Will the Matrox RT2500 realtime editing card work with vegas?

fetch wrote on 1/22/2004, 5:18 AM

Just curious, I really want to reduce my render times, so I'm thinking of getting one of these.

-Is it worth my while?
-Are there better/cheaper cards out there that will do the same if not a better job?

Is there any other way to reduce the render times (apart from a powerful system)

I'm running a P4 2.4GHz, 512MB, 160GB system

It' takes me approx 4hrs to render a 1hr 30min project - and that just the video only to DVD PAL compliant.
No effetcs at all. Is this normal?

Comments

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/22/2004, 6:29 AM

Vegas will not take advantage of any hardware assistance (other than your CPU) so this card would be a waste of money. (i.e., Vegas won’t use it) A more powerful CPU with fast memory is probably your best option for Vegas. I just built a new PC with a P4 3.0Ghz processor and 1GB of Kingston HyperX CAS 2 RAM and I get near real-time rendering of MPEG2 on straight DV (no transitions).

~jr

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/22/2004, 8:24 AM

Plus the Matrox RT2500 sucks (i've used it at work for over a year). It's sluggish, all the audio and video need to be sperate files, sluggish...

I don't like it.

InterceptPoint wrote on 1/22/2004, 8:47 AM

I agree with TheHappyFriar.

I had a Premiere 6.0 and Matrox RT2500 setup for well over a year where I spent most of my time trying to make the system stable. In the end I pulled the RT2500, dumped Premiere, re-formatted my hard drive and have been a happy Vegas user ever since.

fetch wrote on 1/22/2004, 4:50 PM

Ok, it looks like the better way to go is to build myself a powerful system.
What do people recommend?

-Motherboard?
-Memory?
-CPU?

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/22/2004, 6:54 PM

All of the above. :)

People have said they get great performance from the AMD 64 series. The AMD 64 3400 is considered about as fast as the fastest P4 (the extream) so if you're an AMD fan and don't mind spending the $. It's about 1/2 the price of the pentium. That chip only has a couple support boards, but i recomend the Asus one. I like them. :)

zemote wrote on 1/22/2004, 7:01 PM

I just built a pc with a p4 2.6ghz 800mhz fsb with 512mb pc3200 ram, geforce fx5200 and dual 17" LCD monitors for $1300. Ok, the pc was about $500 and the monitors were $800!!!

-zemote

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/22/2004, 8:47 PM

I just put together a new system using a Gigabyte GA-8KNXP motherboard with a P4 3.0Ghz processor and 1GB of Kingston HyperX PC3200 CAS 2 memory. Here is the parts list for the entire system minus a monitor (I kept my 19” Sony Trinitron) with prices I paid from newegg.com:

Mobo:  Gigabyte GA-8KNXP 875P            $202.00 

Mem:   Kingston HyperX KHX3200K2/1G      $235.00

CPU:   P4/3.0CGHz 800M 478P/512K HT      $275.00

Case:  ANTEC PlusView 1000AMG            $ 68.00 

PSU:   ANTEC TrueBLUE480 Power Supply    $ 84.00 

HD1:   Maxtor 160GB L01P160 8MB UATA133  $110.00

HD2:   WD 7200 WD1600JD 8MB 160GB SATA   $132.00 

DVDRW: PIONEER DVR-106BK DVD+/-RW BLK    $132.00 

Video: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB         $299.00

Audio: SOUND BLASTER AUDIGY 2 ZS PLTM    $162.00 

KBD:   LOGITECH BLACK Internet Keyboard   $16.00 

Mouse: LOGITECH MX 310                    $28.00 

FDD:   SAMSUNG SFD-321B/LBL1 OEM           $6.00

OS:    WIN XP HOME w/SP1a                 $91.00

------------------------------------------------

Total                                   $1840.00

You probably don’t need as powerful a graphics card but I do a lot of OpenGL 3D modeling so I wanted a fast graphics processor. You probably don’t need the platinum version of the Audigy 2 card with the breakout box. I’m a musician (keyboards) so I like having the MIDI ports and audio inputs in the front. I would have gotten an M-Audio Revolution 7.1 if it had a breakout box. It’s probably a better audio card.

You can get 1GB of Kingston ValueRAM for $155 so you don’t have to go for the high performance memory, although video rendering is probably affected by memory speed. I’m just not sure how much you gain with CAS 2 vs. CAS 3 latency memory. I just wanted to build the fastest system I could.

Antec makes a similar case with a True430 430W PSU in it (PLUS1080AMG) for $114. (Cheaper than buying the two separate) but I wanted the clear window on the side and the larger 480W PSU. I also bought 5 clear case fans (not shown) with blue LED’s. They keep the case cool and glowing with a blue light. ;-) You might consider getting at least one more case fan (it comes with 2 mounted in the rear) to suck in from the front. I have two in the rear and one over the hard drives, one at the base of the front, and one blowing in the side over the graphics card. The case is surprisingly quiet ‘cuz I bought CoolerMaster fans with rifle bearings. They’re whisper quiet and regulated by the PSU so they're not on full at all times.

The ASUS P4C800-E Deluxe is also a nice motherboard to build a system around. I select the Gigabyte because it had more IDE ports (up to 8 devices) and supported RAID for both IDE and SATA and had 6 memory slots instead of 4. The ASUS board supports 6 IDE devices and has RAID for SATA only but it’s still a great motherboard. (and its about $20 cheaper too)

Hope this helps,

~jr

fetch wrote on 1/23/2004, 8:28 AM

That's a great system there Johnny, I'm really keen on build something similar to what u have.
Tell me, do you use the RAID configuraion? if so which one?

Is it recommeded to have one hard Drive soley for all your projects and rendering etc..

JohnnyRoy wrote on 1/23/2004, 8:50 PM

Yes, its recommended that you have a second physical disk for video captures and rendering. I’ve been doing this every since I started editing video on my P2 450Mhz PC and I’ve never experienced dropped frames.

I’m not using RAID yet. My plan is to eventually add another Western Digital 160GB SATA drive and then run the two 160GB drives as a 320GB RAID 0 configuration. I really have no use for it yet since the single 160GB SATA drive is way more than fast enough for DV editing. I assume new formats like HDTV will add new demands on hard drives but I’m not there yet. I’m just planning ahead.

The Gigabyte motherboard has RAID for both the IDE and SATA channels so it’s pretty flexible. I was going to buy two Western Digital drives (one IDE and one SATA) but I got the Maxtor real cheap on sale (actually $79 after rebate). I could have bought two SATA drives but installing Windows XP gets a little trickier because XP doesn’t have SATA support on the CD so you need to have driver disks for the installation. Not a big deal but I thought the IDE drives were fine for the OS and applications. Here is how I partitioned them:

Maxtor 160GB IDE ATA133:
C: (20GB) Operating System
D: (70GB) Applications
E: (70GB) Media Library.

So the OS and a few applications like MS Office, Firewall, Anti-virus, etc are on the C: drive with a fixed swap file of 2x memory (i.e., 2GB). Applications like Vegas and Paint Shop Pro, etc. are on my D: drive while media like my MP3 music, Video loops, Music Loops, Image catalog, etc. is on my E: drive. This allows me to have all the media that I use often for my videos on line.

Western Digital 160GB SATA:
F: (80GB) Video Capture
G: (80GB) Audio Capture

I’m a musician and I record my own music so I like having a separate partition for whatever music project I’m working on and, of course, a separate partition for video capture. Having a separate disk for video capture really helps performance. You would probably just partition the whole 160GB as F: Video Capture. This should be more than enough space for a few projects at a time. ;-)

~jr