Datavideo DAC-15 DV / YUV / YC / C Bi-Directional Digital to Analogue Format Converter with RS-422

The Datavideo DAC-15 is a bi-directional digital to analogue format converter. with many advanced features including RS-422 player control via DV NLE systems. The DAC-15 features a built in video processor with Color, Contrast, Brightness and Tint (Tint NTSC only) adjustments. Smart DV is another useful feature that allows the DAC-15 and a second DV device to be connected to an NLE system simultaneously.

The DAC-15 converts an analogue video signal (Composite, S-Video (Y/C) or Component), and an unbalanced stereo audio signal to a DV signal, or vice versa. The best possible picture quality is obtained with the built in video processor. You can also set the audio levels for optimum performance.

The RS-422 feature of the DAC-15 allows you to convert from Linear Time Code (LTC) embedded in RS-422 to Vertical Interval Time Code (VITC) in the DV stream. This lets you to control professional VTRs such as a DigiBeta deck from your editing software (NLE system).

The DAC-15 is ideal for a post production house to use their basic, inexpensive DV editing system with the DAC-15 and some NLE software such as Adobe Premiere Pro or Final Cut Pro to "rough edit" the footage. This allows the user to create an Edit Decision List (EDL) for batch capture of the original expensive uncompressed, 2k, or 4k systems.

Any Digital Video user will have experienced problems when connecting two DV devices to an NLE system. Either the computer sees only one device, or it sees nothing, or worse it locks up or crashes.

Datavideo's SMART DV (patent pending) feature was developed to overcome this problem. SMART DV has been incorporated into the latest Datavideo DAC-10, DAC-15 & DAC-30 digital converters and the TLM-70D 7" LCD DV monitor.

With the SMART DV feature enabled the converter or monitor becomes transparent to the computer, while still transcoding the live DV stream in to analogue video. This enables users to monitor a live digital video feed from a DV camcorder or DV deck during capture, or monitor the DV Stream from an NLE system via an ordinary video monitor, while exporting the edited video. SMART DV also allows copying to DV and analogue at the same time.

Disabling the SMART DV feature (simply done using dip switch on the back of the DAC) returns the DAC to a normal bi-directional Digital Analogue Converter, which is seen by the computer as a normal DV Device.