Just wanted to pass on my experiences using Roger’s Workprinter 2. I bought the unit some time ago but just recently had the chance to do some longer transfers. For your info, I’m located in Germany and I’m using a heavy duty step down converter (300W) to get the voltage down to 110. Here’s my computer set up:
Asus P4B266 board
P4 2.23 GHz processor
512 MB DDR RAM
20 GB Maxtor 6L020L1 System drive
80 GB Maxtor 6L080J4 Dedicated video drive
Matrox G550 graphics card
PYRO DV firewire card
Windows 2000
You’ll notice that I’m not using a Raid setup as Roger recommends. These drives are fast Ultra-100 IDM drives with a speed of 7200rpm and that seems to be enough.
I’ve tried capturing with Premiere 6.0 but I just don’t like the feel of Premiere. I just spent the whole weekend capturing with DOCAP and I’m very pleased with the program. I initially had some problems with some of the PAL settings, but Jeff quickly solved the problems and got an update out to me within a few days.
I transferred about 30 GB of material on Saturday at full speed (6fps) and had no image smear or speed problems and the drives captured every frame perfectly. I’m very happy with the system, especially with the sharpness. Capturing was done with a CANON XM-1 (GL-1 in NTSC countries) with everything set manually. Shutter speed set at 1/50, Gain at 0dB, F-stop was varied according to the scene. I just used the f-stop setting to adjust brightness and color scene by scene. White balance was taken of the projector bulb without film loaded. I know there have been discussions about the best way to set the white balance but this seemed to work wee for me. Tri-X black and white came out beautiful and its very easy to get a sharp image because you easily focus on the grain. I also transferred some old ORWO East German color stock which came out very nice. Also easy to focus because of the grain structure. Kodachrome looked nice of course, but sometimes it’s hard to make a decision about the best focus setting because of the super tight grain.
I recommend DODCAP for transfers even if you have access to Premiere. I like to support small programs anyway, but this program really does a great job and offers you more options regarding pulldown and video codecs. For PAL users, make sure you check the PAL box under the DirectX advanced settings. If you don’t you’ll get a transfer at 25fps but with NTSC resolution (or is that solved Jeff?).
If this sounds like I’m plugging the Workprinter and DODCAP, I am. Thanks to Roger and Jeff for allowing me to be totally independent of the transfer labs.
Kurt
Workprinter 2 experiences
Moderator: Andreas Wideroe
Thanks
Thanks for the positive comments, Kurt! I have worked really hard on Dodcap, so it is gratifying to hear that someone is making good use of it.
For the time being, PAL users should manually configure the PAL setting if they use the "DV Video Encoder" codec. In the next Dodcap release, the program will automatically detect your video camera type (PAL or NTSC) and configure the DV Video Encoder for you. Coding on this release is complete, but I need to do more testing before final release.
In the meantime, let me know if you have any issues or need anything.
Thanks!
- Jeff Dodson
For the time being, PAL users should manually configure the PAL setting if they use the "DV Video Encoder" codec. In the next Dodcap release, the program will automatically detect your video camera type (PAL or NTSC) and configure the DV Video Encoder for you. Coding on this release is complete, but I need to do more testing before final release.
In the meantime, let me know if you have any issues or need anything.
Thanks!
- Jeff Dodson
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sigr
- Posts: 75
- Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 1:48 am
- Real name: Sig Rannem
- Location: Toronto, Canada
- Contact:
Hi Kurt,
I was very interested in your experiences with the WorkPrinter 2. I have the same model and also find the results to be very good. My computer set-up is a bit older and less powerful:
P3 500MHz processor
256 MB SD RAM
13 GB 5400 rpm system drive
20 GB Maxtor 7200 rpm dedicated video drive
ATI All In Wonder graphics card
PYRO DV firewire card
Windows 98 SE
I’m also not using a Raid set-up, but still have no problems capturing clean video, even 400’ reels of R8 film (about 3.3GB of AVI video before adjusting the speed, which doubles the file size). In Windows 98 SE files of this size are cumbersome, since I have a 4GB limitation. This means I have to break the originally captured file into two in order to make the speed adjustment.
