Well, I successfully sold my Xena LH and now have a Xena LHe...

When setting up a Xena LHe with Cineform for the first time, do you need to install the Xena drivers - especially if you're not going to use them? I only plan on using the Xena for capture and playback monitoring of Cineform Prospect HD files.

Thanks.

No, you should not install the AJA retail drivers, we include the drivers you need in Prospect HD. They are located C:\Program Files\CineForm\AJAIO, just point to this directory when installing the cards drivers.

Thanks David. That's what I needed to know.

David what if you wanted to use the LHE board in After Effects, Combustion or Photoshop? Wouldn't you need the AJA drivers then? As a visual effects artist having live HDTV preview from my compositing programs is very important.

What would be the best method to setup the AJA drivers for those programs and your drivers for Premiere?

Also do the same rules apply for Cineform Neo?

Prospect comes with AJA drivers for After Effects (which seems faster than AJA's own, last time we tested.) We don't have AJA drivers for Combustion and Photoshop, yet the retail plugins may run with the OEM drivers. AJA has OEM (for companies like CineForm) and retail drivers that are only partly compatible with each other, annoying yet their have there business reasons for doing it.

CineForm NEO also required the OEM AJA drivers we ship if you are using the AJA card for capture, otherwise you can use the retail drivers.

Has anyone here been able to run a Xena LHe card on a quad core Windows XP Pro system? My system has an MSI P35 Platinum mobo, one PCI-e 16x (for an nVidia 8800GTS video card) and one PCI-e 4x (for the Xena LHe), and all SATA hard drives. The system is over-clocked from 2.4 up to 3.4 gHz. Everything had been fine until I installed the Xena LHe card. The system would not boot after that. I took the card out and everything worked again after a second re-boot...

Any ideas? I'm already considering the over-clocking as a problem, but don't know why it would cause the system to crash with the Xena added. Are there any known issues with the 8800 and the LHe? AJA's website does not document any issues that I can see.

I would very interested to know how well the Xena works on that motherboard. AJA only supports workstation class systems for their boards. They also insist that the system must have 2 physical cpus andn ot just dual core or quad core. Personally I thought this was kind of rubbish but you never know. I'm sure the card may work in some consumer class motherboards but maybe that one is a problem.

Is the PCI Express x4 slot a true x4 slot or is it a second slot usually used for crossfire video cards. I think sometimes those extra slots are looking for a video card only though I may be wrong about this. I don't know a single person who has ever used a AJA board on a consumer motherboard.

Prospect comes with AJA drivers for After Effects (which seems faster than AJA's own, last time we tested.) We don't have AJA drivers for Combustion and Photoshop, yet the retail plugins may run with the OEM drivers. AJA has OEM (for companies like CineForm) and retail drivers that are only partly compatible with each other, annoying yet their have there business reasons for doing it.

CineForm NEO also required the OEM AJA drivers we ship if you are using the AJA card for capture, otherwise you can use the retail drivers.

So if I want to use Cineform to capture material and use Cineform with Premiere for editing but I also composite with Combustion then I don't have any options? Sorry if I didn't understand you.

What if I have a VFX station that only has Combustion and Photoshop but want a AJA card in that station to capture Cineform files to composite with?

Would the Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 be considered a consumer or workstation class mobo?

David N, can you advise if this is suitable mobo for my CineForm OEM AJA Xena LHe card?

Stuart, my admin guy told me not to consider OC the new system I am about to build, not that I wanted to do that. I hope you solve your system problem.

I think the MSI P35 mobo would be considered a high-end consumer board. MSI might disagree with me, but the number of slots tells me it's consumer and gaming-oriented. AJA admits their boards may work on a lot of different, non-tested machines, but it's hit or miss. I still think a quad core chip is not the problem.

In retrospect, I did not do my homework very well. The computer is VERY fast, but not laid out well for professional work. It has taken me a long time (and a lot of extra money) to figure out how to get all my peripherals to work. Lesson: don't order a computer when you're too busy to carefully spec. it out. I was way too busy with projects and just ordered a fast machine without checking into its handling of peripherals.

This latest episode is another example. The PCI-E X4 slot shares channels with the two PCI-E X1 slots. I have no clue what that means. When the Xena LHe card is installed, the system board LED lights show it's there, but Windows will not come up. As a last resort, I'll try returning to default settings on the clock speed and see if that helps... Fortunately I'm working on SD stuff right now, but it's frustrating to know my system is not fully capable of what I need it to do.

If you going for a new motherboard, find one that supports a 1333 MHz FSB. It is not needed for AJA, but it benefits all round system performance.

This motherboard supports 1333 MHz FSB... I'm still waiting for some feedback from the builder. I think my problem is related to the PCI-E 4x slot sharing with the PCI-E 1x slots. Maybe this is related to gaming video cards (?). If I can turn the sharing off, my guess is it would help... Who knows, maybe putting the Xena in a 1X slot will work. Since it's only being used as a monitoring solution for Cineform Premiere editing, perhaps the 1X slot is fast enough...

