The Great DV Shootout 2003
Page 4 of 14

Canopus guyCanopus DVStorm2 Product ShotNathan Yanoff, DVStorm2 Product Manager, Canopus:
The technological divide between DVStorm2 and the competition continues to widen:

Realtime video tracks, graphic and title layers
Unlike other DV editing systems, DVStorm2 is capable of five simultaneous realtime video tracks and over 30 simultaneous realtime graphic and title layers. RT.X100 and Pro-ONE RTDV are restricted to only two video tracks and two realtime graphic and title layers with little prospect of improvement without major reengineering.

Realtime video filters
DVStorm2 features 30 powerful realtime video filters that may be stacked, blended and combined without limitations. RT.X100 and Pro-ONE RTDV are limited to just a few filters in realtime and neither product can combine multiple filters without severe workflow limitations.

Quality DV and MPEG
Canopus's standards-compliant DV and MPEG codec technologies are recognized worldwide for speed and high quality, which is evident when you use DVStorm2. RT.X100 and Pro-ONE RTDV are troubled by poor-quality DV and MPEG because they use the outdated C-Cube codec chip.

Return on investment
DVStorm was introduced in 2000, and through its Scalable Technology Architecture, enhancements have been achieved through simple software updates. Upgrading to DVStorm2's feature set is only $299. Keeping up with Matrox or Pinnacle in the same timeframe requires three board purchases totaling approximately $3000. History shows that Canopus is the best investment.
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Charlie's Comments:
Nathan's not kidding when he mentions the DVStorm's capability of previewing five simultaneous real time video tracks at the same time. I test this numerous times and it's the truth. This extraordinary layering capability is the primary strength of DVStorm2.

Click for QuickTime movie -- Canopus DVStorm2 layering example.
Click for QuickTime movie -- Canopus layering example
Check out this example, where I sacked up 15 layers of stills, titles and video. One of the video layers had color correction applied to it and a dissolve between it and another video layer, along with three of the title layers moving onto the screen at the same time. In addition there were ten dissolves happening at the same time! Not until I added another filter to one of the video layers, motion blur, did DVStorm2 refuse to preview the effect in real time.

Click graphic for enlargement -- Take a look at this monster stack of 18 layers of video -- 19 if you count the fade up from black This was the most I could get to play back in real time. Wow.
Click graphic for enlargement -- Take a look at this monster stack of 18 layers of video on the DVStorm2 -- 19 if you count the fade up from black. This was the most I could get to play back in real time. Wow!
Then, with this same kooky video postcard segment I created, I tried creating 30 layers of stills, titles and video trick as Nathan mentioned (see the Premiere timeline in the graphic at right). Did it play back? Uh, no. But I kept removing layers, one at a time, until it would play back, and the magic number for this configuration Canopus sent me (a dual Athlon MP 2200+(1.79 GHz) box with 512MB of RAM) was 18 layers. Remarkable. But then, after heroically playing back all those layers, the mighty DVStorm2 crashed unceremoniously. Even so, that's quite a feat. And five of these layers consisted of moving text, while all of them were fading in and out. Another bug I noticed was the tendency of the DVStorm2 to lose its cursors when the layers get thick, where instead of the dragging tool the cursor stays in its arrow configuration. The Storm also sometimes just sits there while you're trying to drag clips around.

Handling all these layers is all well and good, but this exercise also illustrated the weakness of the DVStorm2: The motion of those titles onto the screen is limited to canned slide-on, slide-off routines, and I wasn't able to move or position the ten rose graphics at all on the screen -- that was done in Photoshop before I imported the graphics into Premiere. So yes, there are many layers you can place on the screen at the same time, and if you like to do tricks with text moving onto the screen at different times with various dissolves, this is a killer app. But if you want to move, say, video cutouts onto the screen, forget it. There's no way to do it with all these layers.

Real time filters? Yes, there are many filters that can be stacked and blended. Limitations? There are some, but you'll probably not need as many filters as DVStorm can process before you run out of power. I stacked up six of them on one clip, resulting in an awful-looking concoction, and it still played back easily. I won't startle you with a QuickTime example of this, so just take my word for it -- there were lots of filters slathered on. But there are limitations. When I copied that monstrosity and tried to dissolve from the first clip to the second, oops. Couldn't play that mess of 12 filter layers dissolving back and forth in real time. It's probably just as well. Nevertheless, if you want to add many, many filters, DVStorm is the one for you. And I like some of the filters Canopus has added to its collection, with the Old Movie filter I've mentioned in other reports still being one of my favorites, with many configurable parameters like film scratches, luminance jitter and much more.

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