Benchmarks

This month:

• RCA ProV2000D MiniDV Camcorder
• Pinnacle Systems miroVIDEODC30 plus
• DataVideo TBC-2000 Time Base Corrector
• Smith-Victor K-86 Light Kit
• Canopus DVRex M1 DV Capture Board

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Easy on the Eyes RCA ProV2000D MiniDV Camcorder ($2399) Thomson Consumer Electronics 10330 N. Meridian Street Indianapolis, IN 46290 (800) 336-1900 http://www.nipper.com Tech Specs

One of the many entrants into the MiniDV camcorder fray is RCA's ProV2000D, which appears to be a clone of the Sharp VL-DC10U. The ProV2000D offers the best of two worlds: the easy-to-view convenience of a large LCD monitor and the improved image quality of the DV format.

The ProV2000D mounts its lens assembly on a rotating handgrip, allowing you to change your shooting angle independent of your viewing angle. The crucial zoom and stop/start controls fall under your right thumb, while all other controls fall under your left thumb. The RCA's bright, sharp LCD viewfinder sits in between, almost filling the camcorder's entire back panel.

Out front are the 12x zoom lens and stereo microphone. The ProV2000D's lens offers four zoom speeds, as well as digital zoom to 30x. On the right handgrip is a small built-in speaker; the back panel sports a plug-in-power mike jack and stereo headphone jack. In VCR mode, the camcorder's zoom rocker doubles as its speaker/headphone volume control.

The ProV2000D uses an output module that plugs into the left side of the unit. This allows the manufacturer to avoid the age-old "where do we put the jacks?" quandary, and makes the camcorder a little lighter. You can also purchase an accessory tuner module ($249) that plugs into the same spot. Unfortunately, the ProV2000D will not record an external source, nor does it have a FireWire connector.

Let's Interface
The ProV2000D's four-inch LCD is more than just a viewfinder--it's the heart of the camcorder's user interface. A four-way rocker button selects on-screen controls that appear at the four edges of the LCD. In the normal shooting mode, for example, the four on-screen options are gain-up, DIS (digital image stabilization), fade and extend (instant digital zoom). The word "FADE" sits at the bottom of the screen; push the rocker button down, and it engages the fader.

Pushing the ProV2000D's MENU button cycles through the various on-screen control menus. When the word "MENU" appears on-screen, you can select it to bring up a more in-depth menu. These menus (one each for both camera and VCR mode) offer numerous options. This on-screen system means the camcorder has a minimum of dedicated controls and buttons, an approach some users will appreciate. If you loathe pecking your way through menus, though, the ProV2000D may be frustrating. If you like a less-cluttered viewfinder, the DISPLAY button removes the overlayed text legends from the screen (though the four controls remain active).

Though it lacks dedicated buttons and knobs, the ProV2000D offers a good complement of manual controls. Manual focus uses the rocker switch to power the auto-focus motor, a control scheme not quite as smooth or accurate as a manual focus knob. The MANUAL menu offers control over shutter speed (up to 1/10,000th of a second), white balance lock and iris adjust. Here at Videomaker, we prefer white balance lock to presets, and we were glad to see it on the ProV2000D. This method allows you to frame up a white object, lock the white balance and be all but guaranteed good color.

The camcorder's manual iris is an offset-style control, offering six steps above and below the auto setting. At the furthest extremes, the ProV2000D didn't appear to offer more than about one stop of adjustment. With an iris offset, auto iris continues to function--this means the camcorder will still respond to changing lighting conditions, which may not be what you want. As with white balance, we find a true iris override to be preferable as it disables the easily fooled automatic circuits in the camcorder. That said, the offset-style adjustment is better than nothing.

Other picture controls include backlight compensation, gain-up and digital image stabilization (DIS). The ProV2000D's gain-up circuit works reasonably well, and includes a clever noise reduction circuit to make the resulting video noise less objectionable. DIS takes a toll on image sharpness, and bumps the shutter speed to 1/100th of a second.

The ProV2000D offers just two video effects: strobe and fade. You can engage the strobe effect on playback, though only with the remote. Other remote-only modes include slow motion playback and frame advance.