I’m using Premier 6.0 for capturing and feel that it works well. You were saying that you don’t like the feel of Premier, but that you are very pleased with DODCAP. Could you be more specific? You mention “more options regarding pulldown and video codecs”. Could you go into a bit more detail on that? What aspects of pulldown are not as good with Premier and what codecs are you using? (As far as I recall the PYRO DV firewire card only supports AVI capture anyway - ?) I would be interested in using DODCAP myself, but as far as I know it doesn’t work with Windows 98 SE.
I’m capturing with a Sony TRV-720 Digital 8 camcorder, which unfortunately has no manual white balance. So far I’ve typically used automatic exposure, which does have some drawbacks, but gives you a reasonable result with a one pass capture. I have experimented a bit with manual exposure, which obviously works fine. However, it would seem that I would have to capture each reel at several exposure settings and then choose the best exposure for each individual scene with the editor in order to get the best possible result. This would be very tedious and timeconsuming. You were saying that you are varying the F-stop according to the scene. How are you able to do that on the fly at 6 frames per second, without too much film passing by before you get the exposure adjusted to the right setting?
I would greatly appreciate your comments on this. By the way, I live in Canada, so I’m using NTSC.
Thanks,
sigr
I was very interested in your experiences with the WorkPrinter 2. I have the same model and also find the results to be very good. My computer set-up is a bit older and less powerful:
P3 500MHz processor
256 MB SD RAM
13 GB 5400 rpm system drive
20 GB Maxtor 7200 rpm dedicated video drive
ATI All In Wonder graphics card
PYRO DV firewire card
Windows 98 SE
I’m also not using a Raid set-up, but still have no problems capturing clean video, even 400’ reels of R8 film (about 3.3GB of AVI video before adjusting the speed, which doubles the file size). In Windows 98 SE files of this size are cumbersome, since I have a 4GB limitation. This means I have to break the originally captured file into two in order to make the speed adjustment.
I’m using Premier 6.0 for capturing and feel that it works well. You were saying that you don’t like the feel of Premier, but that you are very pleased with DODCAP. Could you be more specific? You mention “more options regarding pulldown and video codecs”. Could you go into a bit more detail on that? What aspects of pulldown are not as good with Premier and what codecs are you using? (As far as I recall the PYRO DV firewire card only supports AVI capture anyway - ?) I would be interested in using DODCAP myself, but as far as I know it doesn’t work with Windows 98 SE.
I’m capturing with a Sony TRV-720 Digital 8 camcorder, which unfortunately has no manual white balance. So far I’ve typically used automatic exposure, which does have some drawbacks, but gives you a reasonable result with a one pass capture. I have experimented a bit with manual exposure, which obviously works fine. However, it would seem that I would have to capture each reel at several exposure settings and then choose the best exposure for each individual scene with the editor in order to get the best possible result. This would be very tedious and timeconsuming. You were saying that you are varying the F-stop according to the scene. How are you able to do that on the fly at 6 frames per second, without too much film passing by before you get the exposure adjusted to the right setting?
I would greatly appreciate your comments on this. By the way, I live in Canada, so I’m using NTSC.
Thanks,
sigr
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Kurt
Sigr!
Thanks for your thoughts. As far as I know DODCAP is now also available for Windows 98. Take a look Jeff's website for more info. Before I purchased the program, Jeff also told me that his program is not that different than Premiere. What I like most about it is that it's simple to use. Also, you can capture without any pulldown and apply the pulldown laterr without losing your original file (can Premiere do that?). And then there's the interpolated pulldown option which I know Premiere doesn't have. I'm still getting used to this pulldown stuff at the moment so I would say just download the trial program and see what you think.
