IAC DISCUSSION FORUMS

Hi Col

Thanks for the suggestions. Things are not looking good with my Matrox system and my local repairer is about to try replacing both processor and motherboard as it won't run reliably with the new motherboards he has tried. I was feeling rather depressed as I do like my Matrox card (and do use the effects). I particularly like the accurate scaling, rotation and so on which are really good for title sequences etc. Planet (I understand your reservations, although they do do a very good job in my experience) are reluctant to recommend the RTX2 mostly because it can't handle 1080p and may be due for replacement shortly. Having spoken to my local guy the other day about the problems with the old machine, I'm wondering whether to ask him to build me a machine on the lines you suggest and just work with CS5 (which I could get for the upgrade price). I suggested this to his assistant the other day and he said, 'effectively that's what we are doing if we replace both processor and motherboard' and I suppose he's right the three discs are all working well, along with the PSU etc! They won't push me into spending more than I need to but I have enjoyed my experiences with my old system (which cost me about £1700 and included keyboard, mouse, KVM switch which I requested and a few other goodies which have proved very useful.

Planet suggested that the internet connection and associated updates are no longer the problem they used to be, but I have enjoyed the extra speed of dispensing with virus checkers and the like. My prejudices have been reinforced by the fact that my new main PC now won't run my Sibelius (music software) properly since Windows 7 installed SP1 a week ago...Any opinions on internet connections?

Does CS5 offer much more than Pro 1.5 in terms of transitions, effects and the like? I quite liked Edius, which I've been trialling, but couldn't get it to work with my HV40 (maybe I don't have the appropriate software in the trial version?) but I have managed to capture some HD footage (excellent quality) with Windows Movie Maker, crude though it is!

I do appreciate all the suggestions you and Billy have made over the past couple of weeks.

David

David

It will possibly not be just a motherboard and processor change.

Motherboards bought now have SATA connections for hard drives not IDE in fact often there is now no IDE connections on motherboards hence hard drives and optical drives will need changing. RAM memory needs to be matched to the motherboard. The power supply of modern motherboards is different and requires a PSU to suit. As you see it is not just a case of swapping a limited number of parts. When I rebuilt my PC the only things I could re-use were the hard drives and optical drive, it all depends on the age and components in your PC.

A new MOBO c£130, RAM c£100, CPU c£180, CPU fan c£25, power supply c£80 should all together cost less than £550 in component form + plus hard drives c£60 each + optical drive c£25 + GPU c£80 + assembly, hope this give you some idea of potential cost.

My editing PC is not used online, I have my boot disc in a caddy and a second boot disc that I use if I want to go online. I simply swap over to the second disc to go online is all the anti virus etc software. The second disc is a cloned copy of the original boot disc which has all extra software and internet connections disabled and as part of maintaining the edit PC in good order certain Windows actions are disabled to keep the CPU load down to only that what is needed in editing thus maintaining a super fast edit station.

Just in case anyone is confused ... what Col means is that he has one PC but uses a replaceable hard disk system. When he wants to edit video he puts in one boot disc which sets the machine up as a video editing system. When he wants to go online he puts a different boot disc in. That sets the machine up as a "normal" PC including internet options.

Dave

Hi Dave, Col and all

You will be interested to hear that i have got my Matrox RTX 100 system up and running finally! It went down big-time as my local dealer eventually had to replace both the system disk and motherboard. He put in an extra fan as it was running too hot and we then discovered that my main media drive had also gone (I have lost quite a bit of processed material but at least it's going. It has a modern Gigabyte motherboard which seems fine with the Matrox card except that the video is slightly jerky when previewing during capture. However, once captured, it is fine so I think I'll just live with it for the time being.

In the meantime, I obtained via e-Bay a second-hand mother board which was almost identical to my old one and a very cheap copy of CS2. As a result I'm now using PP2 with a later (final) version of the Matrox drivers. I am sticking with the new Gigabute board but I still have the second-hand Intel board just in case...I'm still thinking about how to proceed to HD but I'll catch up on my SD editing first!

Thanks again for all your suggestions and encouragement.