The ProV2000D offers a few other features worthy of note. One is an on-screen stopwatch with lap time and 1/100th of a second accuracy. The camcorder does not record the stopwatch to tape, but you can use it in record or playback mode. Two still image modes record field-resolution images to tape. Finally, a unique MESSAGE mode lets you flip the lens over and shoot a 30-second monologue to tape. The viewfinder even counts down the remaining time and finishes your message with a fade.

Hands On
The ProV2000D is a light and well-balanced camcorder. We found it to be quite comfortable to shoot with, and the large LCD monitor keeps its picture quality, even in bright lighting conditions. Once you get the hang of the menu system, it's relatively easy to activate any function.

The ProV2000D's video performance is about on-par with a premium Hi8 camcorder; it doesn't touch the performance of a high-end DV unit like the Canon XL1 or Sony CCD-VX1000. The ProV2000D's camera output went well beyond 400 lines of resolution, but tape playback was struggling to reach that figure. Recordings done with the ProV2000D are a touch noisy even in adequate light, with the tell-tale speckles most visible in areas of dark color. Low-light sensitivity of the RCA is fair.

Audio quality of the ProV2000D is quite good, which surprises us for one reason: the ProV2000D's mike sits less than an inch from the transport. We were expecting motor noises galore--turns out they're present but not objectionable. The designer that created the mike's mounting system deserves a raise.

Overall, the ProV2000D is a well-designed camcorder that offers a good complement of controls, a unique interface and average image quality.
--LA

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Still Standing miroVIDEO DC30 plus ($999) Pinnacle Systems 280 N. Bernardo Avenue Mountain View, CA 94043 (888) 484-3366 http://www.pinnaclesys.com Tech Specs

When we reviewed the original miroVIDEO DC30 card just over a year ago, we found it to be a solid performer with a somewhat challenging installation curve. Since then, Pinnacle Systems bought miro and competition has heated up considerably in the low-cost capture-board market. The miroVIDEO DC30 is still around, however, re-released with new software and drivers and a "plus" after its name.

The DC30 plus is a PCI bus-mastering card that uses Plug-and-Play technology to ease installation (or so the theory goes--more on this later). The DC30 plus offers S-video and composite inputs and outputs, as well as stereo audio in/out. The stereo RCA jacks are on a small breakout cable that hangs from the card; video connections are on the back of the card.

The DC30 plus allows you to mix and match between two horizontal resolutions (640 or 320 pixels) and two vertical resolutions (480 or 240 pixels). The DC30 plus will also crop off the outermost pixels if you want, cleaning up the image slightly and saving some disk space.
If your hard drive system is up to it, the DC30 plus' Motion-JPEG (MJPEG) chipset will pump out video rates up to about 7MB a second. At a full 640x480 resolution, that translates to an extremely transparent 2.5:1 compression ratio. For most consumer-level video editing, that's more than adequate.

Compared to video, still images are a slam-dunk for a card like the DC30 plus. It grabs very nice stills at resolutions up to 640x480, with good color and crisp resolution. The video compression slider affects stills at the digitization step, not during saving--make sure you've got the quality slider maximized before grabbing a still. The card will also pack stills one after another into an AVI file, saving a new frame each time you press the ENTER key.

Software Suite
The DC30 plus bundle includes full working versions of Adobe Premiere 4.2 and Asymetrix 3D FX. That's several hundred dollars worth of software you won't need to purchase, which is good news indeed. DC30 plus buyers will also get limited edition versions of Adobe Photoshop and Crystal Graphics Flying Fonts.

The clever "instant video" drivers really make the editing process more efficient. Premiere usually re-renders each and every frame of video for the final movie, even if it's unchanged by a transition or filter. This makes for a lot of wasted hard drive space, and a great deal of time lost. When you export your timeline to the DC30 plus instant video drivers, the system renders only the changed video frames; it plays the finished movie back from the original video files wherever possible. This speeds things up considerably, and also does away with the 2GB AVI file size limit for your finished movie.

The DC30 plus package also includes drivers to route Windows sounds through the card's on-board audio system. Having audio support right on the board is a two-edged sword. On the plus side, it makes for a more foolproof integration between audio and video digitizing, with fewer potential sync problems. On the negative side, on-board sound capabilities can conflict with an existing sound card. This may mean enabling and disabling drivers, especially if you switch from editing video to an application that requires more sophisticated sound capabilities.

