Building Custom Workstation for Media Composer?

[Oakmozart]

I don’t see why you couldn’t. However, I’d stay away from AMD chips and go strictly with Intel for this older system, which is obviously Meridien-based. Avid is in the process of including support for AMD chips (a seminar I recently attended said that Avid would be demoing future products on the HP xw9300 dual-Opteron system in the near future and probably at NAB 2006), but they didn’t offer it back when your Composer was manufactured. Save yourself the headache and stick with the components your computer was designed to run on.

If PCI-X is backwards-compatible (and I don’t think it is, but I don’t know for sure), then you might be okay throwing your old PCI-based Meridien boards onto a modern PCI-X board. For safety’s sake, I think I’d build a computer that’s as close to the original system as possible. In otherwords, build the fastest Xeon-based system you can, cram it full of the fastest RAM that you can (DDR-RAM, probably) that has AGP 8x (or 4x or whatever your original system had), regular PCI slots, etc. An HP xw8000 might fit your needs nicely and you can still find them for very affordably these days, including new/refurb models.

I’m NOT an ACSR, nor am I real familiar with the new PC hardware technologies coming out. It’s time I get caught up again, but that’s beside the point. Before building a system, it might not hurt to talk to your reseller about it and maybe they can set you up with a proper system very inexpensively, or at least give you some advice on what to put in your “new” system.

[Jeremiah Belt]

Thanks for the info! Do you think it will work with Hyper Threaded Pentium 4 Cpu’s and not the Xeons? Xeons are still ludicrously pricey. Thanks

[Oakmozart]

Hard to say. You could try using dual-hyperthreaded P4’s, but remember: Avid doesn’t officially support hyperthreading. In fact, in my experience, the ACSR’s I know have always told me to turn it off or the system will encounter problems/instability.

I don’t know of any dual-P4 motherboards out there, but I’m sure you could find some with some digging around. You can get dual 3.06 ghz Xeon’s for around $350 or so (though they’re the older ones with the 533mhz FSB). Find a dual-Xeon mobo that supports the older type of Xeons but supports more modern RAM (like DDR PC3200) and you’ll probably be in business.

Xeon’s will ALWAYS be insanely expensive in their prices…why, I don’t know. I do know that they are incredible processors and I’m very curious to see what this fall’s new dual/double-core chips are capable of. I know they’ll blow Xeon’s right out of the water…and then Xeon prices will come down as everyone tries to clear them out.

[Jeremiah Belt]

Thanks for the input! Here is a question that I am going to pose to Avid but maybe you can help me with. With this Media Composer’s age and all it seems to me if I built a fancy workstation added a DeckLink or Bluefish 10bit HD card to it and purchased Avid Express Pro HD with Mojo utilizing the same 10K Ultra Wide 320 SCSI RAID I would have a system that would rival this one and be future proof easily? What is your opinion on that. Because the Xpress Pro HD bundle seems to offer far more features then this old Hardware Meridean system does and with the Mojo and 10bitHD card (Digital SDI and BNC with Genlock) it would be able to push Higher quality 10bit Uncompressed SD in realtime without breaking a sweat.

[Oakmozart]

Avid software only works with Avid hardware. If you buy a DeckLink or Bluefish 10bit HD card, it won’t work with Avid and will be a waste of money. Your best bet is either 1) upgrade the computer and run your old Meridien boards, 2) “upgrade” to Xpress Pro HD + Mojo (which lacks the connectors you seek), 3) buy a Media Composer Adrenaline HD (got $35K + a new computer?) or 4) ditch Avid all together and buy a Mac dual-G5 computer with Final Cut Studio and your DeckLink or Bluefish 10bit HD card. You might even consider adding an AJA IO for more i/o’s, if you need more than what’s on your HD card. I hate to recommend the competition, but if they’re offering what you need in a budget that’s competitive with XPro, then I say go for it.

Avid knows that Mojo is WAY behind the powercurve. I think they either underestimated or flat-out ignored the market segment for Mojo. I do know this: they realize that Mojo’s shortcomings are going to have to be addressed if they wish to remain competitive in the “low-end” market (told to me directly from an Avid rep at an Avid gathering I attended earlier this week). How Avid solves the problem is anyone’s guess, but he told me that it will be addressed probably in the next 1-2 years. I won’t be convinced until I see it. For now, if one wants to stay with Avid, one must either upgrade to Adrenaline or live with their Mojo crippleware until Avid gets its act together.

Wish I could preach some good news to you, but the Avid gospel is looking pretty dreary right now. NAB ’05 was a solid testament to that.

[Jeremiah Belt]

Yup that’s pretty much what I thought, I just recalled hearing some talk around the DeckLink booth at NAB this year about Avid X Pro HD so I was curious. And I would probably build a PC Dual Opteron or something and run Premiere Pro through a bluefish card or decklink (4:4:4 Uncomp 10bit 1080P!!!). I would rather stick with a pc for versatility reasons..and my home system which is only a 3.2 GHZ P4 (overclocked to 3.5) is much faster in editing, graphics and 3d then the Dual G5 2Ghz I used to use at work.(I ran some crossplatform benchmarks and from just utilizing the software. Thanks for all the Avid input.