Kurt
Thanks for your thoughts. As far as I know DODCAP is now also available for Windows 98. Take a look Jeff's website for more info. Before I purchased the program, Jeff also told me that his program is not that different than Premiere. What I like most about it is that it's simple to use. Also, you can capture without any pulldown and apply the pulldown laterr without losing your original file (can Premiere do that?). And then there's the interpolated pulldown option which I know Premiere doesn't have. I'm still getting used to this pulldown stuff at the moment so I would say just download the trial program and see what you think.
Kurt
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Kurt
Sigr!
Regarding the manual f/stop setting, it really depends on what kind of footage I'm transferring. If I have a customers 400ft. home movie reel on the projector, I usually set the f/stop one time and capture everything at one setting. Of course some of the scenes turn out a touch dark or light, but most of the time the footage is well exposed and this is not a problem. For my own footage, I sit in front of the computer during the transfer and just stop the motor when I have a scene change or a part that I feel needs a bit of correction. It takes me about a second to stop the motor and I just stop it without worrying about the sync switch. After it stops I throw off the sanc switch and save the file, then activate the sync switch again and start the motor to begin capturing the new scene with the new f/stop setting. It's a bit of extra work but worth it for my more serious stuff.
Kurt
Regarding the manual f/stop setting, it really depends on what kind of footage I'm transferring. If I have a customers 400ft. home movie reel on the projector, I usually set the f/stop one time and capture everything at one setting. Of course some of the scenes turn out a touch dark or light, but most of the time the footage is well exposed and this is not a problem. For my own footage, I sit in front of the computer during the transfer and just stop the motor when I have a scene change or a part that I feel needs a bit of correction. It takes me about a second to stop the motor and I just stop it without worrying about the sync switch. After it stops I throw off the sanc switch and save the file, then activate the sync switch again and start the motor to begin capturing the new scene with the new f/stop setting. It's a bit of extra work but worth it for my more serious stuff.
Kurt
Windows 98 SE
Sigr -
The version of Dodcap released about one week ago now supports Windows 98 SE. Feel free to download it and give it a try.
Dodcap should work just as well on Windows 98 SE as it does on Win2000 or WinXP. The only issue that I am aware of has to do with maximum file size limits. A user pointed out to me that on Windows 98 SE, your maximum file size is either 2 GB or 4 GB, depending on how your file system is set up. Currently Dodcap does not place a limit on the size of the file captured. At this time, I am not sure exactly what happens if you try to surpass this file size limit while capturing in Windows 98 SE. So basically, you would have to stop the capture before the maximum file size is reached to be safe. Most users never reach this limit anyway, because you would have to let the WP run for so long to reach it.
The pulldown option available in Dodcap that is not available in Premiere is the "Interpolate Padded Frames" option. This performs pulldown using hybrid (interlaced) frames instead of whole frames like Premiere does. When played on a PAL or NTSC television, this looks smoother than the whole frame method, especially with film that originally projected at 18 fps.
- Jeff Dodson
The version of Dodcap released about one week ago now supports Windows 98 SE. Feel free to download it and give it a try.
Dodcap should work just as well on Windows 98 SE as it does on Win2000 or WinXP. The only issue that I am aware of has to do with maximum file size limits. A user pointed out to me that on Windows 98 SE, your maximum file size is either 2 GB or 4 GB, depending on how your file system is set up. Currently Dodcap does not place a limit on the size of the file captured. At this time, I am not sure exactly what happens if you try to surpass this file size limit while capturing in Windows 98 SE. So basically, you would have to stop the capture before the maximum file size is reached to be safe. Most users never reach this limit anyway, because you would have to let the WP run for so long to reach it.
The pulldown option available in Dodcap that is not available in Premiere is the "Interpolate Padded Frames" option. This performs pulldown using hybrid (interlaced) frames instead of whole frames like Premiere does. When played on a PAL or NTSC television, this looks smoother than the whole frame method, especially with film that originally projected at 18 fps.
- Jeff Dodson
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David M. Leugers
- Posts: 1632
- Joined: Thu May 02, 2002 12:42 am
- Contact:
Help!