A small setup utility allows you to route the DC30 plus' display to the S-video output, composite output or back to the VGA display as an overlay. Before the latest drivers came out, only DirectDraw-compatible VGA cards supported the overlay function. Now, according to Pinnacle, most VGA cards should support overlay. If your VGA card doesn't offer overlay capabilities, you'll need an NTSC monitor to work efficiently.

Print to Tape
We tested the DC30 plus on a 300MHz Micron Millennia XKU system with 64MB of RAM and 4GB Fast SCSI A/V hard drive. This configuration renders transition and filters quickly, even at full resolution. Factor in the miroINSTANT video driver, and the DC30 plus was surprisingly fast at assembling a final movie.

The quality of the video and audio coming out of the DC30 plus is very good. We found the highest resolution mode and a compression setting of around 6:1 to be suitable for Hi8 source footage, leaving minimal compression artifacts in the finished movie. This mode kept data rates under 3MB per second, a workable figure for home video production.

As compression settings neared 8:1 and 10:1, artifacts became obvious (as they would with any MJPEG compression board). The board's 320x480 resolution mode works great for VHS footage, and isn't half bad for Hi8 or S-VHS work. The 240-pixel vertical resolution mode isn't well-suited to video, and flickers noticeably.

How easy is the DC30 plus to install? It depends--if your system has a PCI-friendly BIOS and an IRQ to spare, you'll be fine. In the Micron test system (Phoenix BIOS), IRQ conflicts took several hours to solve as the DC30 plus scuffled with the Diamond Viper 330 VGA card. You've heard it before, folks--Plug-and-Play doesn't live up to its name.

Installation aside, we had a few other minor problems, most courtesy of the instant video driver. The output driver would sometimes miss a transition entirely (the simple Premiere "take" transition, in one instance). The edit would play fine in the preview window, but disappear on final playback. Trying a different approach on the timeline usually corrected the problem. A few other minor gremlins plagued playback, though it was hard to nail down their exact cause.

All in all, the miroVIDEO DC30 plus still stands as a viable option for people shopping the under-$1,000 PCI card market. The board offers very good image and sound quality, and installation will either be a snap or a snafu depending on the host system. Once up and running, the miroVIDEO DC30 plus is hampered only by the occasional software hiccup.
--LA

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Synchronicity TBC-2000 Time Base Corrector ($649) DataVideo Corporation 12300-U East Washington Blvd. Whittier, CA 90606 (562) 696-2324 http://www.datavideo-tek.com Tech Specs

A few months back, we tested DataVideo Technology's SE-200 Integrated Editing Center, a device that took the all-in-one approach to consumer video peripherals. In that review, we noted one primary weakness of the SE-200: it didn't have a built-in time base corrector (TBC)/frame synchronizer for performing true A/B-roll edits.

This month, we test DataVideo Technology's own solution to this problem for owners of the SE-200: the TBC-2000 time base corrector. With the TBC-2000, it's possible to synchronize two moving sources of video for applying dissolves, fades, wipes and other types of special-effect transitions. If you don't know what a time base corrector is, don't worry--we'll explain the functions and capabilities of this product in enough detail for you to decide whether your video arsenal needs one. If you'd like to study up on the subject before continuing, consult the article "Video Calibration" in the December 1996 issue of Videomaker.

TBC or not TBC
First, before we go into detail about the TBC-2000, let's simplify a bit and jump to the conclusion of our story: if you own the SE-200 Integrated Editing Center, you should buy the TBC-2000. If you don't own the SE-200, and you just want a general-purpose TBC for your video productions, you may wish to shop for something with more features. Here's why: the SE-200, needs a device like the TBC-2000 in order to provide its full dose of A/B-roll functionality. Also, the SE-200 is very much a product in the consumer realm, which means that the TBC you'd need to match its level of quality doesn't necessarily have to be a wonderful professional-level piece of equipment. In other words, the TBC-2000 provides adequate synchronization of two moving video sources, but not much else.

