In question #2 in Bob Turner's interview with Avid CEO David Krall, Bob asked Mr. Krall about Free DV (“One on One,” September 2003). He responds that it's “an entry point to learn the industry-standard user interface. It's hard to argue with free.”

Bob Turner responds: The link to Free DV is there now at www.avid.com/freedv. Be sure to read all the documentation before installing it. For example, if you have any other Avid applications on the computer you are putting it on, you will mess up both. Also, several downloaders have discovered that their spam filters were catching the Avid Free DV authorization key, so be aware of that.

Also, a note to readers: Elsewhere in the interview with David Krall, Krall stated that Avid Xpress Pro with Mojo can work with the DV50 format. This was a mistake (made a month prior to the product being released). What he intended to say is that the NewsCutter XP with Mojo works with DV50 — not Xpress Pro with Mojo.

I appreciate Steve Mullen's articles about the JVC JY-HD10 and general HD and DV matters. However, I'm surprised by the lack of a single high-resolution frame grab from the JY-HD10 on the Net. In the article “Shoot Review: JVC JY-HD10” (September 2003) by Steve there are some frame grabs included. Are they available in any other place at full size? Is it possible to find full-sized frame grabs anywhere?
Emilio Le Roux

Steve Mullen responds: You might want to head to www.dvinfo.net because it has very strong coverage of HDV. Many of its users have posted both stills and movies to the site.

I read the article written by Steve Mullen on the Video Systems website regarding editing in HDV (“How to Edit HDV,” September 2003). Steve listed all sorts of ways to edit HDV natively at the moment. Could you capture the HDV signal via an analog component connection to a native high-definition NLE system? Let's say I shelled out for a high-def Cinewave card system in a Mac with Final Cut Pro? Wouldn't “uprezzing” work? I have not priced out a complete Cinewave system for my Mac, but I'm sure it would hurt.

Now that I think about it, people will be attempting to incorporate that little camera into all sorts of native high-definition systems in the future. There's no way you'll be able to mix and match MPEG-2 streams with native high def. You have to capture it analog or have some fancy conversion box, right?
Eric Bickernicks

Steve Mullen responds: You could certainly use an AJA HD10A to convert the component signal of the JVC HD camcorder into HD SDI and capture into an FCP4/CineWaveRT4 system under OSX.

I am a longtime Final Cut Pro user and found your article on videosystems.com about Apple's use of the XML interchange format interesting (“A Metadata Dictionary,” May 2003).

Could you tell me if any digital asset management systems can actually read QuickTime file XML interchange format data?
Jason Lawrence
MEDIAWORKS

Bob Turner responds: I asked Apple to reply to your question. I received the following response: “The XML specification and developer tools are currently still in beta. Developers that want to build a searchable archive can download the XML beta tools from www.apple.com/developer if needed. However, since it hasn't gone into general release yet, we don't have digital asset management solutions that are readily available. Developers are just beginning their work now.”