Pricing And System Requirements
The MSRP for DVRack is $495; it is available at the Serious Magic website. A free trial is available for download at the same site. Inside the box is the CD, Instruction booklet and Sureshot Cards. The cards, which will be discussed in more detail later, help the videographer to set up the correct focus and exposure.
You won't need a hotrod system to run DVRack, but you will need a FireWire connection to attach the Mini-DV camcorder to your computer. A 1.4 GHz or faster CPU is required.
While the CPU requirements are modest, make sure you have lots of hard drive space as digital video eats it up quickly, using 180 MB per minute. DVRack currently handles only Mini-DV, in either NTSC or PAL formats. There is talk about making it available for HD, but there are no definite plans yet.
Installation
The install took less than fifteen seconds on an ASUS Z9000 laptop. The program folder takes up less than 10 MB of space.
One nice touch in the installation program is that it asks at the end of the install if you want to defrag your hard-drive. If you are going to be recording video clips to your hard drive this step is an obvious benefit.
DVRack has the usual Serious Magic activation requirement: you must activate the program within seven days. One license entitles you to have copies on both your laptop and desktop.