There are two main purposes for owning a TBC: to synchronize two (or more) separate moving sources of video, and to clean up minute timing errors that occur during the duplication process. In the latter category, the TBC-2000 does not perform well enough to merit recommendation. The chief drawback of the TBC-2000 is the poor quality of the digitized image. Because it actually makes a digital copy of one full frame of video at a time, the quality of any TBC's output links directly to the quality of the still frames it captures. The quality of the still images on the TBC-2000 is noisy and grainy at best, and sometimes will have a tendency to break down completely into a jittery mess.

For signal adjustment, the TBC-2000 provides brightness, contrast and color (saturation) controls, which are of adequate quality, but don't appear as if they could withstand the rigors of regular use. Also present on the front panel of the TBC-2000 is a Still button, which holds a single frame (both fields) on the screen.

On the back panel of the TBC-2000, the inputs and outputs are easily accessible, clearly labeled and logically arranged. A tiny switch next to each set of plugs selects between composite (RCA-style) and S-video connectors. Unfortunately, the device won't pass video through it when the power switch is off--a minor annoyance that DataVideo could've easily avoided.

Niche Market
The TBC-2000 is not a serious solution for professional-level work. The ad for the product appearing on DataVideo's Web site is a bit misleading: "Use the TBC-2000 together with the SE-200 to create fully professional, synchronized video effects." Eliminate the word professional, but keep the emphasis on using the product primarily with the SE-200, and you have a much more accurate view of the TBC-2000's main purpose.
--JM

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Lights (Just Lights) K-86 Light Kit ($399) Smith-Victor Corporation 301 North Colfax Street Griffith, IN 46319 (800) 348-9862 Tech Specs

Let's face it--what really separates good video from bad video is lighting. The mere presence or absence of lighting instruments on a shoot is one of the most important factors in getting the maximum production value out of your equipment.

Even so, many amateur videographers wouldn't think of purchasing a video light--let alone a complete lighting kit--to enhance their productions. This is probably due to the fact that many amateurs consider lights an expensive luxury that only professionals can afford. There are many low-cost lighting kits available on the market, and though professionals might sniff at them, they could be the best way for many amateur videographers to take that first big step towards better-looking home video productions.

One such kit is Smith-Victor's model K-86, a simple three-light affair that provides all a fledgling video hound needs to begin experimenting with basic three-point lighting scenarios. While this kit certainly won't win any awards for elegance of design or all-around functionality of the equipment, it does fill an important niche in the market, where folks are just beginning to get serious about the craft of video.

In the Case
The kit consists of three very basic Smith-Victor model A80 lights, three model RS-8 stands and a rugged, wheeled plastic case. The wheels on the case are an especially good idea that will hopefully someday become a standard feature on equipment cases of this size. It isn't the most awe-inspiring case in terms of physical security; in other words, checking this kit as luggage at the airport might not be a great idea. It does, however, travel fairly well in a car or truck.

The model A80 lights are mounted on swiveling stands that appear somewhat flimsy, but which adequately perform their job of dialing in an exact angle and holding it in position. The only form of lighting control available is a single on-off switch. A simple black knob provides a way to move the light when the metal housing begins to get hot (which it does quite rapidly). The socket of the A80 is the same kind you'd find in your lighting fixtures at home. Though any incandescent light bulb will work fairly well in these lights, we recommend using bulbs or floodlamps designed for video production; otherwise, you may have problems achieving a proper white balance in your camera.

The RS-8 stands also appear quite flimsy, and in use they failed to consistently provide the rock-steady sturdiness that one naturally desires in a light stand. Even so, they did have one redeeming feature: the lock-down bolts on the telescoping shafts were of sufficient quality to survive the occasional weekend video project. In short, the stands performed their job adequately, but not by any means perfectly.

A Good First Light Kit
Let's recall that we reviewed this product from the perspective of the amateur videographer. From this point of view, the kit is delightfully simple and straightforward. It does what you most need it to do: it throws light on your subject. If you need to control the intensity of your illumination, you'll have to resort to clamping some heat-resistant diffusion material to the rim of the light, or perhaps turning a light upward and bouncing it off the ceiling (if it happens to be white).

The kit's biggest flaw lies in its overall flimsy nature. It's certainly not the flimsiest equipment we've ever seen, but it doesn't take much imagination to see these lights falling over frequently and wearing out after a few years of steady use.

