Just as I was finishing an important gig, and starting to film a short when my xp machine died. It was was running AspectHD 4.1 and Ppro 2.0. Well, I was going to get a new, better machine in a year, so what the hey.

Got a quadcore, 4 gig media pavilion - figured that should work pretty good. Upgraded my Ppro 2.0 to the Production Premium Suite. It runs Vista Home Premium 64-bit.

where to begin....

The lacie external drive that worked on the old computer doesn't show up on the new one. Plugged it back into the old computer, it shows up as uninitialized and unallocated.

PPro CS3 launches, but doesn't have the Cineform presets. Filed a support ticket with cineform a few days, have heard nothing. Noticed on their site I should be running AspectHD 5.0 with CS3, so I upgraded. Well, I paid the money and when they get around to it, I'm sure the Cineform folks will send me the upgrade. It's ok, I know they're busy, I don't mind spending money then wondering when I'll get the product.

I have scenes shot in 720 24p from my short, I tried capturing them anyway, into a 720 30p project. I captured ok, but the audio is out of sync. I have some scenes captured as m2t files on a laptop running dv rack. When I bring them into a 720 30p project, audio again out of sync.

Hopefully, the upgrade will get me the presets back, and all will be well.

Btw, I got a maxtor external drive connected via firewire 400. Vista sees that fine. When CS3 has to use a file on that drive, it takes a long time, frequently crashes, then Vista vomits up a blue screen of death and reboots. I copied the files to the hard drive, CS3 likes that a little better.

Anyway, upgrading to the new OS and super-powered computer has resulted in NOTHING working as it's supposed to. I mean, Vista has trouble dealing with external drives??

The one nice thing is the mah jong graphics are great. That's handy because I spend a lot of time on hold waiting for tech support.

I'm wondering if Adobe, or Cineform, or Microsoft, or somebody could quote me a price on sending an employee to my place and blowing my brains out?

Then, at long last, my long personal nightmare will be over.

thanks for reading my rant, I hope you enjoyed it.

Let me apologize to the Cineform folks... they responded with my upgrade, and I'm pretty much back in business.

Though it looks like Vista will be the bane of my existence for some time.

If it's any consolation, once you get a handle on it, it's NOT that bad.

So cheer up.

Yeah, now that the Cineform is up and working, I'm back on track. Suicidal thoughts receding....

not to pile on the criticism, but i unfortunately have had a very similar experience (vista 64, cs3, cineform). i was miraculously able to export an 80-minute HD project to...

whoops, cs3 just crashed again on me as i write this (please hold). ok relaunching premiere again.

i've had BSOD, a myriad of freezes and crashes, and memory leaks during conformation that were so bad that the screen would turn white because it couldn't draw the desktop. granted, the cineform folks did say that vista 64 bit was not a good idea. now i learned that the hard way. i'm not pointing fingers at anyone's software, but i've never had such a buggy experience with any software program before. i'm currently going back to winXP and re-conforming/re-rendering the project in the hopes of saving it.

when it was working, it was great. problems seem to grow exponentially as the project becomes larger. i'm now seriously considering FCP/Mac and saving my CS3/PC for SD projects.

Should you be surprised if you beat your head against a wall and then have a headache?

This site as well as the rest of the internet is replete with reports that Vista 64 lacks drivers for this hardware or that hardware, or this software or that software. I'd have given Vista 64 a test spin to satisfy my curiosity except that M-Audio still have not yet released a Vista 64 driver for my Firewire 410. So I saved myself the bother despite the temptation. Adobe have been very clear that CS3 is NOT certified for Vista 64. While some folks manage to use CS3 on Vista 64, many others have had problems. Cineform have posted very recently on DVinfo that they do not currently support Vista 64.

We most certainly appreciate reports, but we don't care to endure rants. Do remember that when you point a finger at someone else, there are four fingers pointing back at you.

guys, could you please try to install Win2003 SERVER [either 32bit or 64bit edition] and try CS3 with Cineform on that? I really wonder why you try to use "small toys" = Vista for serious work.

Oh yes and don't mind that "SERVER" in the name. It's really excellent desktop product, I use it on my notebook for several years already!

Well, my old computer died rather suddenly at a very critical time for a couple of projects, so I scrambled to get something I could afford, and very quickly.

I knew the old pc needed replacing, but knowing it would be a hassle to get a new pc set up, I hesitated until I was between projects. Of course, it was in the middle of a project the computer decided to poop the bed completely.

Run out and get a copy of Win XP while it's still in the stores. Or better yet, just transfer the license from your crashed computer to another machine (like the new Vista machine) and put XP there instead. Before you do that, though, make sure you've got either the Vista reinstall disks or a complete system backup in the (unlikely) event you want to migrate back to Vista.

All you need to install XP LEGALLY is the 25-character key code, usually found on the Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity sticker on your computer, plus an install disk. ANY OEM install disk will work as long as you can feed it the key code when it asks. This is assuming you have a machine that came with XP, and not a machine that came with ME and you installed the upgrade version of XP on top of the old system. The upgrade key doesn't work on a regular install.

Don't have an OEM disk? Talk to your local PC shop and explain the situation. As long as you have a valid key, they might do the install for you for a small fee. By the way, if you heat the inside of the case with a hair dryer, you can peel the COA sticker off in one piece if you take your time. I've migrated XP from a couple old machines to newer machines I've built several times, and wiped the old machine to stay legal. One key, one machine -- that's the agreement.

Martin

In my case, I already have WinXP on another boot drive. I went to Vista 64 specifically to take advantage of the larger memory capacity, since this was my first "big" HD project (for me). I have about 1500 media files on this 80 minute project. I have since brought my project back to WinXP (re-conformation took a whole day) to see if I can export to CFHD avi, which I was not able to do under Vista (100% crashing on export). Now I'm hitting the "low on system memory" error message under XP. I tried using Project Trimmer to an external drive...crashed with low memory error. Now I'm trying to just copy the files (minus the unused clips) via Project Manager...we'll see when I get home.

The odd thing is, I was able to export under Adobe Media Encoder to .FLV, .M4V, .MOV with no problem at all. It's just the Cineform that crashes.

I tried the boot.ini tweak. I defragged numerous times. Deleted all my cache files and started over. Optimized rendering for memory....no luck.