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Activity Forums Avid Media Composer Firewire Cards – PCI express Pyro Card

  • Firewire Cards – PCI express Pyro Card

    Posted by Roy Gilbert on April 13, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Just though some of you might be interested to know that there is now a PCI Express version of the Avid supporting Pyro firewire card available – so anyone with motherboards that don’t have seperately segmented PCI channels (a requirement for a Mojo to work reliable) can now just use the much greater bandwidth of the PCI Express channel instead. Of course, you could just buy a supported system to start with, but where’s the fun in that.

    Shannon Bentley replied 18 years ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Shannon Bentley

    May 8, 2008 at 11:50 pm

    Thanks Roy! I have been having problems with my system freezing up with my new Mojo – I think this could be the cause. Is there any way to know for sure before I go buy a new firewire card?

  • Roy Gilbert

    May 9, 2008 at 6:56 am

    There could be a lot of reasons for your mojo problems. Could you be more specific as to what problems you are having? In most cases, a PCI firewire card with a texas instruments chipset should work – ideally the one made by ADS Pyro. If your motherboard is a more budget model, or doesn’t have a segmented PCI bus then the PCI-Express version would probably solve the problem.

  • Shannon Bentley

    May 9, 2008 at 1:16 pm

    When capturing 2:1 OMF from a Sony PVW-2800 Betacam deck through a standard Mojo, the image in the source window freezes. When you play the clip, the image is frozen, but when you scroll along the image appears to be captured and all there – it just won’t play. But these are the least of the problems because then the whole computer (even the mouse) will freeze right up and the only way out is a hard re-boot. Yikes – scary! I tried plugging my Mojo into a different firewire port and it was WORSE – the computer froze up when the Media Composer was loading!!! I have re-installed MC to no avail. I have also been using the system for a DV project and haven’t had a lick of problems. Obviously something in my PC is not fit to handle the Mojo & SD. My set up is as follows:

    Dell Workstation PWS 370
    OS – XP Pro SP2
    Intel Pentium 4
    3GHz
    1.5GB RAM
    300 GB NTFS
    SATA RAID Controller – Intel 82801FR
    OHCI Compliant IEEE1394 Bus Host Controller
    a 2 port firewire card, and a 1 port card with audio I/O
    (I’m trying to run Media Composer 2.5.3 with a standard Mojo and a Sony PVW-2800 Betacam deck)

    Any ideas? What can I do to make this work? Please don’t tell me I should just toss this PC in the ol’ dumpster and start fresh – they don’t pay me enough at work for that!!! 🙂
    Thanks for any advice Roy!

  • Shannon Bentley

    May 11, 2008 at 12:07 am

    Just one more question…how do you know if your computer is a “PCI Express-enabled system” to accept a PCIe card?

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