Without the MXO2 plugged in it runs stable.

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

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

Have you tried reinstalling your Matrox MX02 drivers?

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

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 :)

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

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.

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 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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I fully understand. There does seem to be a lot of whining in posts on the Matrox forums.

One can get crusty about this stuff. Particularly when there have been several similar recent posts. I, myself, suffer from COFS (chronic old fart syndrome) which makes me particularly prone to curmudgeonly responses and requires editing before hitting the send button..

On the other had, I've found myself frustrated and in the middle of a project where I can't think of the right questions to ask to get myself around a problem. Sometimes, just throwing things out helps one get focused or, at least, aimed in the right direction.

I'm hoping we've now got Ron moving in that direction.

Even worse for me. I'm known for really knowing my stuff ... so people sometimes come to me for solutions. And when I get stuck? ... oops. :-D

Really good that the Adobe guy has joined dvinfo.

I must say though, I can't rave on enough about how many times the Matrox drivers have saved me (and my butt) from "codec hell". Just about anything that uses the Video For Windows subsystem can be played out to the video display ... and recorded in to a tape deck. Re-capture from the new recording and the world is once again a wonderful place.

Yeah, I really like my Matrox gear.

Andrew

OK, I updated the drivers and lost my Matrox presets. How do I get the presets back? It went from working poorly to not working at all.

Intel Xeon 2.33 Ghz x2 processors
12 gb ram
64 bit OS
Windows 7

Is that the presets that come with the drivers, or your own personal custom presets?

Andrew

The ones that come with Matrox. The ones that you can not use the monitor without.

Updated from what to what?

If you lost the presets, it sounds like something got seriously messed up in the software. My inclination would be to completely uninstall the hardware and software and start over with later drivers and utilities.

If you are trying to use the just released Matrox Utilities version 5, have you read the Release Notes (under "documentation" in the support --> downloads page.) I just got through skimming them and there is so much info that I'm going to wait a few days to finish some projects before I try updating.

Also, have you called or e-mailed Matrox support? (This is a question, not a criticism.)

I bought this new system three months ago it was built from the ground up to be a CS5 + Matrox mxo2 min system. It has never worked right. It would let you monitor the video on the HDMI connected monitor. But it would crash every time you use it.

The solution was to load new driver. The new driver did not load the Matrox Sequence Presets in CS5. So now it will not work at all. My builder says I need to uninstall everything and reload CS5 and Matrox all over again.

Is this the solution? Is this what has to happen every time there is an update to Cs5 or Matrox? Reload CS5 update CS5 load aftermarket plugins reinstall Matrox.

I am starting to think there has to be a better way to monitor my video on a third monitor. Anyone have a better solution?

Specifics would likely get more useful information unless you are throwing out the MXO2 Mini.

Again, what new driver did you download? A version number would be helpful in getting aid to trying to sort this out. Did you go to the Matrox download site and download the new version 5 software? Or did you find driver software somewhere else on the Matrox site?

What does Matrox say about the issue?

As far as uninstalling and reloading the software, that might be what you wind up having to do. It sounds like something got corrupted somewhere. There's a lot to the Adobe software which means that things can get corrupted. Last May, it took several tries for me to get all of the entire CS5 modules download and installed.

Here's another trick I've used occasionally when prior versions of PPro and Encore got hinky. Create a second admin user account, uninsitall the Matrox hardwre and software and then reinstall it. That worked for me when I had trouble running the Mini with CS4.

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.
Gary

When I got my Mini about 13 months ago, the drivers were FAR from working correctly. I researched my problems and came to the conclusion that Matrox makes products for Mac first and PC's are an afterthought.

Furthermore, Matrox's claims about the Mini's 'Professional Color Correction" capabilities is just flat out ridiculous.

I am taking my PC back to the builder Monday to see if he can get it to work. If this fails I will be selling my matrox mxo2 mini with max. It is a shame because I really need to monitor my video on a third monitor. What else is out there for a PC to monitor with?

I pressume you have tried the Matrox forum and tried to get some technical support from Matrox?

I use an internal RTX2 card, which requires a large computer case, this has worked well for me, although now I have a Cuda enabled nVidia card it is somewhat redundant. However, it does still drive a High definition LCD TV screen and as a bonus you can fine tune the colours and contrast using industry standard SMPTE colour bars - most LCD screens do not offer sufficient control to make accurate adjustments. Matrox supplies a Calibration application which allows you to view the screen with a Blue overlay and then you can adjust the contrast, Chroma etc. The output matches my JVC studio monitor (CRT), which I now rarely use.

I've now run into the kinds of problems that Ron has discussed. Some of it may be Matrox related but most of it seems to be kinks in the newly released PPro CS5.0.3.

