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Pinnacle Pro-ONE
RTDV
There
used to be only one company in the mainstream providing real-time editing
via DV and analogue channels. The competition is only now catching up,
and we take a look at Pinnacle's offering, the Pro-ONE RTDV.
When Pinnacle and
Matrox brought 'real-time' DV editing cards into the mainstream, we
saw a lot of hype and a lot of excitement over their ability to preview
selected transitions and video effects without the need to render first.
It was a move that encouraged experimentation, and helped keep the editing
process fluid, but these real-time previews were limited to analogue
channels only. Even real-time effects would need to be rendered for
output via DV - often a marathon task if the entire project has been
colour-corrected or watermarked. While Matrox and Pinnacle slugged it
out in the mainstream, Canopus was doing good business with its DV Rex
RT and DV Storm cards - excellent hardware which offers real-time output
via DV, though priced much higher than the Pinnacle DV500 or Matrox
RT2500.
Matrox and Pinnacle have now addressed the need for better real-time
functionality, however, and Pinnacle's offering is geared to compete
directly with Storm, with a price tag of around £750. Rather than
create and market a new product range from scratch, Pinnacle has done
the sensible thing and introduced its latest real-time board as an updated
version of its Pro-ONE card. Pro-ONE RTDV has little difference in functionality
to the original Pro-ONE, save for the addition of real-time previewing
via FireWire.
Conclusion
As a real-time board, the Pro-ONE RTDV is a much more serious product
than the DV500 or standard Pro-ONE. While the ability to preview effects
immediately over analogue channels has always been a distinct bonus,
real-time output via FireWire enables users to take more control over
the actual look of their videos, applying colour correction filters
to long-form projects without having to waste time and hard drive space
in rendering for output to DV tape.
RTDV's real-time performance isn't as impressive as that of Canopus's
Storm - which now supports five video streams in real-time. But it works
out considerably cheaper when you take into account its MPEG encoding
hardware - Storm, by comparison, requires a daughterboard for hardware-assisted
MPEG output, costing around £400.
As a DV editing card in its own right, Pro-ONE proved to be a good,
stable performer, doing pretty much everything it said on the box. We
don't expect it to stamp out the competition, but we're sure it will
make choosing a real-time editing card far more difficult at the sub-£1,000
price point.
Peter Wells
Read the full
review in January 2003's Computer Video magazine.
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