Perfect timing, this discussion. I just built myself a new computer with a 2 ghz AMD Palomino processor, 500 megs SDRAM, 80 Gig 7200rpm video drive etc and installed the Pyro firewire card. I can not get it to work%@$+_(! I am not completely in the dark with computers (I built my AMD K6-2 unit with Canopus Raptor video editing several years ago and it still rocks). I have found references that Adobe Premiere has problems with the Pyro card because it is a Texas Instrument firewire and it also has something to do with Windows drivers. My new computer sees that the card is there, but no program can use it. Anybody have any similiar problems setting theirs up? I want to use this new computer to transfer films to video and edit with and plan on trying out Dodcap. I have Windows Millenium installed. Thanks for any help. 
Stab
David -
I'll take a stab at this...
I used Adobe Premiere 6.0 with my PYRO 1394 card today, so I think you can make this work.
This card is very generic, and it can use either the Texas Instruments driver or the Microsoft one. The Microsoft driver is preferred because many programs cannot control all camera functions (fast forward, rewind, etc.) using the TI drivers.
I would suggest powering up your DV camera, connecting it to your firewire card, then looking in Windows' device manager to make sure everything looks good. You probably know how to find the device manager, but just in case:
- Right-click on "My Computer"
- Choose "Properties" from the pop-up menu
- Click the "Device Manager" tab
If the PYRO card is recognized, there should be a folder/category labeled something like "IEEE-1394 Host Controllers." Expand this and you should see either a Texas Instruments driver listed or one called "OHCI Compliant IEEE-1394 Host Controller." This last one is actually the Microsoft driver, and it is what you want.
If the TI driver appears instead, you can switch to the MS one. Right-click on the TI driver and choose "Properties" from the pop-up menu. Go to the "Driver" tab and click the "Update Driver..." button. Go through the steps to manually specify which driver you want, and choose the OHCI Compliant one. After OK'ing out of all the dialogs, you should be set.
If your camera is connected and powered on, you should also see a folder labeled "Imaging Devices." Under this, you should see "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR."
If you don't see all these things, you should probably shut down your computer, remove the PYRO card, and try it in another slot.
If you do see all the items, including "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR," then download AMCap (a small, simple Microsoft capture app) from my website at http://www.alternaware.com and test out your capture capability.
Sorry for the lengthy post, and sorry if I explained a bunch of stuff you already knew. Anyway, please let us know what you find out.
- Jeff Dodson
I'll take a stab at this...
I used Adobe Premiere 6.0 with my PYRO 1394 card today, so I think you can make this work.
This card is very generic, and it can use either the Texas Instruments driver or the Microsoft one. The Microsoft driver is preferred because many programs cannot control all camera functions (fast forward, rewind, etc.) using the TI drivers.
I would suggest powering up your DV camera, connecting it to your firewire card, then looking in Windows' device manager to make sure everything looks good. You probably know how to find the device manager, but just in case:
- Right-click on "My Computer"
- Choose "Properties" from the pop-up menu
- Click the "Device Manager" tab
If the PYRO card is recognized, there should be a folder/category labeled something like "IEEE-1394 Host Controllers." Expand this and you should see either a Texas Instruments driver listed or one called "OHCI Compliant IEEE-1394 Host Controller." This last one is actually the Microsoft driver, and it is what you want.
If the TI driver appears instead, you can switch to the MS one. Right-click on the TI driver and choose "Properties" from the pop-up menu. Go to the "Driver" tab and click the "Update Driver..." button. Go through the steps to manually specify which driver you want, and choose the OHCI Compliant one. After OK'ing out of all the dialogs, you should be set.
If your camera is connected and powered on, you should also see a folder labeled "Imaging Devices." Under this, you should see "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR."
If you don't see all these things, you should probably shut down your computer, remove the PYRO card, and try it in another slot.
