thanks glen. actually i'm in new york and will be here until after christmas at the least.
dell models were actually the first ones i took a look at. i had a few questions and wanted to consult a dell representative. i talked a girl who clearly did not know what she was talking about (nothing to do with her being a girl). she would keep repeating things that had nothing to do with what i was asking. then i tried their new live chat on their internet site. it took forever. 15 minutes wasted and the rep on the other end did not help me a bit. all he was interested in where two things: if i'm a business, and if i will be the only person using the computer or not. so i called again. this time a guy answered. he knew less about dell products than i did from just surfing through their web site for 10 minutes.
afterwards, i read in a few places that dell's service was noticely deteriorating and that their latest laptop models don't seem to made as solid and robust as you might expect. anyway, i just backed away from dell.

HP was a refreshing experience. their rep was friendly, he talked normal not not like a recorded message, and he really helped me narrow the selection down to what i need and what i can afford. i read good reviews on the HP dv4000 and figured that's what i'll go for.

HP PAVILION DV4000 (NEW, 1 year warranty)

- Intel(R) Pentium(R) M Processor 740 (1.73 GHz) centrino technology
- 512MB DDR2 SDRAM (1x512MB)
- 128MB ATI MOBILITY(TM) RADEON(R) X700
- 80 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
- DVD+/-RW/R & CD-RW Combo w/Double Layer Support
- 15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x800)
- Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG WLAN
- 4 Universal Serial Bus (USB) 2.0, 1 expansion port connector, 1 IEEE 1394 (FireWire) and 1 S-Video TV out
- dimensions: 14.11"(W) x 10.16"(L) x1.32"(min) / 1.67"(max)(H)
- weight: 6.45 lbs
- 6 cell battery (good for playing 2.5 hrs. dvd movie)
......... $1370.00

it's a bit over my budget and i'm still trying to find places to cut. so far i've made these minor changes. tell me what you think:

change Processor speed 1.73 GHz to 1.6 GHz
change 512MB DDR2 SDRAM from 1x512MB to 2x256MB
change DVD+/-RW/R & CD-RW w/Double Layer to DVD/CD-RW Drive

that knocked off about $120. do you think i'm making a mistake?

thanks

Hello,

I'm using Avid Xpress Pro HD and I can't get any audio at all.

Direct Sound Audio and 1394 Audio is my soundcard I believe.

When I start avid up it says something about windows mixer not being configured and that I should check my Sound configuration settings.

Under the sound card configuration there is a record/input. this gives stereo mix and microphone as options. there is also a playback/output option that gives me wave, sw synth and cd player options. I have tried all these options but none of them give me any sound. I have also tried to use the windows mixer but it won't work.

any guidance would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

Do you have Windows Media Player 10 installed?

yes I do. is that good or bad?

James,

I think theres a setting in windows your'e overlooking. Sorry, I can't recall what it is.Also, did you check to see if that card is reccomended or has issues? www.avid.com for specs and a forum of helpful but grouchy professionals.

Hey Richard,

thanks for the reply. could you elaborate a bit on the windows setting? is it not related to avid xpress?

also when I play the video sometimes the audio comes on for a brief second and then stops again.

I've tried over at the avid forum but haven't had much luck.

thanks again.

Check your Windows audio settings by right-clicking on the speaker icon on your taskbar and select "adjust audio properties" - when you see the Sounds and Audio Devices box, choose Audio, then look at the panel under Sound Recording. You should see your sound card there. If not, maybe it'll show the name of another device, scroll to select the sound card. Hit Apply and try Avid again.
Sometimes our webcam changes these settings and I have to go through this checklist...

Robin

yes I do. is that good or bad?

That's a good thing. Sorry, I'm sure what the problem is - maybe a driver conflict with Avid?

thanks again to everyone for their help.

my sound card is a SigmaTel audio. It is the only option available for me so it is always applied.

how could I check if there is a driver conflict? does anyone have any more suggestions?

I was just wondering how many times can activation be done. I mean, I am about to get a more powerful rig for my LE 6 so all the hardware configs will be different. Am i able to activate LE 6 on my new system if I have already activated it on my older system which I intend to fit it back to my older LE 5.5. Thanks.

I think it is at least twice. But, I think you can also call to get a reset or new ID (trying to remember the discussion on the Pinnacle board more than a year ago...) But that may have been HollywoodFX Pro.

Edit - you can ask here...

http://www.avid.com/exchange/forums/54/ShowForum.aspx

Thanks. The thread was really helpful.

