David Grantham
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Avid Coin
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COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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With the benefit of this discussion and specifically thanks to Randy’s suggestion I have a Dell Dimension 8400 system up and running on SP2 only and today is the day I’ll be thoroughly exploring how well it works with this entire system. Mfr says I have the bad luck of one in hundreds of thousands and that it wil be making some changes in its tech support to ensure this doesn’t happen to anyone else. This discussion isn’t holding that back. It’s probably held the keys to success and I”m extremely thankful.
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INteresting. But just so as to avoid any confusion, my post hasn’t anything to do with Avid. But I applaud any effort to identify excellence (and I suppose that also means calling shortcomings to task.)
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i got a tech-suport guy too through this (he sold it to me) and it looks like as long as the system isn’t raided (it isn’t) it’ll be okay.
Thisnew systme appears to solve some problems. Scrubbing the timeline in adobe mode is a completely differnt experience from the previous machine – more than another .8 GHz would suggest to me. SO I’m hoping this is a better config all round. Have to roll back the OS to SP2 for matrox compatibility before I can run this project, though.
The two stage output solution is in my hip-pocket if this config doesn’t solve it. I think it will. My project isn’t that complex, and I can’t help but think that if PPro is written properly my twenty or so sequences of a few minutes average lenght isn’t going to break things on a machine that’s worht it’s salt. The bins list is huge but it’sjust a big dumb list of addresses and shouldn’t hold things back either.
My schedule is of course a wreck. BUt that was inevitable at this point.
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I have no got a used 8400 as on the business forum I was advised it is very stable. But there’s this on the matrox website about it:
“This system includes an Intel ICH6R controller in RAID or AHCI mode. These modes are not supported with a Matrox RT.X system because they can cause dropped frames. You therefore need to configure the Intel ICH6R controller to work in a mode supported by Matrox RT.X. For instructions on how to do this, click here2 (if you’re an advanced user), or contact Dell Technical Support.”
THe link doesn’t work and I’m having trouble contacting Dell. Any thoughts?
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Thanks. I think I can get the discspace. I just don’t want to lose the flexibility in that final output. It’s only about 14 mintues long and I’d like to have an editable version to refine. BUt I”m going to keep this on the list of workarounds. Thanks for the thought.
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Randy – thanks again I have a used 8400 for doing this project on now thanks to your recommendation. It’s got xp pro to current specs so I suppose I should roll it back to sp1 if can figure out how. Also there’s this on the matrox website :
“This system includes an Intel ICH6R controller in RAID or AHCI mode. These modes are not supported with a Matrox RT.X system because they can cause dropped frames. You therefore need to configure the Intel ICH6R controller to work in a mode supported by Matrox RT.X. For instructions on how to do this, click here2 (if you’re an advanced user), or contact Dell Technical Support.”
I can’t get Dell on the phone and the link in the above doesn’t work. Any suggestions?
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The overheating didn’t damage the video card, I did tinkering in there. No new problems with anything else arose after its replacement. But 2 Nvidia cards i tried after that would not dislpay video properly in windows media player, so I ended up with the one I have now.
I sure apprecaite the help I’m getting, I’m trying to research solutions, test processor load, look for and research compatible used harware, and finish this project on a crashing machine on a much-delayed drop-dead deadline of tomorrow. I’m beginning to think I should focus on only one avenue, but I’m not sure what it is. I don’t think I can pursue them all.
I’m hoping for the diminished load route, actually – the devli I know. But I am relying on copying from several sequences into a final one for the finished piece. If I create a separate project for each sequence I cn’t do that. I’d have to output them as avis (which isn’t working properly – mpeg encoding is – for any cropped video of which there’s a bit) and edit them, without much ability to edit the result, and the generation loss of multiple compression.
I appreciate any thoughts.
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So the earliest drivers available for the radeonX1650 card I have are from 07/11. I could try them or get a different card. I’m sure even they are far in advance of the OS version I have, (which I belive is just the firs t versio of SP 2) but all this was vetted by Matrox at the time of the last rebuild
Matrox recommended a current card would be unlikely to lead to any problems so I used that card when the original dislpay card got damaged when new fans were installed to cope wiht the fact that the matrox card was stiulated to be in the slot underneath the display card, which overheated all; this stipulation was eventualy rescinded (but wihtout notice) in favour of another slot onthe board which matrox had initally aparently overlooked which also worked (supposedly) for the card.
Maybe getting that card wasn’t such a good idea.
Curiously, the only card that shows up on the recommended card list for this motherboard now on matrox’s site is a matrox pahrelia. WhenI got the machine the one I started with – a radeon 9800 – was recommended. Curous that such things change.
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OKay. Heavens. Reinstalling the catalyst drivers. OKay. Looking for the oldest one because the one I see installed is about 2 years newr than the rolled-back OS. This was overseen by Matrox when the vednor reinstalled everything in November.
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Thanks Tim I am testing versions of this project with drastically reduced assets and sequences.
System use:
I havn’t yett tested the system while requiring it to render editing in rpogress, but in repose all project versions have about the same system stats.
They leave me about .6 to .8 GB of Ram free and the PF is at about 1.2GB occupied. This includes one version with only one sequence up with nothing on the timeline.
In fact the amount of Ram available is more (.8 GB) for the more complex version of the project.
Cooling?
Some crashes seem to invovle display aberrations. (Not all) The image in the moitor window will displya fragment of the interface rather than the video, or the taskmanager wil leave bits of itself all over the screen as I move it around. I have extra fans but the video card felt a bit hot to me after he last such crash. I don’t have time to get more fans installed, but is there any way to arrange ice near the computer to cool it down? I live in a very dry (and cold) climate in western canada so there wouldn’t be a big condensation problem. I’ve got the place cooled down as much as I can.