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OnLocation CS4 Review

OnLocation provides a few tools to help with composition in the field. You can have a “rule of thirds” grid superimposed over the image if you want as well as a customizable “safe action” area. You can view the full raster of the image in OnLocation, or change to see what it looks like “overscanned.” This is good for me because the viewfinder on my DVX100a cuts off a little of the edges, so I think I have things off-frame, but I don’t. You can also zoom in 10:1 on the image in OnLocation’s monitor, or set it to fit the image to the monitor or to ensure a 1:1 ratio of actual pixels to monitor pixels, which is how it should be set for focusing. OnLocation also has a handy function that lets you preview different aspect ratios, so you can see what your 4:3 image would look like in 16:9 or vice versa.


Another super useful feature in OnLocation is the split screen button beneath the field monitor. You can superimpose or split the screen between either two previously shot clips, or between a previously shot clip and the live camera. You can set the position of the split screen and or the opacity of the overlay of one scene onto the other. This allows you to do things like match eye-lines or position actors from different scenes relative to each other. This could even help monitor continuity between scenes. A big additional asset to this feature is that it doesn’t just apply to the field monitor, but to the waveform monitor as well, so you can see a split screen of the levels between two different shots. This is critical in matching lighting and video levels and can save lots of time in color correction and rendering in post production.


OnLocation even comes with little cards to help with white balance, exposure and focus. Though I don’t know any DP who would consider doing it, you can place the included SureShot card at the plane of focus in your shot and focus the camera while watching the Focus Meter in OnLocation until the meter reading is as high as possible. I think the potential for misfocusing a shot is pretty high using this though, because if the card is not exactly even with the part of the image you want to have in focus – the talent’s eyes, for example – then the Focus meter will actually screw up the shot. Better to leave this one to the professional’s tried and true methods.


It would also be cool to have some way of recording P2 and XDCam or even RED files in the same way, possibly even transcoding them or providing access to proxy files. I wouldn’t doubt that this is in the works.


Getting the footage from OnLocation to Premiere is pretty simple. You can drag and drop from OnLocation’s Project Folder directly, you can import in Premiere using the standard import dialog, or you can Export from OnLocation which allows you to only export clips you’ve marked as “good” or only selected clips.


Overall I was very impressed with the redesign of OnLocation. As most of you may know, OnLocation was previously known as DVRack. I was pretty pumped when DVRack came out originally because I had always wanted an inexpensive way to monitor with scopes in the field. OnLocation has certainly improved on DVRack at each step. Personally, for me, my interest in using OnLocation is pretty much limited to direct recording and monitoring, but the other myriad features will no doubt appeal to other users.


While I’m on the subject of features that some users would use and others may not, I’d like to put on my Product Designer hat and offer a feature request or three that would definitely make OnLocation even more valuable. One of the features I’d really like to see in OnLocation is some kind of media management/back-up scheme where OnLocation either simultaneously records the media to multiple locations at the same time, or that you can set it to back-up the media automatically to another drive in-between takes and check the validity of the backup file. Another great asset would be to have a simple chroma keyer built in to OnLocation (or even a nice one, like from After Effects) so that you could test out lighting and composition of greenscreen work live while monitoring the results in OnLocation. It would also be cool to have some kind of BlueTooth capability so that someone not sitting at the keyboard could place marks in the timeline during a live recording. For example the director or interviewer could mark certain moments that were either great or problematic or needed to be reviewed; or even as a way to mark the best take without stopping the production. And in the “wouldn’t it be WAY cool” category: How about the ability to stream the OnLocation field monitor over the internet, so if there’s some interested party who couldn’t be on-set, they could monitor the shoot and provide feedback remotely! Just some food for thought for my friends at Adobe.

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