opinions please

duffgnr · Post by **duffgnr** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 9:33 am

hi all
im thinking of moving from videostudio to ms7.
after extensive research there seems to be a common thread of the software being very unstable!

i obviously aint gonna spend a hundred quid on something thats gonna make me hurl it of the window so if you lot could let me know your experiences i would be grateful!

duffgnr

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 9:45 am

I'm a very happy user of MSP 7.3, have been for quite some time. Had some initial problems with the previous version I owned, MSP 6.5 DirectorsCut, but they all were traced back to hardware and set up issues. After fixing that I had no problem at all.
If you are serious about editing and do not just want to get your home movies or illegally copied TV broadcasts/ DVD movies onto disk with the least amount of fiddeling, go for it.
You have to be prepared though to get a somewhat dedicated system for this kind of activity.
A system that is also used to do gaming, internet activities, especially file sharing etc and other general computing like word processing etc., could cause you some grief in the long run. Nothing that a dual boot could not fix though.
While editing, there should be no need to run virus scanners, firewalls etc. ie. no internet connection or networking while you are at it. You also need a dedicated HDD for your programs and another one or two for the capture and rendering. Having a 4th one for the swap file only is also an advantage.

Terry Stetler · Post by **Terry Stetler** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:10 am

Most of the issues here relate to a very few root causes;

1. a system clogged with junkware, games, all manner of internet plugins, addware etc. etc. Most common cause of problems.

2. a poorly optimized system (happens a lot), very often Win9x or WinME which are extremely poor in memory and disc cache management. Ick.

3. the use of certain hardware devices & mainboard chipsets that while highly advertised are JUNK and have drivers to match.

Don't get me started.....

4. true MSPro bugs. A lot fewer than the posts here would indicate.

Most of the problems you see here are common with mid to high end editors when not placed on a dedicated Windows installation.

I prevent these problems by setting up a dualboot system. This gives me one OS bootup for "normal" use (internet, games etc.) and another just for editing.

This kiind of arrangement is very often recommended by the software makers just because it prevents a lot of software configuration problems.

duffgnr · Post by **duffgnr** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:14 am

cheers heinz oz

my system is
athlon 2800+
512 ram
two 80GB hard drives (one for video only)
128Mb Geforce Mx 4000
realtek Ac'97 sound card
MSI DVD/RW drive
MSI CD drive

im actually studying television production at university and use apple's final cut pro at uni. however, the industry standard editing kit is Avid. i was looking into buying avid Xpress DV but this requires a dedicated system beyond belief!

ive been using Videostudio 8 with spanking sucess i like the look of MSP7 and i need a more advanced edit suite than VS8.

cheers

Greg · Post by **Greg** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:17 am

duffgnr,
If you read here and on other forums, you will see that the new version of MSP (8), is due soon, before yearend is (I think) is the current target date. I would recommend waiting and definitely upgrading to MSP, you will be amazed at the capabilities.

Terry,
You have time for games ? When ?

Regards,
Greg

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 12:13 pm

I'm with the others: a dedicated stand-alone video 'puter with a reasonably good spec + MSP7 = no hassle. In my case, I have it networked to my other machines, but no AV, no Internet, no firewall, no games, only video.

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 1:25 pm

no video games here, but internet and other applications like DVD Authoring and plenty of other Video-Editing tools.

You can see my computer specs in my sig, and MSP 7.3 works great

Terry Stetler · Post by **Terry Stetler** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 4:16 pm

Just as a point of reference I'll list my 2 main main editing systems specs with "/'s" dividing where they differ;

AthlonXP 3000+
1GB DDR400
ASROCK K7S8XE m/b (SiS 748 chipset)
Matrox Parhelia/Matrox P-750 display
Matrox RT.X100 (mainly for Premiere Pro, but some MSP functionality)
All HDD's are Maxtors
Antec 480/550 power supplies
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz/M-Audio Revolution 7.1 audio cards
Promise SX4000 RAID 5's (600GB/400GB)
Liniksys gigabit LAN's
Panasonic DVD-R/RW/RAM Multi burner
LG DVD -/+ R/RW/RAM/DL Super-Multi burner

OS: WinXP SP2 multi-boot ("Normal", editing only, beta 1, beta 2, beta 3) & Win2K SP4.