To summarize: the Smith-Victor K-86 light kit is a good, inexpensive way for amateur videographers to start taking control of their video lighting. The level of lighting control they provide might be just one step above using shop lights or floor lamps for your video productions, but it's an important step that we would encourage beginning readers to take at their earliest opportunity.
--JM

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Another Star is Born DVRex M1 DV Capture Board ($3495) Canopus Corporation 711 Charcot Avenue San Jose, CA 95131 (408) 954-4500 http://www.canopuscorp.com Tech Specs

Last year, Videomaker tested the first DV capture board ever to hit the shelves, Fast Multimedia's DV Master. The DV Master has held a privileged--and somewhat costly--position in the prosumer nonlinear editing marketplace, due mainly to its incorporation of Sony's DVBK-1 hardware codec. The presence of the hardware codec on the DV Master meant that rendering times while working with DV footage on the hard drive were greatly enhanced, and that the possibility existed to incorporate analog footage into your DV-based productions, among other things.

Now Canopus Corporation has released the DVRex M1, a DV audio/video capture board aimed directly at the same market that Fast's DV Master previously occupied alone. In this review, we'll be taking frequent opportunities to make comparisons between the two products, but to cut to the chase: in general, we found the DVRex M1 to provide all of the functionality of the DV Master and more--at a suggested retail price that comes in about $500 less than Fast's product.

Ins and Outs
Like the DV Master, the Canopus DVRex M1 installed easily into our Benchmarks test computer (133MHz Pentium, 32MB RAM, 4GB Seagate Barracuda Wide SCSI-II capture drive). Though the system requirements for the DVRex M1 list a 166MHz Pentium as the minimum required CPU speed, we found that Videomaker's 133MHz test computer kept up with the card's needs most of the time, with the occasional slow operation of some on-screen functions. In these cases, our test machine suffered such a serious performance lag, that we doubt whether a 166MHz processor would be enough for smooth, seamless performance. Bottom line: if you're thinking of purchasing a computer to go with the DVRex M1, get the fastest CPU you can afford.

The DVRex M1 ships with the board itself, a stylish breakout box with all of the necessary inputs and outputs, a CD-ROM with all of the necessary drivers, and a full copy of Ulead's MediaStudio Pro 5.0. The breakout box can operate either in an internal or external configuration. When configured internally, it occupies a single standard drive bay, offering a very convenient location (the front panel of your computer) for all of the necessary video and audio connectors. In its external configuration, the breakout box has a much nicer appearance than other products of its type. All too often, manufacturers put too little thought to how a product will affect the appearance of an editing workstation; Canopus is to be commended for providing something other than the standard, ugly stamped-metal affair.

Installation of the board was a breeze; within five minutes of opening the computer's case, the DVRex M1 was operating perfectly.

Operations
Like the Fast DV Master, the DVRex M1 offers a very nice full-motion video overlay on your computer screen. This in effect means you can use your computer monitor as a high-quality preview monitor for your video productions. When doing so, however, note that the colors on your computer screen may not match the NTSC colors you'll see when you output the final production to tape.

Rendering times with the DVRex M1 were comparable to that of the DV Master. A one-second 3D transition, for example, took about five minutes to render fully on our test computer. (Note: faster computers with more RAM will speed up the job considerably.) Though the manual recommends the included MediaStudio Pro 5.0 software, we had no problems using Adobe Premiere 4.2 as our editing software, once we configured the appropriate pre-sets.

One very nice feature of the DVRex M1 is the ability to perform batch captures with the included RexEdit software. Using the IEEE 1394 FireWire for deck control, it's possible to quickly download a selection of clips, with the audio, from your DV camera or deck to the hard drive automatically.

By way of comparison with the DV Master: the DVRex M1 includes several features not found on the Fast product. One is the ability to use a Microsoft Intellimouse as a physical jog/shuttle controller to move through your tapes. Another is the ability to input and output digital audio directly through the breakout box.

In general, the DVRex M1 is a superior, stable product that beats the DV Master hands down in almost every way. The only thing, in fact, that the DV Master provides that the DVRex M1 does not is YUV (Betacam) output--but this feature is available on the optional DVRex M2 upgrade for $895. If you're a prosumer video editor who wants the ultimate in DV nonlinear performance, the choice is clear: Canopus' DVRex M1 is a nose ahead of the competition.
--JM

Contributing editor Loren Alldrin is a freelance video and music producer. Joe McCleskey is a freelance journalist and video producer.

