes per scene, I found myself running off to the fridge for a snack at each render. VANT, like all current desktop video tools, will make you fat before your time.

Try putting off the rendering until the evening or a long lunch break. The system will automatically fill in the greens on its own and if you don't like the results, you only need to change the segments you don't like. Then simply ask for a broadcast preview of the entire timeline and what you see will be what will render when the final movie is printed. Neat.

Stability

At present, the key issue in nonlinear editing systems, especially on fast RISC processors is system stability. To my knowledge, no system, from the premium priced Avids to the cheapest kiddy cutters, are free from jams and total, yank-the-power-cord crashes.

The bare fact is, computer based nonlinear editing is still in its adolescence and tantrums must be expected and tolerated. Just as a good mother knows what causes her child to erupt into uncontrolled frenzy, so should a good editor know her software so as to save the EDL prior to venturing into crash-prone territory.

VANT's crashes occur most frequently when scrubbing audio. The faster the processor, the more likely the crash. On Pentium processors the problem is rare or nonexistent. Exhaustive debugging is currently underway by Digital Processing Systems, Sentinel (makers of the software anti-theft device, commonly known as the "dongle"), Star Media, in-synch, maker of Speed Razor Mach II, whose initial release was highly prone to audio scrubbing crashes on Alphas.
At present, the problem seems to be coming from the Sentinel's inability to continually process software anti-theft clearances as fast as the Alpha can process code. Digital Processing Systems has developed a new WindowsNT Alpha driver for the Sentinel, which can be downloaded free from their website (www.dps.com) or their FTP site (ftp.dps.com). After installing the driver, there are two further parameters which may be widened if the crash problem is not resolved.
Go to Control Panel, Drivers, XXX and then highlight the Sentinel driver in the pull-down list. Then press, Setup. Here a menu allows you to check a box labeled "x." Do it. If you still get crashes, change the number in the bottom box to 10,000. These adjustments force the computer to wait longer for the security signal to come from the Sentinel. I'm not sure if it slows processing down a bit, but on my Alpha 266, it increases stability to about 98%.

In Summary

To date, I have not encountered a nonlinear editing software company that offers a competitively priced product and employs experienced film and video editors in the software design process. Although nonlinear releases us from the hell of SMPTE-based linear editing, a return to the Eden of film-bin editing is yet to be. My hope is that Sam Lee and his team will continue their efforts in this direction. Sam has the right ideas, the right attitude and the right price. Although Video Action Pro NT is still a maturing product, with lots of room for improvement, it's progress toward Paradise seems a surer bet than most of its competition