There are 6 others, all with either SiS or Intel chipsets and otherwise similar hardware & software configs save for the capture devices which differ and not all having beta bootups.

NO VIA mainboard chipsets or Creative audio cards allowed.

An Athlon64 dual core system is now being specced out for purchase in a few weeks.

heinz-oz · Post by **heinz-oz** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 11:19 pm

duffgnr wrote:cheers heinz oz

my system is
athlon 2800+
512 ram
two 80GB hard drives (one for video only)
128Mb Geforce Mx 4000
realtek Ac'97 sound card
MSI DVD/RW drive
MSI CD drive

im actually studying television production at university and use apple's final cut pro at uni. however, the industry standard editing kit is Avid. i was looking into buying avid Xpress DV but this requires a dedicated system beyond belief!

ive been using Videostudio 8 with spanking sucess i like the look of MSP7 and i need a more advanced edit suite than VS8.

cheers

Whilst the new version MSP8 is on the horizon, it will be a while yet. It will also, undaubtedly suffer from some tething problems initially. MSP7 needed 3 major patches before it got to where it is now. You can also get it relatively cheap now and will be entitled to a lower cost upgrade to MSP8 later on.
One point of caution though on your system. I was using on board AC97 sound at one stage and had weird sound issues at times. On Terry's suggestions I canned the AC97 sound and got a PCI soundcard, presumably based on Turtlebeach technology, and have not had an issue since.
If you take the plunge, be prepared to fork out a bit more cash to upgrade the soundcard.
As long as you follow the instructions given here in this thread and refrain from having gaming junk etc installed on the system, I'm sure you will be pleasantly surprised by the capabilities of MSP. I only use it for hobby stuff and haven't scratched the surface of what it could do.
Go for it!

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 8:10 am

I'll go further than Heinz. Do NOT use on-motherboard graphics, sound, IEEE-1394, networking, RAID etc. Get one with plenty of slots to allow you to use whatever quality cards you want. However, I'm not as allergic as Terry to Creative sound boards. I have three different models in three computers (including Live! in my main video computer) and have never had the slightest problem with any of them. I do agree that AC-97 is problematic though and older VIA PCI controller chipsets are anathema. That does not apply to IEEE-1394 VIA chipsets which work very well and it may be that modern VIA motherboard chipsets may be OK (at your own risk!).

Remember that goodies added to the main functionality of motherboards are usually the cheapest, nastiest ones available, designed to make cheap and nasty computers. Ya pays your money and ya gets what ya pays for.

Terry Stetler · Post by **Terry Stetler** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:44 pm

Just to follow up on Devils VIA comments;

More recent VIA chipsets have been tested heavily by Matrox for use with the RT.X100 and they still fail because of the same old problems: poor PCI to host memory bandwidth. Their compatability list for the RT.X100 is an excellent resource of mainboards & chipsets that can take a hammering, especially in video apps.

This bandwidth issue not only affects Matrox's realtime boards but those made by others (and also some high end studio audio cards) and it really comes into play when doing high bandwidth transfers from HDD/RAID to host memory for realtime playback of deep stacks in software RT apps like MSPro.

I'm looking forward to doing some tests with the new ATI chipsets. They sound impressive, but only some real tests will tell the tail....

GeorgeW · Post by **GeorgeW** » Thu Aug 11, 2005 3:57 pm

And just to show that what works for some, doesn't for everyone...

my current machine is using onboard sound, onboard graphics, and onboard networking

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 6:27 am

I didn't say they wouldn't work. What I tried to impart is that they are most often cheap and nasty stuff and you wouldn't get the best performance from them and this might tip the balance towards problems.

Let me digress into graphics cards. A "good" graphics card can cost more than a computer, nowadays (well, they are computers of a sort). But these are built strictly for gamers who like 70 fps at stupendous resolutions with their favourite software. It is a total waste of money buying such cards for video work. The cheapest AGP-4 card you can buy will do the job just as well as one costing 5 times more, provided it has a good GPU. I use a Matrox G-550 dual-head, normally connected to 2 18" flat screen monitors (one is in hospital just now), but 95% of the time I use just one to avoid "Wimbledon neck syndrome". When I want to monitor TV, I output a DV stream from MSP7 via an ADVC-100 to a TV. Note that I don't specifically recommend Matrox; I dislike the company intensely, but they do make good 2-D graphics cards.