A Day With Pinnacle's DC1000

by Stephen Schleicher

The DC1000 requires a minimum of a PII/350mhz computer with 128MB RAM running Windows 98 or Windows NT. You should also have an external SCSI-2 drive connected to your computer to store media files, and a CD-R/W for authoring interactive CD's. For this article I used a PIII/500mhz with 128MB RAM running Windows 98.

7:00 AM Saturday (yes, there actually is a 7:00 AM on Saturday):

Opened the computer and installed the DC1000 capture card. The capture card fits into an open PCI slot. While the version I demoed only captures analog video, there is a daughter board that you can purchase separately that will allow you to capture DV media. This daughter board connects to the DC1000 capture card, and thus will not take up additional slots on the motherboard. The DVD1000 uses the same capture card and daughter board as the DC1000, the only difference being a hardware dongle (similar to After Effects and AEPro).

7:15 AM: After connecting the breakout BlueBox to the capture card, it was time to install the software

Pinnacle Systems has partnered with some of the best media software companies in the industry. Adobe Premiere 5.1 RT, Sonic Foundry Acid, Minerva CD Pro (DVD1000 includes Minerva DVD creator, a $10,000 piece of stand-alone software), Pixelan Software's' Video SpiceRack Effects, and TitleDeko are included in the DC1000 package. I was informed that Real Producer G2 was also included in the package, but I could not find it in this unit.

8:30 AM: Software installed, time to find out if this thing works.

For the purposes of this article I connected a Sony BetaSP deck to the BlueBox. The DC1000 accepts either S-VHS or composite input, the drawback is the breakout box only has RCA connects for the video and audio. (Note: By the time this article goes to press, Pinnacle Systems will have updated the DC1000 to also include a Component Option and a DV option.) Also, there is not an RS-422 connector on the breakout box, so deck control from the computer is not an option with the unit as is. However, there is always a company to fill the void. Pipeline Digital offers ProVTR RS-422 control software that works with Premiere to solve the deck control issue.

While the computer and Adobe Premiere both recognized the DC1000 card, when it came to the first moment of truth, Premiere could not activate the card. The manual mentioned nothing in the trouble shooting section about what the problem could be. I picked up the box the DC1000 came in and sure enough, it did say that it was compatible with Win98, but upon closer examination (i.e. reading the fine print), the currently shipping version of DC1000 only includes the drivers for WinNT. It was time to go online and search for the Win98 drivers. After searching the Pinnacle System and related sites, I was able to find the new drivers. Unfortunately, the drivers are contained in a 69mb file. Since it would take around 10 hours to download from my connection at home, I decided to go to work where I have an ISDN line and the download would only be an hour. This also gave me a chance to pickup some XLR-RCA connectors for the BetaSP deck.

11:00 AM: Installed the new drivers, the capture card is now recognized and I'm ready to digitize some video

The most amazing thing about the DC1000 is Pinnacle's proprietary "SmartGOP" technology (GOP is a group of pictures). It has been greatly assumed that the only compressed video that can be edited with frame accuracy is an I-frame. However SmartGOP allows frame accurate editing within the IPP format used to capture video.

I could write a whole article on MPEG-2 video compressed with I-Frame, IPP, and IBP technology, but I only have 15 more minutes before my footage is done digitizing. In a nutshell, I-frame only is an older MPEG-2 technology where every frame of video is compressed to the same size creating an "intra" frame. I-frame technology has a high data rate and uses a great deal of hard drive space. IPP is made up of a group of frames (GOP) consisting of 1 I-frame and three predictive frames (P frames). The P frame only stores video that has changed from the previous frame. This allows high quality video at half the space, and it allows for frame accurate edits. IBP compression consists of an I-frame, a P frame, and a B-frame (a backward looking frame) which fills in the space between the I and P frames. Again, high quality images and low space usage. IBP technology is very complex and is near impossible to edit frame accurately. IBP may seem complex, but put a DVD in your player and you will see it in action.

11:45 AM: Just finished digitizing 30 minutes of footage to the harddrive

At the highest resolution (BetaSP), the DC1000 can get about 5 ½ minutes of video per gigabyte, and about 11 minutes per gigabyte at the lowest (S-VHS) resolution. I've worked on Avid NLE's for the past three years, was used to the high quality output, so I had gotten into the habit of thinking that anything that is as relatively inexpensive as the DC1000 could not have good output resolution. I was unexpectedly blown away by the quality of the captured video from the DC1000 (I believe my actual first words were "Holy Cow! Would you look at that?!"). The resolution is just as good as an Avid Xpress AVR 75 (broadcast quality). The lines are clean and sharp, and the color is excellent. Had I had my waveform and vectroscope hooked up, I'm sure it would pass with flying colors (no pun intended). The video was captured without dropping any frames and played back without glitches or hiccups.