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Tech Specs

RCA ProV2000D MiniDV Camcorder

Format
DV

Lens
12:1 optical zoom (4.2-50.4mm), 30:1 digital zoom, four-speed power zoom, f/1.8, inner focus

Image sensor
1/4-inch, 410,000 pixels

Viewfinder
4-inch LCD

Focus
auto, push-button manual

Maximum shutter speed
1/10,000

Exposure
auto, manual offset, backlight compensation

White balance
continuous auto, hold

Video effects
fade, strobe (record and playback), slow motion (playback only)

Audio
digital stereo

Inputs
stereo microphone (plug-in power)

Outputs
S-video, composite video, stereo audio, stereo headphone

Other features
still image record, digital image stabilization, gain up, infrared remote, on-screen stopwatch, self-record message mode, built-in speaker

Dimensions
7.1 (width) x 3.8 (height) x 3.5 (depth) inches

Weight (sans tape and battery)
1.5 pounds

Video Performance (approx.)
Horizontal resolution (camera): 450
Horizontal resolution (playback): 380

Performance Times
Pause to record: 1 second
Power-up to record: 12 seconds
Fast-forward/rewind (30 min. tape): 45 seconds

Strengths
Large, crisp LCD viewfinder
Unique on-screen interface

Weaknesses
No FireWire connection
No analog inputs

Summary
A fun-to-use MiniDV camcorder with average image quality

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Pinnacle Systems miroVIDEO DC30 plus

Platform
Windows PC, PCI slot

CODEC
Motion-JPEG

Inputs
S-video, composite video, stereo audio

Outputs
S-video, composite video, stereo audio

Digitizing resolutions (NTSC)
640x480, 320x480, 640x240, 320x240 (plus user-selectable cropping)

Audio
11kHz, 22kHz, or 44kHz sampling rate; 8- or 16-bit resolution; stereo or mono

Other features
VGA video overlay, still image capture, "instant" playback driver, selectable comb filter, picture controls, system performance diagnostics utility

Bundled software
Adobe Premiere 4.2, Asymetrix 3D FX, Adobe Photoshop LE, Crystal Flying Fonts LE

Minimum System Requirements
Processor
Pentium class

Operating system
Windows 95

RAM
16MB

Video
256-color VGA

Interface
one bus-mastering PCI slot

Strengths
Very good audio and video performance
On-board audio digitizing
Generous software bundle

Weaknesses
Potentially challenging install procedure
Some software/driver hiccups

Summary
A tried-and-true PCI capture card that's still a good value

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DataVideo Technologies TM-2000 Time Base Corrector

Features
Internal/external Genlock
Frame synchronization with full-frame (dual-field) memory
Still-frame capability

Color depth
8-bit video resolution

Sampling rate
4:2:2

Inputs
Composite (x2), S-video (x2)

Outputs
Composite (x2), S-video (x2)

Monitor outputs
Composite (x2)

Strengths
Rugged construction

Weaknesses
Mediocre image quality

Summary
A decent supplement product for DataVideo's SE-200 Integrated Editing Center

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Smith-Victor K86 Light Kit
Contents
3 model A80 lights; 3 model RS-8 stands; Light Cart plastic rolling case

Lights
100 degree illumination, 8-inch fixtures, 250-watt lamps provided

Stands
6-foot extension, telescoping, 360-degree swivel mount

Strengths
Inexpensive
Nice case

Weaknesses
Overall flimsy construction
No barn doors

Summary
A good first light kit for the serious amateur videographer

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Canopus DVRex M1 DV Capture Board

Platform
PC (Windows95 or NT)

Codec
Hardware--Sony DVBK-1

Minimum System Requirements

Motherboard
Pentium

CPU
166MHz

RAM
32MB

Hard drive
Wide SCSI-2

Graphics card
24-bit, DirectDraw hardware support

Recommended System

CPU
200MHz+

RAM
64MB+

Strengths
Hardware codec
PCI overlay
Digital audio input/output
Nice breakout box design

Weaknesses
Expensive
Requires powerful system to run properly

Summary
Look out, DV Master--here c