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my Raptor user experience
I received my Raptor order from Egghead last week, and after some preliminary testing over the weekend I can offer some opinions and observations.
First some background. Up to now I have been using a Marvel G200, but the results have been so unsatisfactory that it basically is only used for the TV tuner. Why unsatisfactory? Two words: dropped frames. I have a monster system with a fasttrak and despite all my tweaking I could never escape multiple drops per minute even on low quality settings.
Anyway, to continue... Installation of the Raptor was straight-forward. I had one remaining PCI slot in my BH6 mobo so I stuck it there. Booted up. Fasttrak wouldn't initialize the harddrives. Oh no. Well I've seen this before, the Fasttrak is very picky on what PCI slot it has and what its neighbors are. So I swapped the cards' PCI slots. Booted up. It worked.
Next, the driver install. The software comes on 5 floppy disks, which was surprising in this day and age of everything coming on a CD. Again it was straight-forward. The entire process took about 15 minutes including having to swap those cards. The funniest thing about the procedure was from the manual, which states:
"This product is not intended for and should not be used for medical purposes, or with any equipment which might be used for life support."
Uh, okay.
Next, I fire up Premiere 5.1. Following the instructions in the manual, I connect my Sony TRV-103 via the firewire connector and begin to browse one of my tapes using Premiere's Capture utility. I select in/out points, click to record, and away it goes. Device Control! Yes! What a concept. It works flawlessly.
Next I experimented with Raptor Video, which is Canopus' utility for capturing video. This time I stick in one of my 8mm tapes shot from my previous camcorder. No timecode or batch capture here (with 8mm), but you still have device control. I recorded back onto VHS (a very simple procedure), and there was no "fluctuating" (as discussed on another thread) at all. I may test using some different 8mm tapes to see if it will occur.
I did several tests where I alternated 8mm and D8 footage. Quality on both when laying back out to VHS was superb. Hey, it's digital, what would you expect?
What about dropped frames? During one 4-minute clip from a 8mm tape I noticed a glitch in the capture. But that was it. If it was a dropped frame, it's a huge improvement over what I was having with the Marvel. In several minutes of D8 footage I had no glitches. From what I've read, if you are batch capturing and you drop a frame, it automatically will go back and fill in that frame. I can't be sure exactly how or if this works though.
I haven't had a chance to play with the Raptor Navigator software either. It logs your D8/DV tapes and seems like a very handy tool. I only have one filled D8 tape at present but I suppose you could record something from analog to D8 and get your timecode that way.
The Raptor and Marvel appear to co-exist just fine. I didn't run any extensive tests, but the good old TV tuner was still doing its job.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out the Premiere preview rendering bug. Apparently there's a problem where in some circustances you would be forced to re-render transitions that were already rendered. While I probably will be doing a majority of straight cuts, I hope this is something they address soon.
So in conclusion, I am very happy with this hardware. It truly seems to be the Holy Grail of desktop video that I have been searching for all these years. It's been a long search...dating back to 1994 when I first wasted a lot of money on the Orchid Videola Pro. I was beginning to think that video editing on the computer wouldn't be possible without extreme sacrifices in quality or cost. With the Raptor, this is no longer the case. I highly recommend this card.
Brian
First some background. Up to now I have been using a Marvel G200, but the results have been so unsatisfactory that it basically is only used for the TV tuner. Why unsatisfactory? Two words: dropped frames. I have a monster system with a fasttrak and despite all my tweaking I could never escape multiple drops per minute even on low quality settings.
Anyway, to continue... Installation of the Raptor was straight-forward. I had one remaining PCI slot in my BH6 mobo so I stuck it there. Booted up. Fasttrak wouldn't initialize the harddrives. Oh no. Well I've seen this before, the Fasttrak is very picky on what PCI slot it has and what its neighbors are. So I swapped the cards' PCI slots. Booted up. It worked.
Next, the driver install. The software comes on 5 floppy disks, which was surprising in this day and age of everything coming on a CD. Again it was straight-forward. The entire process took about 15 minutes including having to swap those cards. The funniest thing about the procedure was from the manual, which states:
"This product is not intended for and should not be used for medical purposes, or with any equipment which might be used for life support."
Uh, okay.
Next, I fire up Premiere 5.1. Following the instructions in the manual, I connect my Sony TRV-103 via the firewire connector and begin to browse one of my tapes using Premiere's Capture utility. I select in/out points, click to record, and away it goes. Device Control! Yes! What a concept. It works flawlessly.
Next I experimented with Raptor Video, which is Canopus' utility for capturing video. This time I stick in one of my 8mm tapes shot from my previous camcorder. No timecode or batch capture here (with 8mm), but you still have device control. I recorded back onto VHS (a very simple procedure), and there was no "fluctuating" (as discussed on another thread) at all. I may test using some different 8mm tapes to see if it will occur.
I did several tests where I alternated 8mm and D8 footage. Quality on both when laying back out to VHS was superb. Hey, it's digital, what would you expect?
What about dropped frames? During one 4-minute clip from a 8mm tape I noticed a glitch in the capture. But that was it. If it was a dropped frame, it's a huge improvement over what I was having with the Marvel. In several minutes of D8 footage I had no glitches. From what I've read, if you are batch capturing and you drop a frame, it automatically will go back and fill in that frame. I can't be sure exactly how or if this works though.
I haven't had a chance to play with the Raptor Navigator software either. It logs your D8/DV tapes and seems like a very handy tool. I only have one filled D8 tape at present but I suppose you could record something from analog to D8 and get your timecode that way.
The Raptor and Marvel appear to co-exist just fine. I didn't run any extensive tests, but the good old TV tuner was still doing its job.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out the Premiere preview rendering bug. Apparently there's a problem where in some circustances you would be forced to re-render transitions that were already rendered. While I probably will be doing a majority of straight cuts, I hope this is something they address soon.
So in conclusion, I am very happy with this hardware. It truly seems to be the Holy Grail of desktop video that I have been searching for all these years. It's been a long search...dating back to 1994 when I first wasted a lot of money on the Orchid Videola Pro. I was beginning to think that video editing on the computer wouldn't be possible without extreme sacrifices in quality or cost. With the Raptor, this is no longer the case. I highly recommend this card.
Brian
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