I'll be starting a separate thread on this. To summarize:

Point number 1, is not to use the latest Matrox software if you have updated PPro to CS 5.0.3.

Point number 2 is that there seem to be some muti-cam bugs in PPro CS 5.0.3.

Point number 3 is that, on my system, there seems to be a basic incompatibility between CS 5.0.3 and Matrox (and maybe Cineform) the Windows 7 Critical Updates of December 17. By rolling back that Dec. 17 update, I was able to restore system stability, subject to some multi-cam annoyances.

My stablity issues have gone away. I'm running under a new WIn 7 user account. I've rolled back the Windows updates of December 16 and 17. I've rolled Cineform back to NeoHD build 281 (one back from the latest) and have not upgraded from Matrox Mini ver 3.01 to version 5 (although the system has downloaded the most current drivers.) I have not been able to roll back from CS5.03 but the other actions seems to have solved the stability issues for the time being. The trade-off is that I'm getting delays when I click the timeline's play button in a multi-cam project and also when adding titles.

Ok I got my computer back from the shop and everything appears to be working fine on the latest updates and drivers. It seems that you do indeed have to get a clean start and reload your software in the right order.

So does this mean that Matrox is forgiven?

(grin)

Andrew

Absolutely not what a ridiculous and expensive process to go thru just to get a product to do what it should do out of the box. The only thing this does is get me working again so I can make some money to find another solution. Besides Matrox did not do anything to help.

Perhaps it was your system builder then as your Matrox gear now works properly? I mean, it's hardly as if you had the hardware box swapped for a replacement unit?

Seriously though, you need to understand that video work is very resource intensive for any computer system hardware bandwidth and that all sorts of things can interfere. Then there's the software that runs on top and how it chooses to operate.

Is it Matrox's fault when they release good solid working drivers for CS5 and then Adobe releases a 'patch' update that inadvertently causes issues for the Matrox functionality? Perhaps it is Adobe's fault instead for 'breaking' the release version of PremierPro in order to fix it?

Andrew

Andrew you have been soooo much help. I appreciate you taking time out of your busy day to educate us whiners on how great Matrox is. What would the little people do with out you.

If you really wanted to help you could have taken your vast knowledge and posted the steps to solve the problem.

It is funny to me that this site is here for people to get help and share their experiences and when you ask for help there is always someone whining about having to help you.

Let me make it easy for you nothing beyond this post is written for you. From here on out you can ignore anything I write. (Grin)

I want to thank all of you on your responses. With your help I learned that...

1 Some people also are having problems with Matrox.
2 That it could possibly be a driver issue.
3 That Matrox recently updated their drivers.
4 That some people never got their issues solved and have a bad impression of Matrox.
5 That some people Love Matrox.
6 That Gary Bettan from Video Guys Sells Matrox (I buy a lot of stuff from Video Guys)
7 That there is really a number of people that have the CS5 + Matrox configuration working.
(This gave me hope)
8 That some people feel that Matrox has made claims that the product does not live up to.
9 That some people are fans of Matrox.
10 That some people really do understand what this forum is for.
11 That some people think that you are a whiner when you ask for help.
12 That some people feel far superior to the rest of us.
13 That some people have had this or similar problems and have been able to solve them.
(This gave me hope)
14 That some people feel that the Matrox calibration utility actually works. (Glad to here that)
15 That some people think the problem is with CS5.
(Since CS5 is the host program the obligation is on Matrox to make the product work.)

With your help I was able to make a decision to that lead to solving the problem.
This is a great forum thank you for all your help.

Hi Ron,

Actually, I held back from the über-helpful stuff as I don't yet own a MXO2 Mini. I am still wanting to purchase one in the near future, though. Especially with the Max encoding technology built in.

I do understand how frustrating it is when things just won't work, and I'm not out to make fun of you either. It's just that there are all sorts of cross-dependencies when it comes to video editing software and the operating system. As you saw, even a Windows Update can make a noticeable difference.

Neither is this fair for Matrox. Their software drivers for real-time processing etc has to work hand in hand with a huge software application that they have no control over. The only time they can get a cracking start on writing their 'current' drivers is when the goal posts have stopped moving ... which is the end of beta (or release) for Premiere Pro.

Must be heartbreaking for them when Premiere Pro bug fixes in turn give their good drivers stability issues. But it's life and it happens.

The good thing about Matrox is that they will update their drivers to work with the ultra latest version. And these will be out when they are ready.

Hang in there.

Andrew

Go Matrox, Go Matrox, Go Matrox, Go Matrox , Hoot who.
(Sung to the tune of Jack and Diane)