Videoguy Interview: Tim Wilson of Avid tells all about Avid Liquid 7

Tim Wilson is a long time friend of the Videoguys and the senior product-marketing manager at Avid for both the Avid Xpress family and the brand new Avid Liquid 7. In this interview Tim tells us why Avid management is so excited about Liquid and what makes it so special for digital videographers. Here is just a sample of what he has to say:

“Gary, you’ve been talking to me about Liquid for as long as I’ve known you, and some of the features you’ve been most excited about – thousands of real-time GPU-accelerated effects, background rendering, instant auto-save updated 30 times a second, 5.1 audio mixing, and DVD authoring directly from the editing timeline – are exactly the same ones that excite us at Avid”.

“Avid Liquid is unique: video, surround audio, DVD, and effects in one application. Not one application for each of those tasks – one application that does it all. Nobody else can say that."

“Who is Liquid designed for? Someone looking for cutting-edge technology wrapped in a single, cost-effective, easy-to-use application!”

“Liquid 7 also includes over 50 new filters formerly part of the highly regarded Commotion compositing package. They cover a wide range of effects
categories, and like all Liquid effects, they render in the background so you never have to stop editing. You don’t even slow down.”

Check out our interview with Tim http://www.videoguys.com/videoguy_liquid.html

Gary

OK, not the source bin files....

Spent hours piecing together some video material and adding transitions, color correcting, etc.

I then rendered out a QuickTime Reference File. The total time of the DV footage on the time line was about 1hr 20 minutes (3 files in the bin, each is about an hour - none have any audio). It consisted of 20 clips. Most of them had fadeout dissolves on them, and every clip was color corrected.

So the exporting to QuickTime Ref took several hours (AMD XP1800+ 1 gig ram, nVidia 5200 video card, Xpress Pro HD 5.2.1). When it was finally done, nothing would play the QT Ref file. QT just crashed. I tried reinstalling codecs and QT, but none of that helped.

So I look at the time line and my footage on the timeline is totaly screwed.

1) EVERYTHING has vertical black lines (almost like it is vertically interlaced, but I am never seeing the 2nd set of fields).

2) Some clips are completely shaded blue. You can still see what's going on in the clip, but everything is blue, even the blacks.

3) Some clips are black & Green vertical lines on the bottom half, and black vertical lines and red specs on the top half.

I exited & restarted Xpress Pro. No help at all.

I looked at the source clips in the bin and they are just fine.

Is there a way to undo all of this? I don't want to have to go through the time line & everything all over again and recreate all of my dissolves, and color correct 20 different clips. I want to get everything back to the way it was before I decded to export.

Is this possible? Anyone know what caused this? Am I screwed here? If so I think I'm gonna have to start the whole thing all over again.

I'd like to switch back to Premiere Pro if I have to start all over again. Will Permiere Pro recognize my captured clips? I captured in Xpress Pro, so they are all OMFI Media Files.

Thanks!

Alex F

Alex,

The Avid Gurus on the avid board are the best people to answer you. www.avid.com

However. You should have a 'backup' version of your timeline in your attic. Check your manual for how to pull up a backup version.

Never heard of the problem you described, but I don't work in HDV. And I'm not running 5.21 (yet)

A quicktime reference file, is just that. A REFERENCE file, NOT the whole project. Your workflow seems a bit odd.

Your system also doesn't look like it's up to spec to run HD 5.21 either.

Best bet, take your questions over to the avid board.

Well, you're a life saver! Got my old bin out of the attic. From Right before I exported to QT Ref. so it's got all of my fades and Color Correction in it. Whew!

Workflow is edit, etc. in avid, export QT Ref file, then use Sorenson Squeeze, etc. to make into MPEG-2 file, & then into Encore DVD.

Anyway, I'll try my export again, this time from the File menu rather than the other method, if it even makes a diference..

Thanks,

Alex F

Alex,

Mark your timeline in and out. (Making sure all the tracks that you want exported are correctly selected)

RENDER ANY UNRENDERED ELEMENTS IN THE SEQUENCE. (You can either do this as you go along making it, or at the end when you're finished with the timeline.)

Once timeline is rendered. KEEP IT SELECTED AND MARKED.

FIND the timeline sequence in the BIN. Select it IN THE BIN.

Choose SEND TO.

Choose SORENSON SQUEEZE. Also select open application immediately.

Avid creates a QT reference file. This should take a couple of minutes, not hours.

The QT reference file will show up HIGHLITED in your Media drive. Drag it into the Sorenson Application.

Set your sorrenson for whatever compression you want. Mpeg 2, 4 whatever. You can pick more than one compression form if you want.

Hit SQUEEZE.

Go eat dinner.

The Squozen file (Squeezed? Squoze? Squun?) Is then used in your authoring app. I use ReelDVD... so I can't help you with Encore.

