new machine

[smitty]

time to upgrade want to go P4 any motherboard...chipsets
suggested ? I know this info changes rapidly so old info from previous posts may not be accurate
going to use ... firewire , msp7 , soundblater live 5.1 with livedrive,
maxtor 60g 7200 c:, lg dvd burner, advc100
undecided on the combination of these and MB, display card memory etc
will be video cap,editing,dvd burning only no internet or games
any thoughts
smitty

[junkmalle]

If you're looking at a P4 system you now should get a board based on the Intel 865 or 875 chipsets. I have an Asus P4P800 deluxe with the 865 chipset and a 2.8 GHz P4 overclocked to 3.25 Ghz. Even overclocked this is the most solid motherboard I've ever used. The 875 runs a bit faster (improved memory timings) but I don't think it's worth the extra money (additional US$50 or so).

The other thing to consider is that Intel is just now releasing the next generation of motherboard (BTX layout), chipsets and CPU's. If you're looking at the bleeding edge it might be worth it to wait a few months for those. Included are faster CPU's, faster front side bus, new socket architecture, PCI Express for graphics, Gigabit ethernet, etc.

[Fred H]

Main system here is as below , a P4-3.0 GHz and Asus P4C800-E Deluxe (875 chip) and 2x512 dual DDR.
It is fast enough but I experienced that 512 GB (2x256 dual DDR) of memory would do the video editing job. I never use more than 30-40% of RAM.
More memory=larger pagefile.sys in WinXP=long time to start WinXP.
Better to buy the fastest CPU your budget allows.

Fred

[nunchalnaomi]

Hi,

I agree with junkmalle about going for pci express and sata. Make sure to get at least 2 hard drives. Ideally , you want a 2 moniter set up. The matrox g550 is fine if you don't plan on gaming. Are you going to be capturing analog video ? you will need a capture card. So you might look at the aiw ati cards. Or if you have $ the matrox rt.x100.
good luck Nunchal

[smitty]

Thanks for the feedback!
Junkmalle... I' m doing the research now and your likely right , happens everytime, do the research figure what's going to work and BAM everything changes.
Fred.... what software are you using?and thats good to know that 512mb ram will do. Actually I was thinking of exactly that MB
nunchal......I have been editing since the RRS days so I normally use 3 hard drives and yes I do capture analog using the advc100 so I don't need a VIVO card.I was thinking the g550 have you had any problems with it?
thanks guys
smitty

[Fred H]

smitty, I am using Ulead Media Studio Pro 7.01 for video editing, TMPGEnc 3.0 for crearing DVD compliant MPEG2 and Adobe Photoshop CS and Paint Shop Pro 8.1 for photo editing.
The OS is Windows XP Pro SP1.

About the RAM I must point out that Win XP determines the size of the pagefil.sy as 1.5X the RAM, so in my case it is 1.5 GB. No way to reduce it. WinXP doesn't accept it.

For video editing you need fast harddisks. Don't use the system drive for video.


Fred

[dZeus]

Originally posted by Fred H
smitty, I am using Ulead Media Studio Pro 7.01 for video editing, TMPGEnc 3.0 for crearing DVD compliant MPEG2 and Adobe Photoshop CS and Paint Shop Pro 8.1 for photo editing.
The OS is Windows XP Pro SP1.

About the RAM I must point out that Win XP determines the size of the pagefil.sy as 1.5X the RAM, so in my case it is 1.5 GB. No way to reduce it. WinXP doesn't accept it.

For video editing you need fast harddisks. Don't use the system drive for video.


Fred

that's just plain false. You can set it manually, just like you could in Win2k. So no need to worry about startup times because of amount of installed RAM

[Fred H]

Posted by deZeus
You can set it manually,

Yes I know, but in Win XP it doesn't work. Not in my PC.
What am I doing wrong?
I try to set it lower but XP persist to set it to 1.5 GB = 1.5x1GB RAM.
I tried also to set it to no pagefile, but neither this work.
I tried to set different setting in my second machine (see below) but, even there XP persist to set it to 750 MB (512 DDR)
Yes in my earlier setup there were no problems with the W2K to set the swap file lower.
Can anybody advice how to do it in WinXP?
In this case I would change my mind about what I said before.
Anyway, if I'd like to weight CPU speed vs. RAM, I'd vote for faster CPU.

Fred

[junkmalle]

I'm running Windows XP Pro, service pack 1, 512 MB memory, and I have no problems setting the swap file size. Here's what I do:

Right click on "My Computer", select "Properties".

