CS5 with MXO2 Mini crashes a lot!

[Ron Little]

Without the MXO2 plugged in it runs stable.

Has anyone gotten this combination to run properly? Is this a driver issue?

[Vincent Oliver]

Having the same trouble with the RT X2 card. Have just installled a GTX 470 with cuda, may just ditch the Matrx card.

[Kevin Monahan]

Have you tried reinstalling your Matrox MX02 drivers?

[Gary Brun]

Also Matrox have upgraded their drivers to version 5 if you havnt heard it?

[Rich Perry]

I sold my mx02 mini, as I just got frustrated with the constant crashing min CS5, the new drivers 5.0 were even worse and were the nail in the coffin for me :)

[Mark Morreau]

MX02 Mini? Pah. There's only one place for it, and that's e-bay.

[Harm Millaard]

Gary will not agree, but he tries to sell the stuff. I for one agree wholeheartedly with this statement. You are better off without anything Matrox, just like you are better off without the big C or any other illness.

[Andrew Smith]

I've used Matrox video acceleration gear for a long time now and I can only say that I am very impressed. You'll always get the occasional lockup on any platform ... especially if a computer is involved. I built my box per their hardware specs and I've had an excellent experience as a result.

One of the things I can definitely say in their favor is that Matrox only release new drivers for their hardware when they are ready. I like that, and I've seen this many times over the years. I guess it's one of the benefits of a privately owned company -- that you aren't cornered in to thinking of shareholders foremost.

Andrew

[Gary Brun]

Originally Posted by Harm Millaard

Gary will not agree, but he tries to sell the stuff. I for one agree wholeheartedly with this statement. You are better off without anything Matrox, just like you are better off without the big C or any other illness.

Do you mean me??
I sell Matrox?

[Mark Morreau]

He means Gary Bettan, from Videoguys. That Gary sells Matrox!

[Jay West]

Originally Posted by Ron Little

Without the MXO2 plugged in it runs stable.

Has anyone gotten this combination to run properly?

Yes. Numbers of us have the MXO2 mini running in a stable configuration. I use it with both CS5 and AVID MC5. Perrone Ford's name comes to mind as another DVinfo member who has posted on using the Mini. (I think he mostly uses Avid MC5, though.) Matrox oversells this thing as the equivalent of $5000+ calibrated broadcast monitor run from things like AJA cards for color grading. The Mini is not that, but I find it good enough for what I do and much better than what I'd otherwise be doing. For reference, I'm running an I7/920 on an ASUS P6T mobo w/ 12 gigs RAM, a GTX 260, a G-Speed Raid 10, an internal Raid 0, separate system drive, additional drives for scratch files, 2 computer monitors, and an LCD tv. I'm running under Win 7 Pro.

Originally Posted by Ron Little

Is this a driver issue?

Might be. Might be other issues.

Do you have the latest drivers? Months ago, when I first moved to CS5 and was using the first set CS5 Mini drivers, I did run into some instability when editing 4 streams of AVCHD on my system. Matrox followed up with newer drivers and I have not had problems since then. (Well, I have not had problems that I can isolate to the Mini.) I've done multi-cam projects with 3 HDV and 3 AVCHD streams plus additional audio tracks with no issues as long as I worked in 20 minute segments. Longer multi-cam AVCHD segments tend to bog things down. When I need to work in longer segments (as opposed to working in segments which get nested to a final timeline), I'll convert the files with Cineform.

A question for you that might get better suggestions. What are you editing (HDV? AVCHD? Red 2k? XDCAM? ???) and what are your system specs?

If you are working with AVCHD multi-cam tracks, have you tried Cineform NeoScene or NeoHD? Cineform has fully functional trial versions. I like using NeoHD because of the First Light application because the Cineform intermediates seem to work better for multi-cam editing on my system (that is, better than three or more tracks of native AVCHD).

Have you upgraded/updated your CS5 to 5.02 or 5.03? Matrox recommends uninstalling the drivers before doing upgrades and then reinstalling after PPro has been upgraded. In theory, this routine is only required for major upgrades, but I've always exercised caution and done for even the 5.0.x updates.

Have you reported the problems to Matrox? I've found them slow but usually responsive, eventually.

Another couple of things to check when you have stability problems with CS5 are:
(a) if the stability problems are turning up after you've been editing for a while, try deleting render files and re-rendering everything (render files can proliferate and really slow things down);
(b) clean out the media cache.

[Gary Brun]

Originally Posted by Mark Morreau

He means Gary Bettan, from Videoguys. That Gary sells Matrox!

Ok... that's good to know.
I use a Matrox MXO2 rack with CHD and I am also a beta tester for Matrox.
I can honestly say that there are an excellent company who work very hard to fix issues and have drivers that work before they release them.
I must say for the record that I am very impressed with Matrox as a company and how they work.

If you are having problems with the product please state exactly what it is and I will pass your message on. But to say Matrox is like having the BIG "C" is a little bit too far fetched for me and doesn't match up with my experience with their products.

Regards

Gary

[Andrew Smith]

Additionally, over the years I've noticed that the people in the Matrox forums complaining about their instability issues were always the ones who had under-resourced computers. They had unrealistic expectations for the computer that they were using.

The real issue was their cheap mindset .... and it hardly saved them money.

Andrew

[Jay West]

Well, that's a bit of an overstatement, I think, and also unfairly harsh to the OP, at least at this point. It seems to be that there are a lot of folks who come to this forum to try to learn things they don't know or maybe can't figure out for themselves.

To be sure, some people certainly have had trouble with underpowered and poorly configured systems and then have whined as through their system configuration was the fault of Matrox.

However, others have have had issues that defied easy categorization or fixes. We work with complex software where there are numbers of things that can contribute to problems.

That's why I thought it important to tell the Ron that he needed to give us more specific information about his system configuration. That's also why I asked him if he had tried Matrox support yet. Maybe he's been through all that and is still having trouble. Maybe we were his first resort.

[Andrew Smith]

Yup, too true. Looking forward to the additional information on the issues he is having.

(just to clarify: my comments were regarding to prior experience with what had been observed in the Matrox forums)

Andrew