Be aware there is a known issue with AMD and Avid. Do a search on tha Avid forums for more. I personally have never experienced this issue but it sounds like the black and green bars mentioned in some of those posts. I can't point you right to them as I have never looked at it too deeply as my system has never had this happen.

I am running a laptop with AMD 3.4GHz 64bit processor and it is fine. I also have a home machine running AMD XP 2700+ chip in a small shuttle case with 1GB RAM and have never had this happen there either.

I second Richards comment. QT Ref files are fast. Sounds like you may have done a standard QT file with the interlacing set backwards or something if it took that long and looked that bad.

Good luck.

Sean McHenry

Sean's post clicked with me. Yeah, I think the first time around, you converted to a standard quicktime file, unrendered, with the wrong field settings... and other possible missetings as well.

My first system ran fine on dual AMD chips, and yeah, they're not certified with AVID. Lots of people use them just fine, you should know that it might require some tweaking. I'm running dual Xeons now.

Next January I will probably be editing an HDV project, and it's quite likely I may need to upgrade my MOBO.

My present setup is a Gigabyte GA-7N400V with an AMD 3200, 1GB DDR, GeForce FX5700, plenty of HD storage and Sony/NEC DVD burners.

Even if this setup seems to be able to handle the task, I am not sure if jumping to a dual-core CPU based system would not bring further benefits in speed.

One problem I seem to foresee on some Athlon X2 MOBOs I have seen is that the video is not AGP but PCI-Express, which may limit my video options and probably increase my expense there.

At first I thought that these boards using type 939 sockets would allow using AMD or Intel chips, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What are my best to options to go by?


Carlos

Hi,

First i am not an Avid user.. but i have asked the same question you have asked..I was interested in possibly learning Avid, and I was going to build a dual core systems.. I asked over on the Avid forum.. and it seems that most people advised against it.. I would suggest that you go over there and take a look at this forum..It seems that Avid is picky about the hardware it runs on.. and most of the Avid people seemed very paranoid about running somethin like a Dual core.. the people there talked like the Dual Core systems were to new and unstable..??

My advice would be to look around and talk to some experiienced Avid people before you decide to build anything..


Mike moncrief

Carlos,

www.avid.com is the place to get the specs, and advice on the forum.

I run Avid Xpress Pro 5.2.1 on a dual core P4 3.2Ghz using an abit AL8 motherboard without any problems. It's pretty quick, but in many cases there are other system bottlenecks so the CPU is often no longer the limiting factor.

I am aware of Avid minimum PC requirements, but they can be misguiding too... or at least limiting.

They just list Intel based systems, completely ignoring AMD based ones. Does that mean AMD will not work? Certainly not!!!

A friend of mine that is quite up to date on video systems, told me that Express HD literally "flew" on an Athlon 64 based system, faster than on his own Pentium 4 system.

Of course these forums are the right places to look for comments on people that really operated the systems and got actual results, good or bad.

My own computer works quite fine with straight DV and my friend also thinks I shouldn't have any problem with HDV. Perhaps I should go higher on my memory, to 2GB, or get a better video card. But I am mostly interested in doing the first cut here, going to a better editing suite later for color correction and effects.


Carlos

Carlos,

Yes, Avid only 'certifies' Intel systems, yes Avid will run on AMD systems, but you can't get support for it from Avid. Your best bet is to inquire on the board for people with similar setups to find out the workarounds and bottleneck issues.

I'd definately go with 2 gigs of Ram.

Doing some looking around.

Yes, apparently there seems to be some issues with 64 bit dual-core and Avid, that is quite likely related to mobo incompatibilities. Until someone gets to tame them.

Of course I don't want to pay the price of paving the road for this, as I don't have the time or the background to do it.

The problem is where to find the answers. Will Athlon 64 bit based systems (non dual-core) do well with Avid? Perhaps it's just a question of getting a compatible board, that will also handle x2, and use a 64 type on it.


Carlos

Hello,

I read this thread again, and i realize when I responded that i was not specific.. I was talking specificly about AMD Dual Core systems..

Mike Moncrief

I'm a FCP editor and was tooling around on Avid's site today looking at their XpressPro stuff. I was wondering; can you capture HD footage with XpressPro? I didn't see anything that staed if you could or not. If not, what Avid products can you capture HD with?

Are you talking HDCAM?
If so, then you need an Adrenaline System or higher

Thanks for the reply. What HD formats can you capture wth Xpress ProHD?

I'm pretty sure that you can only capture hdv and dvcpro100. You can edit what you like but capture is a different thing all together.

The specs list I think tells you what you can and cannot do:
http://www.avid.com/products/xpressprohd/featurelist.html