Select the "Advanced" tab, press "Settings" in the "Performance" section.

Select the "Advanced" tab, press "Change" in the "Virtual Meomory" section.

Turn on "Custom size" and set the "Initial size" and "Maximum size" to the desired values. I use the same size for both, 2 times the amount of DRAM.

Click "OK" as you back out of each dialog.

Windows will reboot with the new settings.

If it doesn't work for you -- maybe you're not logged in as an administrator? Could this be a difference between the Home and Pro editions?

[junkmalle]

I can't say for sure about the Matrox G550, but the G400's and G450's TV output only displays one field while in DVD Max mode. It outputs the same field twice rather than displaying both fields. If you use the computer to watch DVDs, or AVI or MPEG files on a TV you will be missing half the picture! This is true of all video.

In case you find this hard to believe (I did!) here's how I verified it:

I created a 720x480 BMP file with alternating, single pixel wide horizontal black and white lines. On the left half of the screen I started with a white line at the top. On the right half of the screen I started with a black line at the top. A small crop of the top center of the image looks something like this:

WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
BBBBBBBBWWWWWWWW
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
BBBBBBBBWWWWWWWW
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
BBBBBBBBWWWWWWWW

were W is a white pixel, B is a black pixel.

(EDIT: oops, I see that the proportional font messed my diagram up. If you use a fixed pitch font the diagram will appear correctly.)

I then use Ulead Media Studio Pro 7 to create a 1 minute long DVD compatible MPEG2 file from this BMP. I recorded it at 8000 kbps CBR to be sure the lines were preserved. After creating the MPEG file I used Media Studio to extract a frame -- the alternating black and white lines were preserved.

I burned this file to a DVD using Ulead DVD Movie Factory 2. After burning the DVD, I extracted a frame from the VOB file to verify that the alternating lines were not messed up by the burn. They were fine.

When I play this DVD on my set-top DVD player I can clearly see the alternating black and white lines. And the picture flickers like mad, as you would expect!

When I play this DVD on the computer and view the TV output from the G450 the left half of the picture is white and the right half is black. There is no evidence of horizontal lines:

WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB
WWWWWWWWBBBBBBBB

If I play the MPEG or the BMP files with Windows Media Player (or any other media player) I see exactly the same thing. Half the picture is white half is black.

On the computer monitor the picture is fine. If I use weave mode I can see both fields, ie alternating black and white horizontal lines. If I use bob mode (which averages pair of scanlines together before display) the entire picture is reduced to a single shade of gray -- and so is the TV output.

[dZeus]

try using weave mode on the mpeg2 decoder you use on your pc, and set DVDMAX options to 'use field-based scaling'.

[junkmalle]

Originally posted by dZeus
try using weave mode on the mpeg2 decoder you use on your pc, and set DVDMAX options to 'use field-based scaling'.

You're simply wrong. Those are the settings I was using.

But you fixed my problem! Turning OFF "use field-based scaling" made the card display both fields on the TV. I've done a few experiments with different sized MPG and AVI files and apparently that option should be called "use single field scaling". When you turn it on only one field is used for TV output in DVD Max mode.

Thanks, dZeus!

[dZeus]

weird, I've never experienced that problem. with the driversets I tried, it would do exactly what it says (scale even/odd lines seperately and keep right field order on playback).

[Fred H]

@junkmalle,
Problem solved
Thanks, I knew that but I made some mistakes, by setting 2 parameters at the same time before reboot. Win XP didn't like this.
I also had to set the memory, first to "0" Restarted the PC than I deleted the page file (placed not on the system drive)
With no swapfile Adobe Photoshop CS complains for it.
Now I could set a much smaller swapfile, with a min. of 16 MB and everything works well, and the pagefile is below 50 to 60 MB.

Anyhow, MSP7, TMPGEnc, Photoshop etc use themselfs only 280 to 300 MB of RAM.

Fred.

[nunchalnaomi]

Hi Smitty,

I had the g550 and had no problems with video editing. I like to play games and it was not good for gaming. My ati 9800 pro plays games, is dual moniter, and works more then fine. The g550 are very cheap on ebay, if fact I can sell you my old one. I used it for a little over a year. I have the dongle , the bag, and an old driver cd. Its in great condition. I run stock. And I have a paypal account . Let me know
Michael
ps look at sata connections instead of ata. ( oh and a raptor) I like asus motherboards. And make sure to get a good name brand power supply like antec.