DSR-11: Going Bilingual

It plays and records both NTSC and PAL, takes DVCAM tapes small and large, plays and records standard DV.  I/O: FireWire, Y/C, unbalanced audio.  A review posted on EditorsNet says the price should be around $1,500 however some Japanese places list it at 250K Yen (US$2,334).  Charles McConathy, a frequent DV-L contributor, said that his shop will get the first shipment on November 6.

Resources: DSR-11 PDF brochure at Sony of Canada (if you have Acrobat) or a DSR-11 page at Sony US.  Do you read Japanese?  Then visit Sony.co.jp as well.

Gripes: you have to use an AC/DC adapter but look at the bright side: it's included and it's universal 110/220V.  Certain things are missing altogether: manual record levels and level indicators, front panel TC display, component I/O, RS-422.  Still a cute little VTR at a great price.

Matrox RT2000 MEGA Pack Preview
by A.Gerulaitis

A preview version of RT2000 MEGA Pack aka Version 2 of Matrox Video Tools, brings long-awaited features and improvements to RT2000.

New real-time FX include nicely done particles.  2D/3D DVE FX that can now be keyframed and saved for future use.  Windows ME is now supported.  Windows 2000 Pro - not yet, wait for 3.0.  There is a new free Inscriber TitleExpress: real-time customizable titling plug-in.  You will probably never look at Cool 3D again.

Direct capture to MPEG-2 IBP format for DVD authoring.  RT2000-Da-Superman is now a real-time MPEG2 Encoder, too.  You can capture from your 1394 or analog input - directly into DVD-compliant MPEG file.  Mind you, that is not the real MPEG yet, but an AVI-wrapped MPEG which you will then need to "unwrap" into a "real" MPEG.  And for that, you will need to use:

Matrox File Converter utility.  AVI-to-MPEG and back.  With a separate audio or interleaved.  An absolute must-have.  If only it did ASF (Windows Media) output.

Matrox Video Player.  Full-frame full-motion resizable Matrox AVI playback.  Just double-click on it.

1394 hot-swap.  Connect/reconnect 1394 devices and look, Ma - Premiere's still alive!

4-channel DV audio support.  Yes, it can capture all four channels simultaneously from those DV devices that support 12-bit/32KHz 4-track audio.  Does it make it the only native DV NLE platform capable of that?  No (says Brandon Higa from Canopus): nearly all Canopus products (besides EZDV), can capture all 4 channels in one pass, using their own utilities or NLE software (Raptor Edit, Rex Edit) which are very good.  RT2000 is still the only one that does it in Premiere.

DVCPRO support.  Batch capture and print-to-tape using Panasonic's own version of 1394.

Analog capture using DV-1394 device control.  Great for low-res off-lining.

Among other advertised improvements are: better A/V sync, stability, audio scrubbing.  Amen - we tested the previously not-too-happy JVC DV decks BR-DV600U and SR-DVS10U and they work well now.

Gripes.  No dual processors since neither Windows 98 nor ME support multi-processing.  Until Windows 2000 Pro is supported (no NT), RT2000 will continue losing some of its high-end customers to Pinnacle DV500, Canopus DV Rex RT and the new Storm.  Other than that, RT2000 remains our favorite DV editing platform packing a lot of features for under $1000 (street price).

JVC's New Professional DV Camcorder - GY-DV500.  The most comprehensive coverage on the Net: reviews, Links, Comparisons.

Sooper Snoopers:

Want to know what's going on on your Firewire?  Equip yourself with a IEEE1394 BUS ANALYZER FE, a product jointly developed by Kenwood and Firefly.

Even better suited for these purposes may be the 1394 DATA ANALYZER by 3A International is based on passive bus snooping technology, allowing it to listen into any activity on the bus without interfering with regular bus traffic. This way every event (asynchronous and isochronous) can be logged into an on-line buffer for off-line analysis. Trigger can be set is various ways to ensure the highest flexibility in capturing specific events.