If you do see all the items, including "Microsoft DV Camera and VCR," then download AMCap (a small, simple Microsoft capture app) from my website at http://www.alternaware.com and test out your capture capability.
Sorry for the lengthy post, and sorry if I explained a bunch of stuff you already knew. Anyway, please let us know what you find out.
- Jeff Dodson
-
Kurt
I had a lot of problems with my Pyro DV card until I upgraded to Windows 2000. I know that's not much of a solution, but I'Ve been very happy with 2000 and find it just as easy to work with as Windows 98. I just installed the card and the system automatically recognized it and loaded the correct drivers.
Kurt
Kurt
Advantage
Not only is Windows 2000 just as easy to use as Windows 98/ME, but it is also more stable, especially for video editing.
Another big advantage is that in Windows 2000, you can capture files larger than 4GB--a big thing if you are capturing long reels with the WorkPrinter. In Windows 98/ME you are limited to 2GB or 4GB, depending on how your hard drives are formatted.
- digvid
Another big advantage is that in Windows 2000, you can capture files larger than 4GB--a big thing if you are capturing long reels with the WorkPrinter. In Windows 98/ME you are limited to 2GB or 4GB, depending on how your hard drives are formatted.
- digvid
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David M. Leugers
- Posts: 1632
- Joined: Thu May 02, 2002 12:42 am
- Contact:
It's alive!
I got my new video editing computer working, thanks for the help guys!
I would like to upgrade my operating system to Windows XP (I wish it were an Amiga. Nothing Microsoft has made impresses me like my old Amiga 500 did over ten years ago. 8) )
Now to find the time to get the rest of my setup, well, setup. Looking forward to trying out Dodcap. If I like it, I will buy it and so should everyone out there who uses it. My two cents.
David
I would like to upgrade my operating system to Windows XP (I wish it were an Amiga. Nothing Microsoft has made impresses me like my old Amiga 500 did over ten years ago. 8) )
Now to find the time to get the rest of my setup, well, setup. Looking forward to trying out Dodcap. If I like it, I will buy it and so should everyone out there who uses it. My two cents.
David
Amiga
Ah yes! I remember the Amiga well. I had a job back in '95 where I programmed almost exclusively on Amiga 4000 computers. Those were fine multimedia machines, and way ahead of their time.
Anyway, good luck with your new machine.
- Jeff D.
Anyway, good luck with your new machine.
- Jeff D.
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Guest
workprinter 2 experiences
I also have a Workprinter 2. My computer is a Pentium lll with a 120GB WesternDigital hard drive (no raid). I've had no problem capturing at the full 6fps without any dropped frames.
I have Premiere 6.5 but I also prefer to capture with DODCAP, it's so much easier to use than Premiere for capturing.
Thanks again to Roger and Jeff for such great products!
I have Premiere 6.5 but I also prefer to capture with DODCAP, it's so much easier to use than Premiere for capturing.
Thanks again to Roger and Jeff for such great products!
WorkPrinter & adding sound
Kurt,
I read your post about your experience with the Workprinter.
I have all the necessry equipment and I am looking forward to buy and use Workprinter for transferring my Super8 films to Digital.
I am however much worried about the sound transfer :
- How do you do it "practically" ? ( I imagine that before capture, I will have to use my Super8 film Editor to mark a picture visually in some way and then to record an audible "Top" at this location. This operation would have to be done at the start and at the end of the film ????)
- It seems to me it will take an awful lot of time to do and to synch to sound to the movie
Thanks for your input
I read your post about your experience with the Workprinter.
I have all the necessry equipment and I am looking forward to buy and use Workprinter for transferring my Super8 films to Digital.
I am however much worried about the sound transfer :
- How do you do it "practically" ? ( I imagine that before capture, I will have to use my Super8 film Editor to mark a picture visually in some way and then to record an audible "Top" at this location. This operation would have to be done at the start and at the end of the film ????)
- It seems to me it will take an awful lot of time to do and to synch to sound to the movie
Thanks for your input