On to Part 2

A Day With Pinnacle's DC1000
	by Stephen Schleicher The DC1000 requires a minimum of a PII/350mhz computer with 128MB RAM running Windows 98 or Windows NT. You should also have an external SCSI-2 drive connected to your computer to store media files, and a CD-R/W for authoring interactive CD's. For this article I used a PIII/500mhz with 128MB RAM running Windows 98. 7:00 AM Saturday (yes, there actually is a 7:00 AM on Saturday): Opened the computer and installed the DC1000 capture card. The capture card fits into an open PCI slot. While the version I demoed only captures analog video, there is a daughter board that you can purchase separately that will allow you to capture DV media. This daughter board connects to the DC1000 capture card, and thus will not take up additional slots on the motherboard. The DVD1000 uses the same capture card and daughter board as the DC1000, the only difference being a hardware dongle (similar to After Effects and AEPro). 7:15 AM: After connecting the breakout BlueBox to the capture card, it was time to install the software Pinnacle Systems has partnered with some of the best media software companies in the industry. Adobe Premiere 5.1 RT, Sonic Foundry Acid, Minerva CD Pro (DVD1000 includes Minerva DVD creator, a $10,000 piece of stand-alone software), Pixelan Software's' Video SpiceRack Effects, and TitleDeko are included in the DC1000 package. I was informed that Real Producer G2 was also included in the package, but I could not find it in this unit. 8:30 AM: Software installed, time to find out if this thing works. For the purposes of this article I connected a Sony BetaSP deck to the BlueBox. The DC1000 accepts either S-VHS or composite input, the drawback is the breakout box only has RCA connects for the video and audio. (Note: By the time this article goes to press, Pinnacle Systems will have updated the DC1000 to also include a Component Option and a DV option.) Also, there is not an RS-422 connector on the breakout box, so deck control from the computer is not an option with the unit as is. However, there is always a company to fill the void. Pipeline Digital offers ProVTR RS-422 control software that works with Premiere to solve the deck control issue. While the computer and Adobe Premiere both recognized the DC1000 card, when it came to the first moment of truth, Premiere could not activate the card. The manual mentioned nothing in the trouble shooting section about what the problem could be. I picked up the box the DC1000 came in and sure enough, it did say that it was compatible with Win98, but upon closer examination (i.e. reading the fine print), the currently shipping version of DC1000 only includes the drivers for WinNT. It was time to go online and search for the Win98 drivers. After searching the Pinnacle System and related sites, I was able to find the new drivers. Unfortunately, the drivers are contained in a 69mb file. Since it would take around 10 hours to download from my connection at home, I decided to go to work where I have an ISDN line and the download would only be an hour. This also gave me a chance to pickup some XLR-RCA connectors for the BetaSP deck. 11:00 AM: Installed the new drivers, the capture card is now recognized and I'm ready to digitize some video The most amazing thing about the DC1000 is Pinnacle's proprietary "SmartGOP" technology (GOP is a group of pictures). It has been greatly assumed that the only compressed video that can be edited with frame accuracy is an I-frame. However SmartGOP allows frame accurate editing within the IPP format used to capture video. I could write a whole article on MPEG-2 video compressed with I-Frame, IPP, and IBP technology, but I only have 15 more minutes before my footage is done digitizing. In a nutshell, I-frame only is an older MPEG-2 technology where every frame of video is compressed to the same size creating an "intra" frame. I-frame technology has a high data rate and uses a great deal of hard drive space. IPP is made up of a group of frames (GOP) consisting of 1 I-frame and three predictive frames (P frames). The P frame only stores video that has changed from the previous frame. This allows high quality video at half the space, and it allows for frame accurate edits. IBP compression consists of an I-frame, a P frame, and a B-frame (a backward looking frame) which fills in the space between the I and P frames. Again, high quality images and low space usage. IBP technology is very complex and is near impossible to edit frame accurately. IBP may seem complex, but put a DVD in your player and you will see it in action. 11:45 AM: Just finished digitizing 30 minutes of footage to the harddrive At the highest resolution (BetaSP), the DC1000 can get about 5 ½ minutes of video per gigabyte, and about 11 minutes per gigabyte at the lowest (S-VHS) resolution. I've worked on Avid NLE's for the past three years, was used to the high quality output, so I had gotten into the habit of thinking that anything that is as relatively inexpensive as the DC1000 could not have good output resolution. I was unexpectedly blown away by the quality of the captured video from the DC1000 (I believe my actual first words were "Holy Cow! Would you look at that?!"). The resolution is just as good as an Avid Xpress AVR 75 (broadcast quality). The lines are clean and sharp, and the color is excellent. Had I had my waveform and vectroscope hooked up, I'm sure it would pass with flying colors (no pun intended). The video was captured without dropping any frames and played back without glitches or hiccups. On to Part 2