DCP by S.D. Katz

With version 2 of Adobe DV Rack come Stop-Motion Animation Recording, Time-Lapse Recording, Motion-Activated Recording, and Onion Skin Split modes—all useful additions to the already healthy feature set of the program.

When I started this review, Adobe had not yet purchased Serious Magic. The acquisition makes sense: Serious Magic is that rare company that has defined new product categories to fill essential needs. It must be nice to have no competition.

DV Rack provides several tools, but at its core, it's a direct-to-disk video recording and monitoring application. It is meant to be used with a video camera on set, and it has been engineered to work with any recent Windows 2000/XP laptop or desktop with a good video card. (Serious Magic recommends a 1.4GHz-or-faster processor and at least 256MB RAM.) DV Rack has to be tethered to the camera, so it is probably most useful in the studio or under controlled outdoor situations. While it's not out of the question, you are probably not going to use DV Rack for run-and-gun shooting. read more...