No the cpu wouldn't cause your problem at all. That would only cause performance issues but I think it should be fine. I think that "2 physical cpu" rule came when dual core was first around and it didn't have enough beef to handle the card. Now core 2 duo chips can blow away older single core based 2 cpu XEON systems.

I do feel as though that x4 slot may be the problem. Like I said before consumer class boards sometimes have funny ways of using their x4 slots. Some share them with other slots while others will only as x4 when two video cards are used.

When I say consumer board I mean a regular board compared to a workstation class motherboard for XEON systems. I'm sure some x4 slots on consumer boards would work but the trick is to find one that works on it's own without any sharing of resources with the other PCI E slots.

Are there any settings in the bios to force the PCI E slots to work a certain way? Maybe you can force the x4 slot open and turn off all the other x1 slots or something like that. That is all I can think of other then returning the MB and trying some other ones to see if they work.

The Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 is 1066MHz max (Chris's post), yes the MSI P35 supports 1333MHz.

Thank you, David, however, the Gigabyte website says the P35 DS4: Supports 1333/1066/800 MHz FSB, when looking deeper at the specs.

Curious if anyone is using this mobo or can report known conflicts with this mobo, or Gigabyte in general, when used with the LHe, a 8800GTX and SATA drive array. Thanks.

Christopher,

My motherboard is very similar to the one you're looking at - and I'm using the same type of video card (8800). Be careful about the PCI-E slots and possible sharing. While I have not yet confirmed it, I think that's my problem. My system builder is checking into this to see if I can disable channel sharing of the PCI-E 4x and 1x slots.

I'll keep the forum posted on how this works out for me.

Thanks Stuart, I appreciate any feedback, in due course.

Happy to help. If you can avoid the issues I'm having, that will be great. Would you over-clock your processor if feasible?

No, Stuart. My tech can OC computers, however, I am seeking longevity of all the peripherals, and he agrees. Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope we all can learn what is the cause and what mobo choices work. Thanks.

Also, make sure you have the latest bios updates and drivers. My Gigabyte came with beta versions. (P35 based).

Joe, indeed, thank you.

Joe, are you running a Xena card (LHe) on your Gig P35 mobo?

Well, it's "official". My motherboard will not support the Xena LHe card. It's most likely an incompatibility between the Xena chipset and the motherboard's chipset and/or PCI-E slot management. I've got two choices - either change out the motherboard or let the Xena go (and then upgrade my video card, and run with a 30" monitor for programs and my existing 24" monitor for HD viewing off the timeline).

In retrospect, using a Xena card just to monitor the Cineform/Premiere timeline in HD on an LCD monitor was probably a poor financial decision. Live and learn. If anyone is interested in a practically new Xena LHe card, let me know. I'll probably be selling it very soon.

Stuart

Make sure you don't get a GeForce8 card. I have a 30" LCD and a 24" LCD, and can't get fullscreen overlay from Prospect with my 8800GTX. It does work in Desktop/DV/HDV mode. I hear there are work arounds, but I have not had time to attempt them yet.

Unfortunately I've already got one! I'm looking to replace it with a decent Quadro FX card.

Hi Folks,

I realise that this is an old posting but some of you might be interested in my current, working, configuration.

I too was interested in using the Xena LHe but balked at the hight cost of the "workstation" required by Aja.

To cut a long story short, I did a lot of research on consumer mobos and ended up on some gaming/overclocker hardware sites. Computer gamers are known to be pretty demanding on their hardware.

I came accross the DFI LP UT P35-T2R during my reasearch, a high end motherboard with quality components, used by gamers/overclockers.

The most important feature of this mobo to me was that you can switch one of the PCI Express x16 slots to dedicated x4 use. This won't work properly on most consumer mobos but since the components on this mobo are of such high quality and it has proven to be very stable even under severe stress it seemed a likely candidate for the Xena LHe.

In addition to this I also purchased a Quadro FX 570 graphics card as the Xena LHe simply won't like a consumer Geforce card.

I also added an Intel Quad core 9300 CPU and 4 x 1Gb DDR2 Dimms.

I'm running the whole configuration successfully under both a Windows XP 32 bit and XP 64 bit dual boot system with the Adobe CS3 suite.

My Xena LHe is connected via HD-SDI to my Sony MEUWX2/LMD 172WS, HD capable, production monitor.

Oh and before anyone asks, the Xena LHe Vista 64 bit driver does work under the Windows XP 64 bit OS.

The system has been running very stable for the last 4 weeks now and I might attempt some overclocking on the FSB to up the CPU clock which I have refrained from doing so far.

I can therefore highly recommend the DFI LP UT P35-T2R mobo for use with the Xena LHe.

It won't be easy to find however as its an older mobo based on the Intel P-35 chipset.

Any questions, feel free to ask.

Cheers,
Armand