DV Master FireWire Audio/Video Capture Card
($3995)
Fast Electronic U.S., Inc.
393 Vintage Drive Suite 140
Foster City, CA 94404
(800) 249-FAST
http://www.fastmultimedia.com

The Ecstasy of Pure DV

Even though the mainstream home-video market is still ruled by the analog formats such as VHS and 8mm, prosumer videographers just can't stop talking about the new DV format and what it means to the industry. Since late 1995, when the first DV camcorders hit the shelves, folks have been raving about the superior quality of the picture and the ability to make perfect digital dubs with the IEEE 1394 FireWire connection that exists on some models. In April of this year, the first consumer DV VCR became available in the U.S., and the prospects of prosumer videographers who use the DV format became even brighter.

Still, one of the chief selling points of FireWire-equipped camcorders has been the ease with which you can transfer your digital video information directly onto a computer's hard drive for nonlinear editing. As a result, early adopters of the new DV technology have been waiting patiently for the next piece of the puzzle to fit into place: an IEEE 1394 FireWire interface for desktop computers.

Now the wait is over. A handful of manufacturers have offered their much-anticipated new DV-interface computer hardware products, each with its own quirks and selling points. Among the manufacturers are Fast Electronic and DPS, both of which have made names for themselves in the desktop-video world with popular and highly effective products in the past. Other companies have also offered FireWire capture boards, but these two have initially risen above the pack as the two most serious options for pure DV editing on a home computer.

That's why we've decided to rev up our Benchmarks test computer (133MHz Pentium, 32MB RAM, wide SCSI hard drive for video capture) and put these two boards--the Fast DV Master and the DPS Spark--through their paces in a side-by-side review. Our goal is to discover the strengths and weaknesses of each, and to discover if there's room for both products in the emerging world of DV nonlinear editing.

Most videographers who follow desktop-video trends have become quite familiar with Fast Electronic, a company whose past products have included such popular names as the Video Machine computer-based edit controller and the AV Master MJPEG audio/video capture board. Now, the company is using its experience with computer-based video hardware to bring you one of the first complete FireWire-based DV input/output boards, the DV Master. Their goal: to ship a nonlinear editing product that integrates the world of FireWire-equipped DV camcorders and VCRs with analog video formats, like Hi8 and S-VHS.

Unfortunately, things aren't as simple as just downloading your DV data onto your hard drive and editing away. As the video data come through the FireWire, they're compressed at a 5:1 ratio using the DV codec (compression/decompression scheme)--which means that once you've transferred the video to the hard drive, you'll need some way to decompress it in order to view clips, render transitions or make your final movie.

Fast's solution was to include Sony's DV codec chips--the same ones that exist inside their DV camcorders and VCRs--right on the DV Master board. This allows you to do a number of things with the DV Master that simply isn't possible without the hardware codec. With the DV Master, for example, it's possible to digitize your Hi8 or S-VHS videos through the S-Video inputs, in effect recording them onto the hard drive with the DV codec. If you then record the video and audio onto your DV camera or VCR through the FireWire, you're effectively using the DV Master as a set of analog inputs for DV. This may not seem like much, but if you're familiar with the typical DV camcorder's lack of standard analog inputs, you'll know that this function of the DV Master is one of the only ways in which it's possible to transfer analog footage onto a DV tape.

Included with the DV Master is a breakout box that holds all of the analog video and audio connections available to the board. Inputs include Y/C (S-video), composite video through a special RCA-to-Y/C adapter and a pair of 1/4-inch phone plug jacks for stereo audio. Outputs available are Y/C video, YUV component video, stereo audio through a pair of 1/4-inch phone plugs and a single stereo headphone output--again, through a 1/4-inch phone plug. The use of the phone plug connectors--which are identical to the plugs you'd find on both ends of an electric guitar cable--is curious, though it does provide an easy way to quickly connect and disconnect your cables. For those who would rather use the more standard RCA-style phono plugs, Fast includes a full set of adapters.

On the board itself are three IEEE-1394 FireWire connectors--two external, and one internal. The purpose of the internal connector is to provide a way to install another product that's new to the nonlinear editing world: a miniature DV tape transport into one of the standard computer drive bays, in effect providing a means to input and output DV footage to the computer regardless of whether or not your camcorder has a FireWire connector. (For more on this exciting product, see the June 1997 issue of Videomaker, page 12.)

The DV Master comes bundled with an impressive array of audio and video editing software. It includes the full version of Adobe Premiere 4.2, and the XP version of Sonic Foundry's Sound Forge audio-manipulation software. For RS-422 control, Fast throws in DiaQuest's DQ TimeCoder software/hardware package. And finally, CrystalGraphics' Flying Fonts Lite adds a little 3D titling pizazz to the mix.

Installing the DV Master into our Benchmarks test-bay computer (133MHz Pentium computer, 4GB Seagate Barracuda capture drive, Adaptec AHA2940 PCI SCSI adapter, 32MB RAM) was relatively simple, requiring only a few trips into the Windows 95 Control Panel to set things right. Ideally, a plug-and-play board should require no trips into the Control Panel, but this is rarely the case with video capture devices. After only about 10 minutes of re-adjustment, we had everything running smoothly.

Once installed, operation of the DV Master board was all but invisible. Adobe Premiere operated in almost exactly the same way it ordinarily would for the purposes of capturing, editing and outputting video projects. The DV Master has one very nice feature not present when using other capture boards. At the bottom of the PCI overlay window, which you use to view clips on the computer monitor as you capture them or view them during the editing process, is a series of standard tape-transport controls. They offer a way to control your DV camcorder or deck from within Premiere. Without requiring an editing protocol such as Control-L, Panasonic 5-pin or RS-422, you can send commands over the FireWire to play, rewind, fast forward, stop or pause your source deck.

Rendering transitions with the DV Master is much less of a chore than you might imagine, due to the presence of Sony's hardware DV codec, which speeds up the process considerably. A one-minute project with five simple transitions, for example, took only three minutes to render completely.

The DV Master does have a few very minor drawbacks. For one thing, there is no true composite video input on the breakout box. The supplied Y/C-to-composite adapter doesn't work as well as an ordinary composite input, due to the different nature of the two connectors. And while both YUV-component and Y/C-video outputs are available, you can't use both at the same time--a minor point, but one which might involve some otherwise unnecessary re-cabling during the editing process.

The price is also a little higher than it needs to be, but this is understandable; the folks at Fast Electronic have produced a product that's in high demand among prosumer videographers, with features that, at the time of this writing, are truly unique and wonderful. Though we dream of the day when this kind of power, functionality and ease of use are available at a price more people can afford, we applaud Fast for making the DV Master into something that's all too rare in the desktop video world: a product that does everything it claims it will do, and beautifully.